TO: Sonya Ross, AP
I read your op ed piece today with interest, and while I think you believe you are being clever, you are actually being racist yourself, and unfairly judgmental.
The frustration we have all sensed and seen in Bill Clinton has nothing to do with race. As you point out, he did more for the African Americans of this country than any president before.
His frustration stems from his being a powerful personality, accustomed to power, and a husband taking a very very personal, perhaps too personal, interest in his wife’s campaign.
No one cares about Michele Obama’s unskillful remarks, or if they do, it is not getting one fraction of the media attention that his every move does.
His frustration stems from the fact that H Clinton was clearly the front-runner going in, with 30 years under her belt, and then a new candidate with barely two, basically appears to be running away with the whole election.
Except that if Obama were unstoppable, she would not have been able to stop him, as she has. He has not won a single large state, and is not so far in the delegate count than anyone can ever say this is a foregone conclusion.
Obama may have had some high profile endorsements early on, but he has not sewn this up yet, and according the rules he continues to flout, he would be short on delegates too.
On the other hand, if he were a true Democrat, he would want to see the Michigan and Florida delegates seated. He has stopped that from happening at every turn.
Why not seat them? Because they broke the rules? Why not have another primary? Decide it once and for all, fairly?
This is the source of B. Clinton’s frustration-because the quicksand shifted, and now the rules are out the window and bogging down not only his wife’s campaign, but the whole effort to win the White House.
He wants to see he getting on with the business of helping this country, not running the gauntlet of her critics over and over again, let alone Obama, with his rude sexist digs at her at every turn.
(And ask yourself this: you don’t want to betray your race, Ms. Ross, but you are prepared to set back the cause of equal rights for women how many decades as you try to yank the rug out from under Hillary Clinton?)
Obama has shown what he is made of since he first came to our attention. A meteoric rise is usually followed by an equally meteoric fall.
She has stayed the course with guts and resilience, putting herself through what NO presidential candidate has EVER had to put up with before, or ever will in the future.
And believe me, I am NO fan-she is as flawed as the rest of the political candidates this country seems to be so super at churning out. I was rooting for Edwards myself until he started to look so weak and other issues started to crop up which make him look less and less electable.
I am not voting for Obama because he is so inexperienced, and because, as YOUR most recent AP poll showed, those of us who do actually know who he is now see him to be inexperienced, unethical, and dishonest.
B. Clinton’s admiration for H. Clinton’s determination, for the sacrifices she has made for years, her energy, her efforts. He does not want to just sit back and see it all count for nothing in the end. Yes, she can still be a Senator, but everything she has done for years has been leading up to her becoming the kind of commander in chief that he was.
So it makes him impatient, true, but it does NOT make him racist.
And as we have seen, and your article indicates, racism works both ways, and when combined with sexism, is particularly ugly.
B Clinton is impatient, as we all are, for her to win fair and square, as she will, and deservedly so, and then beat the stuffing out of McCain and get to the White House.
Why deservedly so? Because all the other horses in the field were not able to keep up with her, or catch up with her, and her victory is going to be in the face of the most outright sexism any reasonably intelligent, prosperous country, should completely reject in the same way that it should reject racism, ageism, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and so forth.
And because the alternative is 4 more years of Republican misrule, and more of the suffering the Bush administration has not only inflicted on the world with this war, but has resulted in the American people all now being plunged into the worst recession this country has seen in over 20 years.
Any true Democrat will want ALL the delegates to be seated, and any true PATRIOT will vote for the Democrat who wins, regardless of personal feeling, opinion, or any other hidden agenda, because the alternative of McCain is just too horrific to even contemplate.
The more everyone keeps producing devisive columns like yours, the less likely that is to happen.
We ALL have our opinions–you using your position to inflame the race issue even further than you already claim it is, is completely irresponsible
And only makes all Obama supporters seem even more polarized and naive than they already do, especially after last week’s debate (or was it a debacle for Obama?)
It makes many people ask: are all Obama supporters all just strikingly fanatical-or racist and/or sexist themselves?
