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How Can Black People Trust Hillary Clinton After the 2008 Campaign?
Today, Clinton is wrapping herself in the flag of Obama to appeal to Black voters, arguing that she’s the candidate who will address the needs of Black people. She’s got her surrogates attacking her opponent’s civil rights bonafides, and she’s 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 it’s hard to believe she’s serious about fighting for racial justice unless you pretend her 2008 campaign against Obama never happened. If you remember that period, there’s good reason to believe today’s promises are nothing more than lip-service to a community she sees as key to winning the nomination.
A quick trip down memory lane reveals that Clinton has a history of employing race in a divisive, cynical manner.
Based on what happened the last time Hillary Clinton ran for President, we should expect that at some point Black people will get thrown under the bus again, especially if it helps Clinton gain or maintain power.
Painting Obama As Not ‘Fundamentally American’
Throughout the 2008 election season, racist and bigoted smears about Barack Obama circulated online, and bubbled up into mainstream conversation about the campaign in the traditional news media. Two of the most prominent lies about Obama, which persist to this day, were that he is secretly a Muslim (playing on fear-mongering and bigotry about Islam), and that he was not really born in America. Both of these ideas paint Obama as “other” and outside the mainstream, drawing their potency from fears about Black people gaining power. People generally associate these memes with the right wing. But the truth is that for the entire Democratic primary, not only did Hillary Clinton’s campaign do nothing to push back against the racist fear-mongering about Obama, it actually fed this atmosphere and helped it grow. It was a part of their strategy from early in the campaign.
Back in March of 2007, Hillary Clinton’s 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.“
In December of 2007, Billy Shaheen, the co-chair of Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign, raised the issue of Obama’s drug use as a young man, and the possibility that Obama could be attacked as a drug dealer
. He said he was talking about how Republicans would attack Obama, but his statements had the effect of injecting racist stereotypes into the campaign: “It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’ There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks.” It is a tried and true tactic: floating an idea to which you claim to not personally ascribe, with the effect of getting the idea to circulate.
The next day, Clinton privately apologized to Obama for Shaheen’s comments and claimed she had nothing to do with them. Obama didn’t accept the apologybecause he believed Clinton’s campaign was circulating emails claiming he was 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. David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager called it“the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.”Initially, the Clinton campaign did not deny having sent the photo, instead playing dumb about the possible impact of the photo and attacking Obama over it:
there’s Hillary Clinton, herself, more subtly doing the same. In March 2008, in an interview on 60 Minutes, instead of defending Obama against the “secret Muslim” smear, Clinton carefully and strategically left room open for doubt, saying“I take him on the basis of what he says,” and then when pressed, saying he’s not Muslim “as far as I know.” Clinton could have clearly and unequivocally denounced the smears against Obama, but she didn’t.
In contrast, when presented with a similar question, the Republican front-runner John McCain unequivocally dismissed such claims, rebuking and taking the microphone away from a participant in a town hall who asserted she couldn’t trust Obama because he is an Arab.
When Hillary Clinton attacked Obama for having weak support among white people in May 2008, her comments were denounced in no uncertain terms by many prominent Democrats and media commentators. Here is a sampling:
The New York Times (which also endorsed both Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns):
“Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones … We endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and we know that she has a major contribution to make. But instead of discussing her strong ideas, Mrs. Clinton claimed in an interview with USA Today that she would be the better nominee because a recent poll showed that “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” She added: “There’s a pattern emerging here.”Yes, there is a pattern — a familiar and unpleasant one. It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses.”
From an article in Black Star News:
“Racists should decide the Democratic nomination,” Issac J. Bailey wrote Friday in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News. “Sen. Hillary Clinton didn’t use those words in an interview with USA Today, but she came close.”
Today, Clinton is wrapping herself in the flag of Obama to appeal to Black voters, arguing that she’s the candidate who will address the needs of Black people. She’s got her surrogates attacking her opponent’s civil rights bonafides, and she’s 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 it’s hard to believe she’s serious about fighting for racial justice unless you pretend her 2008 campaign against Obama never happened. If you remember that period, there’s good reason to believe today’s promises are nothing more than lip-service to a community she sees as key to winning the nomination.
A quick trip down memory lane reveals that Clinton has a history of employing race in a divisive, cynical manner.
Based on what happened the last time Hillary Clinton ran for President, we should expect that at some point Black people will get thrown under the bus again, especially if it helps Clinton gain or maintain power.
Painting Obama As Not ‘Fundamentally American’
Throughout the 2008 election season, racist and bigoted smears about Barack Obama circulated online, and bubbled up into mainstream conversation about the campaign in the traditional news media. Two of the most prominent lies about Obama, which persist to this day, were that he is secretly a Muslim (playing on fear-mongering and bigotry about Islam), and that he was not really born in America. Both of these ideas paint Obama as “other” and outside the mainstream, drawing their potency from fears about Black people gaining power. People generally associate these memes with the right wing. But the truth is that for the entire Democratic primary, not only did Hillary Clinton’s campaign do nothing to push back against the racist fear-mongering about Obama, it actually fed this atmosphere and helped it grow. It was a part of their strategy from early in the campaign.
Back in March of 2007, Hillary Clinton’s 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.“
In December of 2007, Billy Shaheen, the co-chair of Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign, raised the issue of Obama’s drug use as a young man, and the possibility that Obama could be attacked as a drug dealer
. He said he was talking about how Republicans would attack Obama, but his statements had the effect of injecting racist stereotypes into the campaign: “It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’ There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks.” It is a tried and true tactic: floating an idea to which you claim to not personally ascribe, with the effect of getting the idea to circulate.The next day, Clinton privately apologized to Obama for Shaheen’s comments and claimed she had nothing to do with them. Obama didn’t accept the apologybecause he believed Clinton’s campaign was circulating emails claiming he was 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. David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager called it“the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.”Initially, the Clinton campaign did not deny having sent the photo, instead playing dumb about the possible impact of the photo and attacking Obama over it:
there’s Hillary Clinton, herself, more subtly doing the same. In March 2008, in an interview on 60 Minutes, instead of defending Obama against the “secret Muslim” smear, Clinton carefully and strategically left room open for doubt, saying“I take him on the basis of what he says,” and then when pressed, saying he’s not Muslim “as far as I know.” Clinton could have clearly and unequivocally denounced the smears against Obama, but she didn’t.
In contrast, when presented with a similar question, the Republican front-runner John McCain unequivocally dismissed such claims, rebuking and taking the microphone away from a participant in a town hall who asserted she couldn’t trust Obama because he is an Arab.
When Hillary Clinton attacked Obama for having weak support among white people in May 2008, her comments were denounced in no uncertain terms by many prominent Democrats and media commentators. Here is a sampling:
The New York Times (which also endorsed both Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns):
“Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones … We endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and we know that she has a major contribution to make. But instead of discussing her strong ideas, Mrs. Clinton claimed in an interview with USA Today that she would be the better nominee because a recent poll showed that “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” She added: “There’s a pattern emerging here.”Yes, there is a pattern — a familiar and unpleasant one. It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses.”
From an article in Black Star News:
“Racists should decide the Democratic nomination,” Issac J. Bailey wrote Friday in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News. “Sen. Hillary Clinton didn’t use those words in an interview with USA Today, but she came close.”
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