During the last week or so, the cable news channels have turned their attentions to some questionable comments both by the presidential candidates and their surrogates, comments that skirt the edges of the kind of racial and gender codes long used by the rightwing in this country.
The cocaine allusion, the reaction to the “tear,” the various veiled references to type — all of it has done little to further debate on the Democratic side, making it less likely that two key segments of the Democratic alliance will be able to work together once the primaries have concluded.
No one comes off well in this tussle. All three of the major candidates have been guilty — either directly or through a surrogate — of playing these games. And no one can benefit — at least not in a larger sense.
John Nichols attempts to put all of this in perspective in this post on The Nation:
Where both Clinton and Obama are misguided is in their shared attempt to score political points rather than to step back from the abyss of an ugly discourse and to seek the clarity that is so frequently absent from our politics.
Neither Clinton nor Obama is using history well or wisely. Neither is telling us what those of us who recognize the significance of the King-Johnson collaboration – and, for a brief shining moment it was a collaboration –need to hear. Neither is answering the fundamental questions: How, as president, would they relate to social and political movements? Would they invite the Martin Kings and the Frederick Douglasses of the twenty-first century to the White House? Would either of these two candidates, as president, sit down with those demanding transformational change, craft policies with supposed radicals, coordinate political strategies with influential outsiders – as did both Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s?
The shame is that none of the candidates of either party have shown any sense that they are even thinking of these questions, let alone offering us answers.
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Hank Kalet 