Can Barack Obama get a fair hearing from the American people?

Many of the affirmative action programs and quota programs were rolled back in the Clinton years and some with his blessing. He also triggered a roll back of many welfare programs and also intiated one of the most thorough welfare reforms in history.

He also created the ill-fated "committee to study race relations" which was a disaster and ended up in some ways polarizing the country in race relations more. He also failed to deliver on a promise to overturn one of the biggest travesty's to black Americans -- the ridiculous mandatory sentencing crack cocaine laws which sends almost ten times as many black men as white men to prison despite similar crimes with different versions of the same drug.

Of course, I'm sure there was at least one area where blacks -- at least certain black females --were satisfied with Clinton, but that likely doesn't offset the fact that in general he was a lot more noise than action when it came to lending a helping hand to black folks, which is why their undying love for him is so puzzling.

In fact, if GWB were responsible for many of the same measures as Slick Willy he'd have been branded a racist and an evil man. Oh wait, he already has.

 

The parallel I was trying to draw (and thought I had) was the polls said it would be handily defeated and it was easily passed because people will say one thing in public and vote the other in private, and I used this as an example. I am not advocating anything. It was the closest example I could come up with this side of Dewey defeats Truman.
Be stunned all you want; you are taking this out of context.

 

Boom, to the best of my understanding and analysis of Clinton from my college days, it's not what he did for the black community, but for some unexplained reason (and I could be dead wrong with this thought), blacks looked at him as an underdog whose life was similar to theirs.  He grew up poor in the south, lived in a broken home with his mother, and life was hard.  He makes the effort to attend college, goes on to Oxford, and returns home to help those who supported him. In the long run, he finally "makes it."  However, Clinton still looked at himself as a second-class citizen from a hick state.  In essence, he emulated the sentiments of poor, middle class, and upper class blacks:  no matter how successful Clinton was, he was looked at as a second-class citizen, since he's from Arkansas.  Chris Rock put it best:  "you don't want to be me (a black man), and I'm rich."  

After his infamous filibustering speech at the '88 DNC in Atlanta, he shoots for the moon and runs for President.  His campaign nearly ended when it began, due to numerous indiscretions (Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones) and other issues (Whitewater came later) that started to rear its ugly head.  He was barely suriviving.  

He perseveres, wins the '92 election and strolls into the White House.  Bush Jr. may have set the standard in appointing high-level minorities, but Clinton was the first to publicly fill minor appointments with blacks and women.  Jocelyn Elders and David Satcher were named Surgeon Generals, Mike Espy was Ag Secretary, and he put Ron Brown in as Commerce Secretary (conspiracy theorists will claim that it was Clinton who "physically" took Brown out of the Commerce job.  Literally.).  That spoke volumes to blacks.  Blacks felt that they had scored big time in landing Cabinet positions, judgeships, and high-level civil service positions in the federal government.  

He was never afraid to spend countless hours campaigning and socializing with influential blacks and the black community in general, and feel comfortable doing it.  After all, the guy is a talker.  In a historical sense, no other president or presidential candidate would take the risk to hang around blacks as often as he did.  

Most Presidents and candidates are stuffy, feel out of place, continue to think that blacks still hate them because they are white (and that's true to a certain degree), and do things that makes their efforts to connect with blacks backfire in their faces (see Perot, Ross and "you people").  Their public hatred was always directed toward Republicans (which is symbolic as well.  Think rich people, mansions, and country clubs), but internally if there is someone they don't like on the Democratic side, tell won't tell you.  For saying it could cost the Dems control in D.C., and blacks a chance to be a part of dictating public policy, laws, and other important decisions.  

The popularity of Clinton with blacks, IMO, galvanized when Monicagate happened.  Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones were bumps in the road, but when Ken Starr was gunning for him, Clinton could have easily denied it and rebuffed the accusations.  But when he pressed and with the slight possibility that he could get bounced out of office (which was unlikely) he admitted it and said "I'm sorry."  

An apology, in his eyes, should have been enough, but the machinations to remove him didn't end.  Clinton looked like a man alone, and in the black community, they resonated with him:  alone, fighting a one-man war, and doing everything he can to persevere.  "The Man" was trying to take him down, but Clinton won the public relations war, but not without major battle scars to show for it.  

Clinton knew that the only group outside of his hard core supporters in Congress and Hollywood was the black community. They never abandoned him.  They saw him as a "victim" like themselves.  It's absurd to look at it in that angle, but after listening to family, friends, and others where I grew up at, that is the overall feeling about Bill Clinton and why they feel attached to him.  Blacks saw him as a regular guy with no scripts and no career track plotted out, who was being railroaded at every corner by those who didn't think he should have been in the White House in the first place.

It's a stretch to say that blacks "adopted" him, but they would rather have him on their side than Condi or Barack.  Though Barack is black and a Democrat, the comparisons of every Democratic candidate to Clinton from here on out could make or break them in the eyes of the black community.  Blacks have automatically counted Powell and Rice out of the mix because they are either Republicans, nominated by a Republican, or worked for a Republican administration, which continues to be a major silly hangup with black voters, such as myself.  I can't vote straight Democratic or Republican if I have bad vibes about someone on that slate.  I vote with my instincts and let the best man win.  

For blacks, Clinton resonates with them, is easygoing, and talk to blacks without putting them down or being standoffish.  Hillary, to me, is more standoffish, but she has his last name.  The more of Bill, the better her chances, regardless if Barack and his family is black, and has plenty of political juice on the southside of Chicago. 

That the sociological (hack) perspective that I've formed about the aura of President Clinton among African-Americans.  

This un-paid post was not endorsed by any campaign, political parties, or lobby groups, and the writer is solely responsible for its transaction on a message board.

 

A fine post, D-3, one I found both insightful and interesting.

 

I believe that the corner of white America which would not vote for a black President is the corner of white America which wouldn't stand in line to go into the voting booth in the first place.

I may be incredibly naive there. But that's my first thought.

 

No way. I think it's the same corner as that which came out in droves to vote against gay marriage last time around.

Admiration and affection toward a candidate or issue don't motivate nearly as well as strong dislike.

 

Clintons "tough on crime" policies were responsilbe for putting more african americans behind bars than the previous two republican presidents combined.

And yes I can use the welfare act example. I disagreed with it then and still do now. If you look at it as line iten in federal budget it was not a big expense. It was couched as expense reduction but it was really more symbolic. How it effected kids was wrong. Clinton should have shown more guts and not singed bill into law.

When you really drill down into those 2 policies alone Clinton impact on black community was very negative. He only talked a good game.

Put those 2 policies together - putting black men in jail and then not supporting their kids was a lethaly bad combination with lasting affect.

 

D-3 - great post! Thank you for such a detailed answer to my question. It seems like a lot of Clinton popularity in black community was based more on symbolic gesture than real policy.

The real poliies proved very detrmental with lasting affect. I submit that many of the social problems today in black community were result of Clinton policies.

 

Colin Powell would have been president of the United States had he run as a Republican early in the 2000 primary season or a democrat in the 2004 campaign. If he ran against Bush in 2004, George H. W. Bush would not have voted for his own son.

 

In most cases it is either racism or simple self interest.

 

Unfortunately that is how the left framed many issues -- if you don't support them you are a racist, you are a homophobe, you are a sexist, you are anti-children.....it couldn't ever be that you are just anti-bad legislation, nah, you had to be a bigot of some sort.

Thankfully, to quote Slick Willy, that dog just don't hunt around here any more and many attempts to paint foes of bad legislation and/or absurd spending programs or projects as being bigots are increasingly falling on deaf ears.

 

No, it's not. Equating racists with those who have an issue with homosexual behavior (and the "gay agenda") are two *completely* different things.

The former (wouldn't vote for a qualified African-American or woman solely based on race) is a very, very small segment of the population that exists in some small pockets of the South. The people in the latter group would have no problem voting for J.C. Watts or Michael Steele or a number of other African-Americans.

The same people who fomented the racist anger in the 1960s might be among the same people who would prefer not to see homosexual marriage legalized ... but at the same time, there are A LOT of people who view homosexual behavior as harmful (to both the participants and society at large) and either a lifestyle choice OR a psychological problem that can be reversed (and has been -- although the ex-gay movement rarely gets a lot of press) who are *not* racists. The former group has an agenda based on sheer hatred and ignorance. The latter group's agenda comes from making conclusions based on the scholarship and data available.

To translate the beliefs of the no-gay-marriage group and equate them to racists is extremely irresponsible.