black…MYstory

Looks like JibJab.com is back with another political animation and it’s a good one.

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Paula Abeles is one of those Hillary Clinton supporters who, in the wake of her losing the nomination to Barack Obama, has decided to switch her vote to McCain.

Such switches were, by no means, unheard of — anecdotally, I have seen many instances of people professing the same switch on various blogs I have read. For those who chose not to vote for Obama, their rationales for doing so range from his perceived lack of experience all the way to continued hard feelings over how they believe their candidate was treated.

However, let’s also be honest enough to say that there are some people who switched their support because they couldn’t see themselves supporting a black man for president.

I believe Paula Abeles to fit in this category.

We might not remember her name but, we might remember what happened a few years back. There was to be a meeting of the Monticello Association, which was a gathering of descendants of Thomas Jefferson. Well, as we know, because of Jefferson’s relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, some of those descendants are also black.

Abeles and her husband Nat, the former president of the association, enacted a campaign to block the black descendants of Jefferson from attending the gathering. This included her pretending to be a 67-year-old black woman while participating in an online Yahoo! group of Hemings descendants, in efforts to discourage their attendance. In response to her actions, Abeles offered the following:

“It might have been somewhat unethical.

…

It might have been childish, but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering.”

In other words, we couldn’t have all those “uncivilized” negroes mingling with us “civilized” white folk.

To be fair, I consider this person, he likely beliefs and her past behaviors to be no reflection on Hillary Clinton. I simply don’t believe that, of her former supporters who are now supporting McCain, all of them do so out of a sisterly spirit. Some do so based on serious racial prejudices.

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As you no doubt know by now, Hillary Clinton campaign has signaled that Senator Clinton will suspend her campaign and endorse Barack Obama this Saturday.

With this move, Clinton will end her 17-month bid for the Democratic nomination and clear a path for Obama to take on John McCain.

Honestly, I thought this day would not come but, I am glad it finally has.

Maybe now the Democrats can begin the healing process.

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The Associated Press has a story out on some of the biggest mistakes made by the Clinton campaign that cost her the nomination.

Honestly, I had thought for the longest time that she was poorly-served by the people around her, not the least of which was her own husband, former President Bill Clinton.

She has said some things that caused me to raise an eyebrow but, for the most part, it was the management of her campaign and the surrogates that spoke for her that left me most taken aback.

One section of this article stood out for me. It was how the actions of Bill Clinton ended up costing Hillary Clinton the black vote when, at the time, she enjoyed a significant advantage with black voters. It sums ups what I saw quite nicely:

Until January of this year, former President Clinton had been viewed as an asset for his wife among her aides and supporters. Although reviled by conservatives for his affair with a White House intern, Bill Clinton remained a beloved figure among Democratic audiences, particularly blacks, who remembered the 1990s as relatively prosperous and his efforts on their behalf.

That changed in South Carolina, where the former president campaigned vigorously for his wife. Her advisers, aware of his tendency to go off message, had urged him to stay positive and talk up her accomplishments, not criticize Obama.

But Bill Clinton chafed at the campaign’s reluctance to take on the Illinois senator, particularly over what the former president viewed as conflicts between Obama’s rhetoric of opposition to the Iraq war and his voting record. So he took it on himself to speak out, with calamitous results.

Obama soundly won South Carolina, and Bill Clinton then made things worse. He seemed to diminish Obama’s triumph by noting that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, never the presidential contender that Obama had already become, had also won the state’s primary years earlier.

Once so popular among blacks he was dubbed the first black president by author Toni Morrison, Bill Clinton had helped drive those voters away from his wife. Obama’s already strong black support would climb to as much as 90 percent of the black vote in subsequent contests.

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We might now know why the Clinton campaign adamantly denied today that their candidate will concede.

In a word — leverage.

It now appears that Hillary Clinton has signaled that she would be open to be Obama’s Vice-president.

Perhaps her delay on announcing her exit of the race would be for just that reason and put her in the position to bargain for the spot.

While it would not be the “dream ticket” I would envision, it could help unite the party (did I just say that?)

So, it seems the veepstakes is on and Hillary Clinton may have just thrown her name in the hat.

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Well, we already know that tonight marks the end of the primary season. For a while now, we have heard rumblings that indicated that we could see a delegate fight at the Democratic National Convention in August, which would pose a huge risk to the chances of a Democratic candidate in November.

However, there are signals that this won’t happen.

Today, the breaking news is that Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight will be a concession speech. According to senior officials on her campaign, if Obama has the 40 remaining delegates (pledged and super) that he needs to reach the magic number of 2,118, Senator Clinton will acknowledge Obama as the Democratic nominee.

However, it appears that she will not say that she is formally ending her run.

At any rate, I’ll be up late tonight awaiting this. If this is the case, it will not be the Obama victory speech that everyone will be awaiting. Instead, it will be the concession speech that will own tonight’s coverage.

Update: Now, some in the Clinton campaign say she will not concede. So, we will see which of these stories prove to be true tonight.

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I had to laugh at how hard some right-wingers are willing to push against reality or, at least, credibility, to prove a point.  For example, you KFYI’s (Phoeniz, AZ) right-wingnut Bruce Jacobs who decides to read, on air, a Wall Street Journal “article” attributed to Bill Cosby.  You might have seen it before, it starts off with the following:

“Rev. Wright epitomizes the thoughts and actions that have prevented and continue to prevent black America from moving ahead and achieving their potential as a people. He suggests that this United States of America made up of sons and daughters of immigrants (I’m talking of the millions of 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation immigrants in this country) of every race, creed, color and religion each and everyone of them who had nothing to do with slavery, some how owe something to a group of people who have never been slaves?”

Now, if you click on the link above, you might be confused.  You might say, “hey, that’s not the article!  This article is about Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s recent speeches on reconciliation, not Bill Cosby’s article!”

Well, that’s because you didn’t scroll down to the comments section.  My quote above was from comments posted by a reader calling himself “Bill Cosby”.  So, because this person posted under the name of “Bill Cosby”, the internet has been lit up with message board posts and blog posts about what “Bill Cosby” said about Rev. Wright.  Funny enough, in all the posts I’ve seen, I had not seen one link to this supposed article.  So, I went to Snopes.com, which is an internet myth-busting site, and saw that they  had the real deal on the story.

The funny part about it is that Jacobs was reading the story like it was in an actual newspaper and not a printout of comments from a post on the Wall Street Journal blogs.  So, Jacobs deceived his listeners and, no doubt, many of these suckers went on to repeat this nonsense.

However, it doesn’t appear to be the first time he’s done this.  In 2003, Jacobs reported an urban legend about Bill Clinton as fact.  In that urban legend, Bill Clinton dodged the draft and became a fugitive from justice.  However, as a “fugitive from justice”, Bill Clinton ran for Congress in 1974 and for Attorney General of Arkansas in 1976 (okay, has this gotten ridiculous enough yet?)   They way this urban legend goes, he was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter right after Carter was inaugurated in 1977 (never mind that Presidents usually issue pardons when leaving office, not right after they’re sworn in).

In other words, Jacobs is not big on the truth.

Now, of course, he was not content with just making himself sound stupid so, yes, he put up a YouTube video.

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In a previous post, I referenced how, in citing her reasons for staying in the Democratic nomination race, Senator Hillary Clinton invoked the assassination of leading Democratic candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968, seemingly as an example of occurences that could change the complexion of the presidential race.

In this post, I wrote of how low I believe this to be and that, given the very real threat of assassination that Barack Obama lives under, this reference was particularly sickening.

Keith Olbermann, on his show, Countdown, offered a special comment on Senator Clinton’s remarks.  His statements are strong and unequivocating.  I share them with you, now.

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Senator Hillary Clinton, of late, has gone down a very bizarre path.  For example, she recently compared her fight to have the Florida and Michigan delegations seated as-is at the Democratic Convention to efforts to free black slaves and to the fight for winning the right to vote for blacks and women (never mind that she was perfectly okay with Florida and Michigan being “disenfranchised” when she was ahead in the race).  We all knew it to be grandstanding but, hey, whatever, right?

Today, though, we heard something from Senator Clinton that not only showed her desperation but, also showed how low she is willing to go to still try to get the presidential nomination.

Today, Clinton offered the following rationale for staying in the Democratic presidential race:

“And again, I’ve been around long enough. You know, my husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary sometime in the middle of June. Right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just– I don’t understand it. And you know, there’s lots of speculation about why it is, but uh…”

My question is why reference an assassination when being asked why you are sticking around when you are behind in the delegate math, both in elected delegates and superdelegates?  She seemed to be saying that anything could happen, such as an unfortunate accident or even the death of the leading candidate at the hands of an assassin.

This year, we commemorated the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  and will soon observe that same somber marker for the assassination of Robert Kennedy.  Today, we have the leading candidate who, because he is black, has received what are being called very credible death threats, so much so that he had to accept a Secret Service detail over a year ago and has to have more security at his events than either Senator Clinton or Senator John McCain.

So, to imply that you are sticking around in case something happens and one of those things being referenced is that, previously, a leading presidential candidate was murdered is beyond the pale.

Hillary Clinton’s chances were sinking more and more each day.  Now, one must ask if, after all this time, it is now the time for the superdelegates to step forward and end this.  There are rumors that Clinton has been pushing for the Vice President slot.  Well, one has to ask, would she be willing to take such a role because, hey, who knows when the presidential slot might open up.  After all, there have been Presidents who have been assassinated?  Trust me, while I was being somewhat facetious, I certainly wasn’t trying to be humorous.  Barack Obama is fully aware that there are some out there who wish to to him harm for no more reason than he is a black man who dares to dream big enough to want to be President.  The fact that another presidential hopeful, of his own party, no less, would raise the specter of assassination leaves one wondering what lurks in the mind and heart of Senator Clinton.

Of course, she has apologized, sort of.  But, this is sort of like trying to unring a bell.  Once such things are out there, it is not easy to take them back.

However, before I wrap up, I do want to call attention to one thing THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME SHE HAS MADE THIS REFERENCE.  Keith Olbermann, in a special comment on his show, Countdown, has cited no less than three previous instances where she cited her husband’s June win in 1992 and the killing of Robert Kennedy in 1968 as reasons for her to stay in the race.  In at least one prior instance, she specifically used the word “assassination” in referencing Kennedy’s death in justifying her continued campaigning in this race.  Then, as now, the inference was that you can’t be sure what would happen.  I’ll post the Countdown video shortly.

So, perhaps we have seen what may prove to be the final implosion of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  She asked who would be ready on Day One to be president.  Today, it is clear that one person is not — Hillary Clinton.

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All I can say is “Wow!”

EDIT:  It looks like YouTube took down the earlier video.  Get this one while you can.

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