I also note that Mr. Herbert figures it time for some payback. He's opened the Clinton's closet and is starting to air out some of those old scandals.

TheraP,

The whole thing (blog title and following line)reads like this:

"Bob Herbert says Clinton wins!!! ...at leaving on a sour note."

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/10/clintons_diminishing_of_black_voters/

Boston Globe

Clinton's diminishing of black voters
By Derrick Z. Jackson
Globe Columnist / May 10, 2008

IN HER long, sad self-diminution to being merely a white candidate for subsegments of white people, Hillary Clinton claimed to USA Today this week, "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on." Clinton exploited an Associated Press poll to say how "Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me . . . There's a pattern emerging here."
more stories like this

This was on top of Democratic strategist and Clinton supporter Paul Begala saying this week on CNN, "We cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans. OK. That's the Dukakis coalition, which carried 10 states and gave us four years of the first George Bush. President Clinton, you know, reached across and got a whole lot of Republicans and independents to come."

This reaches across the aisle all right, straight to right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, who has been urging people to vote for Clinton to prolong the Democratic primaries, said this week, "Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes that Democrats need to win: blue-collar working people. He can get effete snobs. He can get wealthy academics and he can get the young, he can get the black vote, that's about it."

Obama just got done being tarred and feathered as an elitist by Clinton and the talk shows for belittling "bitter" people in jobless small towns who "cling to guns or religion." Yes, that was dumb.

Yet here is Clinton dancing all over stereotypes. There is no way you can say in the same sentence, "hard-working Americans, white Americans," without diminishing black Americans as lazy.

IF Clinton must keep talking about white voters, I wish she'd say "a little over half of the less-educated white voters."

Because frankly? I'm white, and I'm insulted by her for assuming I'm voting by race. I'm insulted by her assuming any of us are voting by race. I'm insulted that she would assume--even if some voters ARE voting by race--that this is something that CAN'T CHANGE.

If it's the less-educated voters who are more easily swayed (and I do NOT think most of them are racists; I think most of them are clinging to what they know), then might not some education help change some minds? A college education isn't needed. Watching the political arena embrace the possibility of a black president who is WILLING TO ANSWER THEIR FEARS might do it.

Obama thinks it can change. I think that for our country to move forward, it HAS to change. I think this election is one of the best opportunities this nation has had in several DECADES to bring about that change.

Yeah, payback is a bitch. I loved reading Herbert unloading. I also got the feeling that it was a coded message to the Clintons. He, and a whole lot of other people know a whole lotta other things. Maybe a warning shot off the bow. back down or we start writin'...

>The illusion that is Barack Obama
> | May 05, 2008
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>POLITICAL campaigning necessarily produces a wide gap between words and deeds. This is the price of bringing together a broad coalition with disparate interests. All effective politicians are at times authentically insincere or sincerely inauthentic. Exaggeration, embellishment, overstatement, doubletalk, deception and lies presented as metaphorical truths are the order of the day.
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>So, of course, Barack Obama is no different. He exaggerates the credit he deserves for a limited piece of ethics-reform legislation. He embellishes when he presents himself as having had a consistent record on the Iraq war when in fact he's done a fair amount of zigzagging.
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>He engages in doubletalk when, on free trade and Iraq, he tells the yokels one thing and the policy people another. He overstates when he presents his minimal accomplishments in the Illinois Senate as proof of his stature. He engages in systematic deception when he says he doesn't take money from lobbyists.
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>.. Article continues.
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>Alternatively, you can cut and paste this link into your browser:
>http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23643866-5013948,00.html
>