To:-- The D.N.C., and other chief Democrat officials
Re:-- Racist Inuendo and Gender Whining by Hillary Cohorts and the Bankruptcy of the Party
I am writing to demand that you and other Democratic party leaders put an end to the divisive and race-mongering tactics being employed by Senator Clinton’s political partisans. Preferably you should demand that she quit the race for the good of the country.
1. For the Good of the Country.
I am old enough to remember when niggers sat in the back of the bus and drank from separate fountains. I am old enough to remember the snide-ass remarks of racist apologists and bully-sheriffs. I am not too old to have forgotten the smell.
This country has come a long hard way from the days of segregation. We have made some things worse and some things better. But when all is said and done, our candidates for president today have included, a woman, a black man, a white man, and candidates of varying faiths and ethnicities. No one has been talking about “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.”
No one at least until the Clinton campaign has done everything it could to open but freshly sealed wounds by playing the race and religion cards against Obama under the most flimsy tissues of feigned innocent deniability. Ferraro sneering that Obama would not be a candidate but for the fact that he is “black” and former Senator Kerry volunteering that Obama would help America’s image because of his “Muslim roots” (wink wink) are on low level par with Republican mongering over Obama’s middle name.
These contemptible sneers and insinuations are not simply “hard-ball politics”. Given this country’s history, they are serious wounds inflicted on the country solely for the sake of personal ambition and advancement. Desperately clawing for the White House, Clinton is willing to stir up demons from the past.
2. For the Good of the PartyThe leaders of the Democratic party would be well advised to wake up and ask themselves why the party has been relegated to the sidelines for the past 30 years. You have lost the Supreme Court, the judiciary, Congress and the White House because you have managed the extraordinary feat of alienating both the left and the right.
What kind of feeble-mindedness could loose labor to a president and party that threatened to destroy unions and put the working man back 75 years? What kind of self indulgent stupidity looses the middle class by harping on superficial social issues under the guise of political correctness? What kind of political cowardice looses progressives by adopting a socio-economic agenda that was written in a corporate boardroom. And lastly, what kind of moral decay sees “no point” in impeaching a president who has managed to subvert the constitution, international law, the political process, the economy and the environment in eight years of unparalleled plunder and destruction?
This election ought to be the Democrats’ for the picking and yet the party is out to prove that it can loose once again. You should not forget that those of us who are progressives are not enthusiastic about either Obama or Clinton. We despise what the party has become. We might vote for its candidate only if the party offers some prospect of progressive change. Do not mistake this for a sure thing.
You should not forget that your precious “center” doesn’t care for you either. It doesn’t, prescisely because you abandoned the real Roosevelt - Johnson tradition of social justice that had been the country’s center for 50 years. If you had pursued policies of corporate responsibility and general welfare within a context of true diversity and freedom you would be in power today rather than on the verge of permanent marginalization. Instead, you thought you could get by on the cheap and easy by pandering to minority hot button issues. It is not that these issues are not important to those whom they concern; but they should only be accomodated within a general policy framework -- never used as a substitute for social policies for all.
You should not forget that even if the occupier of the White House and his party stole the Ohio election he still managed 48% of the popular vote. Excluding the 2% who actually benefit from the Republican agenda, that figure includes 25% who are terminally Republican and comprise the Rock of Stupidity. It includes another 25% who might be described as the moderately center-right. It is no very difficult feat for the Republicans to “moderate” themselves just sufficiently enough to garnish 3%-5% of the center center or just left of center to put them over the top. While these figure are mere rules of thumb, they have proved true over the past 40 years, which is why you have lost and the Republicans have won.
3. For the Sake of DecencySo in this political setting, what is the Clinton Cadre up to? They are stirring up in the same underhanded manner the same race and religion cards that the Republican party, since its inception, has never failed to use.
As if that were not enough, they are engaging in tactics that remind the vast center of those very self-indulgent “special group” issues the center despises, thus giving a vast chunk of the electorate the little reason they need not to vote Democratic.
Let’s be very clear about one thing: Hillary Clinton is not an oppressed woman. She is one of America’s more fortunate. She has made it to the top of the political heap with no small measure of financial security and comfort. The difficulties she encounters are the difficulties that anyone in high position, angling for higher position, encounters. For Hillary Clinton, Geralidne Ferraro, Erica Jong, and the whole case of successful, secure women who have access and voice, to be playing the gender victim and whining about discrimination is simply nauseating.
There are women in this country who suffer terrible disadvantages. You can see them at battered women’s shelters or “putting up” with their boss when called into the office. You can see them working Wal-Mart checkout stands, tired out at 20 and still tired at 60. Hillary is not one of them. She does not symbolise any of them. For anyone to mistake the one for the other is a form of Marie Antoinettism that will get them only to the political guillotine.... and deservedly.
In conclusion The leaders of the Democractic Party must put a stop to Clinton tactics that do a grave disservice to the tenor of our political discourse, that disgrace the party and go the extra mile destroy its electoral chances -- all for the sake of unrestrained personal ambition. If you fail to do that, you might as well follow Joe Lieberman and become tag-alongs to the Republican party. The insurance companies and banks will still pay you to put up a farce, but you will never regain power.
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