Michael, if only Hilary could use an insanity defense for her latest outrageous racist remark. Sad to say, she's crazy like a power-hungry and desperate-to-win losing politician. My interest in her candidacy has gone from 50% to -100%. She's doing McCain's work for him and the GOP, just when this country is about to set its own highwater mark by electing the first non-white President in its history. Thanks a lot, Hilary, and please never contact me again!

I don't think that Hillary is losing her mind; rather, more of her true colors simply are showing.

The fact is that the Clintons routinely have used the black, women & LGBTQ communities as political tools by which to grab power, and they never have represented the interests of their so-called traditional support base. However, for some time, it's been clear that the Clintons would not hesitate to betray at any cost their previously loyal bases for their own political power.

Why the LGBTQ community supported the Clintons is beyond me, and Kevin over at Chris Crain's blog provides some pertinent analysis:

Ask any gay Hillary supporter to say, in plain words, exactly why Hillary would be best for the country. You will never -- I repeat, never -- get anything in response but platitudes mixed with venomous stabs at either Obama or the GOP or both. ¡Que peronista! And all her most prominent gay defenders are lifetime gay Democratic hacks simply hoping for a job. Period. They defend the Clintons in the face of the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and stand ready to defend them again to the teeth -- and the do-nothing Democratic Congress, and the "fight-on-the-ice" DNC -- should four or eight years pass without any movement on either under their watch. ("It wasn't the {lying, hypocritical} president's fault! It was [insert blame here]!") They are the worst detritus of the Bill Clinton era of gay Washington, and would bring a sense of blind loyalty to power more dangerous and insidious than the paradoxical, circus-freak brand that has been trotted out in hit pieces on gay Republicans who still love George W. Bush. Because it would have the air of respectability, and could not dare be questioned without reprisal.

And Sally Quinn over at Newsweek asks why feminists support Hillary Clinton:

About one [Bill Clinton] girlfriend, Connie Hamzy, she [Hillary Clinton] said,,”We have to destroy her story.” About Gennifer Flowers she denied the story even after having a tape played on television about it. It was “attack the motives and the details,”said former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers told Sally Bedell Smith, author of “For Love of Politics” (ever wonder why so many former Clintonites are not supporting her or are actively supporting Obama? And what about Senate colleagues?). He was accused of sexually harassing Kathleen Willey. He was accused of rape by Juanita Broderick, exposed himself to Paula Jones and finally had a sexual relationship with a 21 year old White House intern, a few years older than his own daughter. When Clinton gave his famous finger wagging speech, lying to the country that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” Hillary was by his side. “That was Clinton at his cold-blooded worst,” former Clinton administration official George Stephanopoulos later wrote. Now, full of self righteous fury, he was lying with true conviction. All that mattered was his survival.” And he survived, for one reason only. Hillary Clinton supported him, denied the stories, and allowed White House operatives like Sidney Blumenthal to try to shred the characters of the women he had dallied with, particularly Monica Lewinsky who was portrayed as a stalker and a temptress.

And now Hillary simply is trying to return the Democratic party to a George Wallace-style populist base with not-so-subtle yet pernicious and ugly racial tones in one last grab to secure her political ambitions, and she politely should be shown the door.

Tupac once asked why he's never seen a black President, and if he were alive today he'd probably be crying with joy as Obama becomes the Democratic nominee.

Michael,
I was having a similar conversation earlier with my mom and sister Latoya back in Houston, who I was checking on to make sure they'd gotten their Mother's Day cards.

They both started off the new year as Hillary supporters but after Bill's antics in South Carolina lost my college-educated sister. It took my mom a little longer, but the Ferraro comments pushed her into the Obama camp.

I guess Hillary in her zeal to court Raygun Democrats with suspect loyalty to our party forgot (or her handlers did) that you can't win an election without hard working, college educated African-Americans either, who just happen to be the most consistently loyal demographic for the Democratic part over the last four decades.

'We must be careful to keep our eyes on the prize-equal rights for every American. We must continue to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. We must vigorously expand hate-crimes legislation and be vigilant about how these laws are enforced. We must continue to expand adoption rights to make them consistent and seamless throughtout all 50 states, and we must repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy.'

Sen. Barack Obama, Windy City Times
February 11, 2004

Hillary's resort to backwater George Wallace style politics since South Carolina, and which she personally has amplified in recent days as reflected in her comments posted by Michael, have cost her the VP slot.

Today Senator Kennedy, when asked about Hillary's chance to run as Obama's VP, stated no, and further explained:

Obama should choose a running mate who "is in tune with his appeal for the nobler aspirations of the American people," Kennedy said. "If we had real leadership — as we do with Barack Obama — in the No. 2 spot as well, it'd be enormously helpful."

Of course she's losing it, Michael. You would be too if you'd put personal millions into this campaign, been talked about for years as "the next President," and had as much time and energy put into this as she does.

At this point I just feel sorry for her. It's like watching a drunk that can't put down the bottle.

Bil,

If you are right and we are watching a political drunk who can't put down the bottle, then it is up to the superdelegates to step up and perform and intervention.

It is bad enough that she is harming her reputation, but she is using right-wing tactics to tear down the Democratic frontrunner.

It is no longer about her. It is about ensuring that a Democrat wins the White House in November. Hillary needs to decide if she is going to continue her destructive path or if she is going to help unify the party behind Barack.

What everyone’s said about Billary Clinton is true and we probably don’t know all the dirt yet. That’ll be exposed when some more of her campaign staff get fired for ‘betraying’ her.

If you remember, Bill Clinton presaged Obama's current campaign of hype and hope in 1992. Then Clinton was the darling of the liberals and everyone counted on him to come through. And he did, but not for us. He signed the Democrats bigot bill DADT and boasted about signing DOMA. If he never seemed to be able to get it up for GLBT causes he had no trouble screwing us sideways with NAFTA, deregulation of corporate predators and tax cuts for the rich. He lied about Iraqi WMD’s long before Bush did and persued unlimited air strikes and a ban on sales of food and medicines. Many children and older Iraqis died and that was the beginning of the genocide we see raging now.

Obama is a leader of the same party controlled by the same folks, and if anything the Democrats have gotten worse. They scrapped ENDA and the Hate Crimes act and they continue to support the war and giveaways for the rich. And now the blatant and disgusting racism that infests the Democratic (sic) Party is out in the open, as well as the rabid bigotry of gay-bashers like pentecostal cult leader and DNC Chief of Staff Reverend d Leah Daughtry.

Aside from blind faith why would anyone imagine that Barack Obama will be better than Bill Clinton? If Obama wanted equality he would have objected when Democrat Barney Frank killed ENDA and they canned the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill. Like Hillary Clinton he’d prefer that they not be used as ‘wedge issues’ and didn’t object at all. If he wants equality he’d never have gone near gay bashing scum like the Rev. Donnie McClurkin or Mary Mary.

To say that Obama or Clinton differs from McCain on war policy is simply a lie. All three will prosecute that war, all refuse to embrace total and immediate withdrawal and say so repeatedly.

Obama is no friend of working people, the elderly or people without insurance. At lest not according to the fasted growing union in the AFL-CIO, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, who say this about Obama pro-business health care scam “Barack Obama has released his healthcare plan—and it is a bitter disappointment… There are two basic options for healthcare reform: increase the role of health insurance companies or replace them. Obama has chosen to give more customers and more public funds to the for-profit insurance corporations. It’s an expensive gift and one that allows them to continue meddling in medical decision-making while raking in obscene blood-money profits.” The Obama campaign is financed by big business and indebted to them just like Clinton and McCain. They’re all candidates of the rich, not working people.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article11104.htm

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp

www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/tags/barack-obama

http://www.queerty.com/leah-daughtry-defines-marriage-as-one-man-one-woman-20080131/

I suppose that, technically, Hillary using the phrase "hard-working whites" does *NOT* necessarily imply that there are no hard-working Blacks ... nor does it imply the non-existence of hard-working Latinos, or hard-working Asian-Americans ...

... but OTOH, yes, any politician with an IQ over 100 who makes such a statement in public has to know that it will be spun to her disadvantage. Thus, the statement definitely shows how desperate she is becoming, and how wreckless that desperation is making her.

This gaff isn't that different from Obama's gaff about "bitter voters clinging to their guns and religion" ... except that Obama's gaff plays better when quoted in complete context. Hillary's gaff is a gaff no matter how you edit the quote ... and her stuttering shows that she knew exactly what was happening: she could have at least stopped in mid-sentence and gone in a different direction.

Ya know reading all of this there seems to be a disconect here.When Democrats talk about the White male vote they all seem to stumble.Look at Howard Dean and his "guys with rebel flags " remarks bombed big time.

Now Hillary and her "Hard working poor white boys." For Senator Obama it was the "Bitters rual American" remarks. Yes this was refering to white males folks.

For years now the white male vote has either been ignored or totaly written off now that they need those voters and want them back from the GOP they dont know how to describe them. So when they talk about them they don't know what to say with out coming across as "racist".

If they hope to regain this voting block they have got to learn how to talk about them better.

Cathy makes a good point.

Also, after watching the Friday night PBS pundit parade (McLaughlin Group, Washington Week, NOW, and Bill Moyers' Journal), it does occur to me that maybe Hillary was looking for a term such as "working class" or "blue collar" ... and out of sheer tiredness or whatever, her brain brought up the phrase "hard-working" ... and maybe she stuttered because she knew that "hard-working" wasn't quite the term she really wanted.

You have to admit: substitute "working-class whites" instead of "hard-working whites" and it doesn't sound nearly as potentially racist. There is also the point that Hillary has no reasonable motive whatsoever to knowingly offend Black voters. Her unfortunate wording might have been simply a "brain fart" (pardon my French) rather than having to be a revealing phrase that mistakenly belied her true attitudes.

Blue collar and white collar used to refer to white guys. Now that those jobs are nolonger just "white" It's hard to use that when talkig about White males.

So whats a poor candidate to do come up with a new word that may work but then pick badly and yep you just pissed off the group you were trying to discribe.

Also in a side bar not all Democrats are liberal to win the south and other more rural places they have been rebuilding the conservative wing.Why to win back this very group of voters so the party has to watch it as they rebuild or it may back fire on them and yet again they will have a new crop of Boweavel Democrats!

For those who would embrace the Hillary base -- i.e., the socially conservative working class whites -- I have a note of caution: what profit it a man to gain the world but lose his soul? In other words, if the Democratic Party loses its socially progresive values in the pursuit of gathering voters then what have we really won?

It sounds as if some on this board think that Hillary is right for pursuing the socially conservative voters (i.e., bible-clinging gun-toting Reagan Democrats) which is the core of her base. However, do you folks think that the Hillary base will embrace the LGBTQ issues -- such as ENDA, repeals of DADT & DOMA -- that are important to us?

If Hillary wins the election will she remain loyal to her Ronald Reagan/George Wallace base or will represent LGBTQ issues? The answer to this question is not hard to figure out: just look at what her husband Bill did when confronted with exactly the same conundrum. He abandoned us in favor of the George Wallace Democrats within the party.

I think that 2008 is a unique opportunity for a Democratic White House victory, and so why not take advantage of the opportunity by giving it to Obama who does not owe anything to the George Wallace-style voters in the Democratic Party. There is such antipathy in the country against George Bush and the Republican Party that I believe the socially conservative voter that Hillary attracts simply is not going to matter this time because so many progressives, liberals, anti-war voters, black voters, young voters, etc. will be coming out in record numbers to throw out the Republicans onto the street.

It's just ironic to see Hillary courting the most conservative wing of the Democratic Party in her bid for power when we are at a moment in history to elect Obama who is one of the most progressive Democrats since George McGovern (and, incidentally, George McGovern just abandoned Hillary in favor of Obama).

To emphasize this point, the people Hillary's trying to court (the Dixiecrats) ABANDONED our party to vote GOP because of their antipathy to civil rights. If they want to come back, then it needs to be on our terms.

I had some white guys I was talking to about Obama three days ago, and one expressed concerns about his guns. I asked him, "Has voting against candidates because of NRA propaganda about their alleged stances on guns put more money in your wallet over the last 8 years?"

And although some are willing to read the most innocent explanations into Hillary's comments, I do not think that she deserves the benefit of the doubt in the context of the campaign she has run since South Carolina when Bill attempted to marginalize Obama along racial lines.

Even the New York Times in an editorial yesterday is unwilling to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt on her comments:

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.

And it should be remembered, too, that Obama does not have trouble getting "white votes," and has won many contests in overwhelmingly "white" states including Vermont, Iowa, etc.

These voters are not the ones seeking to return its Democratic candidates wanting there votes.
So to court them they have to appeal to them which is once again why the conservative wing which was almost dead is suddenly reappearing.
To get conservative voters you must make them think your one of them on the issues they care about.

As to the Democrats bring progressive ie liberal they were no such thing untill FDR hijacked the Socailist Parties platform and most of it's voters to create the New Deal.The Socilist Party has never recovered from this and they had been growing and looking to over take the Democrats until there voters got hijacked into the Democrats.

So this notion that they must bend to you is silly and why the Democrats can forget about victory in Novemeber if you think if you want to be one of us you must think like us. Every party is at its strongest when it has three wings a liberal wing a moderate wing and yes a conservative wing.This is why the GOPis failing they tossed there liberal and have tried to toss there moderates but the moderate wing hasnt died totaly yet the liberal wing yes its gone like the Democratic conservatie wing was.After all its the moderates who turn the ideas of the liberals and conservatives into something that works.

I have no problem with the Democratic Party being a proverbial "big tent" with diverse opinions across the political spectrum; however, I do draw the line at including those within our party who would deny basic constitutional rights to others based upon their religion, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. What's Hillary's next argument: Obama should be denied the Democratic nomination because he failed to win the neo-Nazi vote in the primaries?

Last night on SNL Hillary really got dumped on concerning, among other things, her lack of ethical standards by resorting to a not-so-veiled attempt to use race as a factor in denying the nomination to Sen. Obama. It really was quite funny because SNL had no qualms about making the sub-text underlying Hillary's campaign tactics rather express.

Here's the link for the SNL clip to which I referred.