The John Birch Society :: Truth Freedom Leadership

ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:

In a May 7 "Analysis" piece in the New York Daily News entitled "Ugly truth why Hillary Clinton won't quit," Thomas M. DeFrank provided a novel explanation about why Senator Hillary Clinton refused to drop out of the presidential race following her defeat in North Carolina and her anemic victory in Indiana in Tuesday’s primaries: Racism.

Follow this link to the original source: "Ugly truth why Hillary Clinton won't quit"

COMMENTARY:

After each Democratic primary, the pundits analyze the potential aftereffects and how the results will impact upon Barrack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's respective quests for the White House. With John McCain having the Republican nomination locked up and able to take a breather from campaigning, all eyes focus on the Democrats. Each perceived setback, whether Obama's embarrassing past association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright or Clinton's anemic performance in the latest primaries, is held to portend the end of the road for the candidate in question.

But it has been a long time since Democrats have seen such a presidential horserace and it's not over yet. Even following Tuesday's results, Obama's 1,840.5-to-1,688 lead in delegates is no guarantee of the nomination, which requires 2,025 delegate votes. With the results of Florida's and Michigan's primaries in dispute and with hundreds of superdelegates free to support anyone they choose, the nomination may not be decided until the convention.

Not surprisingly, since this is the first time either an African-American or a woman has gotten this close to securing a major party's presidential nomination, the race and gender factors are being studied carefully.

As a May 7 AP article noted: "Racial divisions were stark. In both [North Carolina and Indiana], Clinton won six in 10 white votes while Obama got nine in 10 black votes, exit polls indicated."

Even so, the Daily News analysis seemed to play up the race factor to larger-than-life dimensions, pointedly noting: "With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama — for reasons that are disturbing."

While acknowledging that Obama "did manage to pull in many white voters," the writer cited an inadequate sampling (a classic fallacy, as anyone who has taken Logic 101 knows) culled from the Indianapolis crowd to prove that many white voters preferred Cinton because of Obama's race or Muslim-sounding name. When one voter (who cited information he received in a hoax e-mail as a reason to dismiss Obama) said, "I'm kind of still up in the air between McCain and Hillary," the implication (again, more false logic) was: The voter prefers either McCain or Hillary. McCain and Hillary are white. Therefore, the voter is a racist.

If such implications of racism can be made in reference to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton — whose husband Bill Clinton was honored at a 2001 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. as the nation's "first black president" — one can only imagine what outlandish statements might be made in a McCain-Obama general election.

Much larger issues need to be looked at besides the petty name-calling and speculation about race, religion, and gender that has dominated this year's election season. The media pundits have continuously raised questions about whether or not a Mormon, a woman, a black man, or even a man as old as John McCain can be elected president. Such arguments shortchange the open-mindedness of the American voter and his or her ability to judge a candidate on their qualifications, rather than their accidental attributes.

Conversely, the media may give too much credit to the voter's ability to separate the candidates' positions from their campaign rhetoric and to discern the real issues. And, for this shortcoming, the media is itself to blame. How often does the news media run stories about this or that candidate's positions on matters of real substance? During both the Republican and Democratic debates, the candidates disagreed mainly about how much socialist big government they were in favor of, or about how long we should wait before pulling our troops out of Iraq. Yet, the press gave reams of coverage to the "carbon-copy" candidates and scant coverage to those proclaiming anything original, such as Texas Representative Ron Paul.

Interestingly, a May 7 Reuters news story, “Tired voters say Democrats' primary fight divisive,” reflects what may be growing dissatisfaction among Democratic voters. The report quoted Linda Mrochinski, who works for a nonprofit organization in Milwaukee, as representative of this unrest. Said Mrochinski:

I backed Hillary in the (Wisconsin) primary, but no matter which one gets in, I'm unimpressed by both of them at this point.

Instead of a policy-based and a "what we can do" campaign, it's become a campaign of the women versus the blacks. It's just not a very comfortable campaign at this point.

The way Obama and Clinton (and their supporters) have been beating up on each other throughout this campaign (while disagreeing only slightly from each other on matters of policy) one wonders if they are not both working to put John McCain in the White House. It would not be the first time in our history that powerful forces behind the scenes would support one candidate as a "loser" to guarantee the election of their favored candidate.

Only a completely disagreeable Democratic candidate that has made legions of enemies within his own party, and who is leftist enough to thoroughly scare most middle-of-the-road voters, could make the lackluster, fence-straddling John McCain the preferred choice of most Americans.

When we think about, either Obama or Clinton could fill that role nicely.