http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-rucker/can-black-people-trust-hillary_b_9312004.html
There's more in the article so check it out. Some of these are more circumstantial than others, but there are clear racial undertones in the campaigning in 2008 to me. Not having lived in America in 2008, this is all new stuff to me, and it's really weird seeing all this now.
Can people who were around for it provide more context? Is this how you felt during that campaign? Is the article off base?
Today, Clinton is wrapping herself in the flag of Obama to appeal to Black voters, arguing that shes the candidate who will address the needs of Black people. Shes got her surrogates attacking her opponents civil rights bonafides, and shes built a large stable of Black establishment players to support her. Clinton is proclaiming that Black Lives Matter and offering bold promises to fight systemic racism and inequality.
But its hard to believe shes serious about fighting for racial justice unless you pretend her 2008 campaign against Obama never happened. If you remember that period, theres good reason to believe todays promises are nothing more than lip-service to a community she sees as key to winning the nomination.
Back in March of 2007, Hillary Clintons chief strategist Mark Penn wrote a campaign memo that proposed painting Barack Obama as un-American or other:
His roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values ... Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century ... Let's explicitly own 'American' in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn't.
...
The candidate [Obama] very respectfully told her the apology was kind, but largely meaningless, given the emails it was rumored her camp had been sending out labeling him as a Muslim.
In February 2008, the Drudge Report posted a picture of Obama in traditional Kenyan/Somali clothes (including a turban, which helped reinforce the secret Muslim smear). Drudge said the picture was circulated by the Clinton campaign.
...
Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a member of Congress and Clinton surrogate, when asked about the circulation of the photo, implied that Barack Obama is native to Kenya: I have no shame, or no problem, with people looking at Barack Obama in his native clothing, the clothing of his country if were supporting a woman or an African American for president, we ought to be able to support their ability to wear the clothing of their nation.
She attacked Obamas association with Rev. Wright not once, but on several occasions. And she launched these attacks after Obamas deeply moving A More Perfect Union speech, where he both denounces some of Wrights rhetoric, while speaking to the reality of race in America and Black Liberation Theology.
As Obama tried to move on from the manufactured controversy around Jeremiah Wright, the Reverend was thrust into the spotlight again with a highly publicized appearance at the National Press Club which, it turns out, was organized by a longtime Clinton ally.
after Barack Obamas victory in South Carolina in 2008 made it clear that most Black voters were supporting him, the Clinton campaign began making the argument that Obama was not electable because he was not winning enough support from white voters. The Clinton campaign implied, over and over again that, as a Black man, Obama could not attract the support of the white people (many of them racists, apparently) supporting Clintons campaign.
This pattern did not go unnoticed at the time. While many who might have otherwise spoken out likely limited their criticism not wanting to anger a powerful political dynasty many prominent Democratic and Black commentators and politicians did call it out.
There's more in the article so check it out. Some of these are more circumstantial than others, but there are clear racial undertones in the campaigning in 2008 to me. Not having lived in America in 2008, this is all new stuff to me, and it's really weird seeing all this now.
Can people who were around for it provide more context? Is this how you felt during that campaign? Is the article off base?