Ta-Nehisi Coates

Obama Pulls Within Three Points In Cali

West-Siiiiiiiidddeee!!! Let's go baby.

So I'm finally reading What's The Matter With Kansas...

But I thought this would be a good time to link to one of the great spoofs of all time. Enjoy.

Oh, Bob Herbert

I've been of mixed mines about Bob Herbert. It's great that he's on his beat, but I generally don't enjoy columnists (well a couple), so I don't know what to say. Anyway this is sad. Gawker finds Herbert plagarizing himself. The Essence:

We may have Two Americas, but Bob Herbert has only one stock description of the crappy public schools.

Some good news

We're gaining on you. The Essence:

Black and Hispanic children have made significant gains in health, safety and income over the past two decades, narrowing gaps between them and white children, according to a pioneering report on child development to be released Tuesday.

Al Sharpton to Clinton--Zip it Bill

Speaks for itself. Sharpton is actually quite engaging here. But that was never his problem.

Clinton Dissected

Bill, that is. Very nice piece. Not based on arm-chair theory, or bullshit psychoanalysis. The essence:

Who can say what Clinton’s effect on the campaign trail really is? However much journalistic critics and Obama supporters cringed at Bill Clinton’s performances, they seemed to help Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada.

But those experiences seemed to unleash something more antic and unruly in Clinton’s attacks on Obama and the media, making the Clinton campaign even more about him and less about her. The effect was a bit like a dieter who reads on the Internet that doughnuts are actually good for you.

Richard Cohen Reciting Clinton Talking Points

So tarring Obama with Farrakhan had no effect. Now Richard Cohen passive-aggressively puts his hopes in the racism of white people. Cohen argues that Obama "played the race card" by labeling Clinton's comments about King as "ill-advised." The very putrid essence:

The turning point for Obama actually came in New Hampshire, when Hillary Clinton said that Martin Luther King's "dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964." This, of course, only reflected historical reality and was, moreover, a slap not at King, but at Johnson's predecessor, John F. Kennedy, to whom Obama is often compared. (Both Caroline Kennedy and her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, have since endorsed Obama.)

Possibly we shall someday learn that Hillary Clinton's remark was diabolically intended to offend blacks. I doubt it. Whatever the case, though, some important African-Americans quickly reacted -- and the Democratic primary campaign was never again the same. Not only did the Clintons not back off, but they seemed to savor the moment. As for Obama, instead of adroitly taking the sting out of what Hillary Clinton had said by shrugging it off, he called her comments "unfortunate" and "ill-advised."

The upshot was the racially divided vote we saw in South Carolina, one Bill Clinton immediately likened to Jesse Jackson's victories in 1984 and '88 -- in other words, yet another asterisk, a race-based triumph and therefore of negligible importance. Obama won big, bigger than expected. But a lot of his margin came from African-Americans, particularly, and unexpectedly, women, many of whom were supposedly in Hillary Clinton's corner. He got about 80 percent of the black vote.

Witness a columnist breathlessly filling inches. First of all, the idea that "the Dream" wasn't realized until Johnson is--racist or not--just wrong. Did Brown v. Board not happen? Was the Mongotmery bus boycott just erased from history? Was Hartsfield not the mayor of Atlanta? This is not a slight to Johnson--he bravely sacrificed the future of the Democratic party for the future of the country. But he isn't the start of the realization of "the Dream." In fact, "the Dream" was well in motion before King ever even made his speech.

But moreover, this idea that somehow Barack winning the black vote is ultimately a minus is complete bullshit. I remember this time last year when pundits were crowing about it being a problem that black people seemed to favor Clinton. I am sorry, a win is a fucking win. The idea that whites will reflexively flee Obama because he called a Clinton comment "ill-advised," and because a lot of black people like him is a cynical, unprovable assertion. We have no way of knowing whether it's true.

Furthermore, South Carolina's primary was only racially divided because Edwards and Clinton did so poorly among blacks, not because Obama did so poorly among whites. Barack got a quarter of the white vote, and basically tied Clinton for white men. Where he really lost was among white women--but that has more to do with Clinton's status as an important first, than any sense that Obama had morphed into Marcus Garvey.

The Myth of Our "First Black President"

TNR does the knowledge on Bill and blacks. The essence:

Back in 1992, the Clintons were decidedly not heroes to black America. Bill ran on a platform of welfare reform. He was tough on crime, and some felt he gratuitously supported the execution of the brain-damaged African American killer Ricky Ray Rector on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. When Clinton scolded the obscure rapper Sister Souljah at a meeting of Jesse Jackson Sr.'s Rainbow Coalition, Jackson called it a "Machiavellian" gambit for white votes. That fall, Clinton carried 82 percent of the black vote--a low sum compared to other Democratic nominees. (In 1988, for instance, Mike Dukakis carried 89 percent of the black electorate.)

Yeah basically, except a lot of black people were down with welfare reform and criminal crackdowns. I'm not sure that hurt Bill so much. Besides Gore got more of the black vote than Bill, but I wouldn't say blacks liked Gore more. All that said, I agree with the basic assertion. Black people's affection for Clinton has long been overstated.

Kilpatrick Drama

Sorry but this just makes me sad. I guess if it interferes with his stewardship of the city, it's a problem. But, for some reason the only thing that struck me about the text messages was that the two of them seemed very much in love. I don't say that to make light of adultry. I guess Kilpatrick's wife and kids are the ones who are really suffering.

A Neo-Southern Strategy

Shay over at Booker Rising says that's what will ultimately tackle Obama:

The South Carolina vote will provide momentum in this presidential race, but it will not mainly be experienced by Sen. Obama's campaign. Instead, it will be experienced mainly by Sen. Clinton's campaign, thanks to the Southern Strategy that will have reverberations throughout the country.

She's not the first to say it. I saw Buchannan making the same point the other night. Color me unconvinced. First off, Nevada and New Hampshire aren't southern states. Furthermore, Obama did very well among rural voters in Nevada, and beat Hillary among white men in South Carolina. The state's that Clinton is counting on are places like New York and California. I don't know how a "southern strategy" works to the Clinton's advantage there. The bigger problem with this thesis is that it can't be proven. If Obama looses, anyone can say it was because of  a "new Southern strategy." But how do we know it isn't simply because the voters preferred Hillary?

It's the black/brown thing all over again. Look, far be it from me to give white folks more credit than they're due. But you can't automatically conclude that racism will doom Obama--especially after his perfomance in Iowa, and his relatively strong performance among white men in South Carolina. We should be less cynical allow people the same sense of humanity and complexity that we would want.