Not this time
On March 18, 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech. And in the speech, he said this:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
You’re going to hear story upon story today about how Hillary Clinton is gaining traction among people that Barack Obama cannot reach, which is nothing more than code for “they won’t vote for a black man.”
You’re going to hear spin about how Pennsylvania puts the Clinton campaign back into play, caused a surge in fundraising, is making donors sit up and take notice.
You’re going to hear about how Barack Obama, while in preschool, collaborated with violent, unrepentant, anti-American underground Chicago types.
You’re going to hear about how we should be trapped in the politics of fear, encouraged to adopt the Bush doctrine of ‘obliterating’ those we disagree with, called to reject the new for the old.
You’ll have a choice. The racists aren’t going to go away. The hatemongers aren’t going to go away. They will ‘attack race as a spectacle’. Hillary Clinton will participate. Richard Mellon Scaife’s endorsement was a dog whistle to the packs in North Carolina, calling them forth to endeavor to destroy Barack Obama’s campaign. He won’t change who he is.
The question isn’t about whether he’s black or has a neighbor that associated with two people pardoned by Bill Clinton. It all depends on how we answer.
Is it
Today, serious efforts to swiftboat Barack Obama in advance of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries begin. I say, “not this time.”
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