The first quote was, I'm sure, an accident, and not particularly offensive. She could easily have backed off of it. The really offensive one was the second round, and then the third, when she started charging "reverse racism" and knew that she was addressing a national audience.

Don't forget, Samantha Power was talking to a Scottish newspaper, yet the quote caused her resignation, even though she tried to retract it immediately and asked the reporter not to print it. Ferraro chose to escalate the controversy, and she's still on the team.

If the Clinton campaign isn't really set on winning Pennsylvania with white working class racial resentment, they need to demonstrate it.

It may not have started out as a dog whistle, but the Clinton camp non-response clearly is one.

Kevin--Would it help you to know that she's been spouting the same line on NPR and on John Gibson's radio show? I think they qualify as major media.

Always glad to be of service.

Stop for a momment. The press picks up on this and do the Clinton's step back from blatantly racist remarks? Because that is what they are: he's an Affirmative Action senator and candidate is what Ferraro was saying. And that is a whistle that'll play BIG in PA and it's why the Clinton's haven't said beep about Ferraro making this about racism against HER because she's white.

The Clinton's are working to get the nomination, despite it being mathematically out of their reach and using the Mondale formula. They need to make Barack Obama the ethnic candidate and isolate him in the inexperienced box. And the media feeds into this despite the fact he has more legsilative experience and has done far more community progressive work than HRC and has put forth substantial proposals and a clear forigen policy.

So Ferraro clearly made a mistake and this wasn't delibrate. The fallout, that is a delibrate dog whistling agenda and to deny that IMO is to deny the current facts on the ground.

It's not dog whistle stuff, she's just a racist.

Either that or she believes women are more oppressed than blacks, something impossible to prove.

How about this one: Bill Clinton appears on the Rush Limbaugh show, and suddenly Mississippi is full of Republicans who are willing to vote for Hillary?

Don't think the Clintons are above these things. And whether Ferraro's remark was planned or accidental, the campaign has let it run its course, without any discouragment. And why does Ferraro go on Fox News to defend herself and further stir white resentment? Who watches Fox News?

Clinton's new strategy for reaching the White House is called White Pride.

but it's pretty unlikely that Ferraro had any serious dog whistling agenda here.

Kevin, I see you do not understand how dogwhistling works. Dogwhistling is done to small audiences of the base and then it is spread far and wide. Torrance is a well-known pro-Hillary magazine. Ferraro's dogwhistling was known far and wide among the pro-Hillary bloggers long before Markos got has hands on it because all pro-Hillary bloggers read it. By saying it in Torrance, Ferrarro was spreading it to the pro-Hillary base while keeping it under the radar. Markos, begin the intrepid blogger he is, foiled this despicable racist dogwhistling strategy and exposed it to the public. Of course, this is just part of the grand Hillary racist strategy like darkening Obama's photo and her 3 AM ad.

Basically it all a part of the triangulation that served Bill so well in the 1990's. Hillary has a surrogate make a incredibly racist comment about her opponent, then the firestorm brews about the comment, and later when the racist remark boils over and tarnishes Obama in the eyes of the electorate, Hillary steps in and says he can't get elected so you'll HAVE to pick me.

Kevin, even if that were the case -- and the above commentary should set you straight in that regard -- you, of all people, being a blogger, should know that in this day and age things get out. It was bound to happen.

This is racist, vile crap. And one of the reasons that I'll never, ever vote for a Clinton.

Sometimes you just don't get it, do you?

I'll be very interested to see what Digby has to say on this little episode.

She also said it even earlier on John Gibson's radio show (and apparently on NPR, though I haven't heard it). And who knows what she's been saying at private fundraisers.

Ineffective? You're blogging about it, aren't you? Better for them that it slowly seeps out from podunk California, as they knew it would, than be splashed acorss the front page of the NYTimes. And Ferraro has been *everywhere* sayig close to or simlar things. She's become quite the face of the Clinton campaign.

And FWIW I was sick of her before this remark.

I am a middle-aged white woman and I am sick and tired of Ferraro (or anyone else for that matter) telling me how to vote because I am a middle-aged white woman.

“Every time that campaign is upset about something, they call it racist,� she said. “I will not be discriminated against because I’m white. If they think they’re going to shut up Geraldine Ferraro with that kind of stuff, they don’t know me.�

Kevin, you've got to be kidding me. She's been saying the same thing all over the place. Hell she said similar things about Jesse Jackson in 1988.

Why do we use the term, 'dog whistle', when the message is clearly within the average voter's audible frequency: "Pick the legacy candidate over the affirmative action candidate"

1) Ferraro's comments are deeply offensive, regardless of the forum in which she made the first (of several).

2) If she wasn't a Clinton surrogate before, she is now, given that the Clinton team is standing by her.

3) Maybe this wouldn't be as big a deal if, on a nationally televised debate, Clinton hadn't told Obama that is was insufficient for him to merely "denounce" Louis Farrakhan. But she did. So it's a big deal.

A correction to my previous post-- NPR had her on, saying that Kennedy and Kerry should cast their SD votes for Obama "not just because they're white" is difficult for me to interpret. The context is very complex (at the 43:00 mark):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87922258

But the John Gibson show has the same thing as the Daily Breeze (at the 4:00 mark):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqL_sm0J8jc

lol @ apm. I swear, I need a new monitor now. That was funny.

Dog whistle? Once the Clinton campaign responded by piling on, it became louder and more obvious than an air raid siren. Maybe Cohn needs to get his hearing checked.

This could be history in the making - the Clinton campaign appears to be willing to live or die on racial division. They're not just pulling the race card, they're throwing the whole deck at Obama and basically saying "yeah, you heard me b*tch, I said n*igger-lovers. Whaddayagonna do about it?".

So THAT's why nobody outside of Torrance heard anything about Ferraro's remarks.

Oh, wait, we did.

I don't think it's "dog whistle" politics. It's not a coded message aimed at a particularly attuned portion of the electorate.

It's just a statement that reflects the deeply ingrained low level racism inherent in most white people. It's especially prevalent in older whites who grew up in a segregated society and for whom Sidney Poitier was the only black actor to appear on screen.

It's not racial animus, just the attitudes created by a life time lived in a racist but improving society.

More here.

The Torrance Breeze is just where it got noticed, because as several people have pointed out, nobody apparently has been noticing Ferraro's appearances on John Gibson and other FoxNews propaganda shows (Who, exactly, is she trying to reach in Gibson's audience?). First Susan Estritch, now Ferraro. The Mondale campaign's longest legacy is apparently the FoxNews Democrat (and of course, another FoxNews (and NPR) regular who works for HRC, Liebercrat and Bush/McCain apologist Lanny Davis).

This isn't "dog whistle" stuff. This is the "dog crusher" hordes descending upon the pages of "101 Dalmatians".

You all are missing the point. You're assuming that somehow racism, dogwhistled or otherwise, would help Hillary in a DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY, RIGHT BEFORE MISSISSIPPI????

Hello, deterioriation of the US education system...

As is clear from all the outrage, real and feigned, that we're now hearing, this clearly did NOT help Hillary. It did help Obama.

It's quite clear that the Obama campaign has a strategy of painting the Hillary campaign as racist, and they like pushing this story forward right before primaries in states with large black populations (see, e.g., South Carolina). So how do they proceed?

They find some obscure Clinton supporter, take some quotes that might be seen as racist, and start pounding away on them. The idea that Ferraro, who has a tangential relationship with Hillary at best, writing in a dinky dunk publication, somehow was "dogwhistling" to attract this massive racist vote that's supposedly going to come out for Hillary (in contravention of all the polls), is retarded.

There is a candidate who's benefiting from these racism charges, and his name is Obama. There is a candidate who's benefiting from voters who claim race is their main reason to vote, and his name is Obama. There is a candidate who keeps pushing forward obscure sound bites from unaffiliated Hillary supporters and claiming that they're evidence of some larger racist orchestrated campaign, and his name is Obama.

Whether it's him, or Axelrod, or someone else in that campaign, someone decided around the time of New Hampshire that calling Hillary a racist was a legitimate campaign tactic, and they're pushing that envelope again.

Or, perhaps she realizes, as you certainly should, that no matter to which media outlet one comments, chances are it will metastasize throughout the web.

What are the chances that there is at the Breeze someone with an IQ above that of a moron who recognized the ridiculousness of Ferraro's remarks and passed them along?

Again, you need to get out more.

Well, given a national platform Ferraro's subsequent comments were even more offensive and her outraged denials more misleading. Then we find that she was saying the same things back in 1988, she'd apparently learned nothing then and resided in a deep freeze during the intervening decades. Good that Clinton "rejected" the comments but I don't think she's gone far enough.

I guess the strategy is to win Pennsylvania by appealing to digruntled working class white voters. Tarnish Obama as the guy who only got ahead because he was articulate and black. Convince the SDs that his lead is made up of votes of unimportant states, caucuses, and minorities. Win the primary in a bloody and contracted battle. And THEN try to get the African Americans and disillusioned, disheartened, disgusted whites (like me) back into the fold.

Senator Obama, please bring back Ms. Power. Turns out she was right. Hillary is a monster.

And am I the only person who sees how ridiculous it is for Hillary Clinton, of all people, accusing someone of getting a leg up over the competition? If Obama is the Affirmative Action candidate then Hillary is the legacy and nepotism one.

Like the poster above, I'm a middle-aged white woman and I'm tired of people telling me how I should vote--from men AND women. Stuff it, Geraldine!

As a proud former resident of Torrance (15 years) I resent those remarks, Kevin!

Torrance rocks!

Isn't a dog whistle outside the mainstream's hearing range? In which case, this IS something you whisper to a small community newspaper. Where she went wrong is that the humans picked it up.

Ferraro's stating a fact - in the follow up article in the Torrence newspaper (how many of you bothered to read that before deciding that Ferraro was a racist) it says:

Ferraro said she was simply stating an obvious truth, as seen in exit polls that show Obama taking as much as 80 percent of the black vote in the Democratic primaries.

"In all honesty, do you think that if he were a white male, there would be a reason for the black community to get excited for a historic first?" Ferraro said. "Am I pointing out something that doesn't exist?"

****

So why is it racist to point out that many people are voting with racial motivtions and that Obama is getting the benefit of being the recipient of that vote? If Obama WAS white, he would not be getting 80% of the black vote. That's just a simple fact.

It really does say a lot that so many people immediately take umbrage and rush to emoitional judgement calling other people racists while completely ignoring the fact that the "racist" comment was merely an observation of behavior that in fact has undeniably racial underpinnings. To get all outraged and start throwing around the "racist" epithet serves to completely remove discussion of whatever the point is off the table.

Do Obama supports NOT want to acknowledge that a not insignificant part of Obama's support DOES come from African-Americans who often are motivated to vote for him simply because he is an African-American - that he most likely would NOT get that level of support from the African-American voters if he was, in fact, a white guy? Is it racist, and therefore off-the-table to point that out?

The mass "outrage" is goofy - it seems more reminiscent of the underinformed artificial outrage whipped up by right wing talk radio directed against Clinton in the 1990s than actual discussion of the "reality-based community" that we have come to associate with Democrats. At least acknowledge the facts before silencing the point raised by resorting to marginalizing someone by calling them "racist".

Even though it's pissing some excitable people off by saying something they don't want to hear and are twisting out of context, good for Ferraro for holding her reality-based ground.

What Ferraro is saying is what the Clinton campaign is convinced of. I mean compared to the brilliant, experienced, health care expert, foreign policy savant that is Hillary, who is this black guy making all this trouble?

Would you really want such a black guy picking up the phone when your sweet white angels are in bed?

She and her surrogates are making certain that Obama will not transcend race, should he be the nominee.

Is there some way to draft Al Gore?

You all are missing the point. You're assuming that somehow racism, dogwhistled or otherwise, would help Hillary in a DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY, RIGHT BEFORE MISSISSIPPI????

It's not about MISSISSIPPI. She was never going to win MISSISSIPPI. It's about PENNSYLVANIA. Old, resentful, blue-collar whites in PENNSYLVANIA. The same people she demagogued about NAFTA to in OHIO.

The idea that Ferraro, who has a tangential relationship with Hillary at best,[...] obscure sound bites from unaffiliated Hillary supporters

Ferraro is one of the top people on the official Clinton fundraising team, and has published an op/ed spouting the Clinton line on superdelegates. I guess it's good that you're embarrassed enough by this bitter old has-been crank to want to minimize her relationship to Clinton, but she is an official Clinton surrogate.

When are these morons going to stop this bullshit that a white man can't get 80% of the AA vote! What do think happens in general elections? The AA vote is the highest and most consistent voting block for the democratic party. Of course this means that they only vote for democrats because they are black.

Hillary Clinton is running for the nomination of a party that is majority white/ethnic, by a 70/30 ratio, and majority female, by a 60/40 ratio. Despite these overwhelming advantages which identity politics should give her, she is actually losing to a black male candidate by every statistical measure that you could devise.

Which tells us what a lousy candidate she really is.

And Ferraro has the gall to say that Obama has an advantage because he's black? If he were a playing on a demographically level playing field, he'd be beating Hillary by a margin of 3-1 right now.

Hillary owes all of her success to the fact that she is a white woman running against a black man in a party which is 40% white women and about 15% black men.

I agree she didn't blow the dog whistle. She just accidently stuck it the Clinton campaigns mouth and they couldn't believe their luck.

I'm sorry, but Ferraro is nuttier than a pile of elephant shit. At the end of an interview with Fox, she said:

"... I'm telling David (Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager), if Barack Obama is the candidate, he really shouldn't antagonize people like me, because he's going to come to me and ask me to raise money for Barack Obama -- and I would do it for him, too, if he stops doing this kind of horrendous attacks at me."

Right. If the Obama team hopes to do better than these measly $55 million months, they'd better get some religion & start kissing her ass.

Would somebody please explain to me how a person this absolutely stupid can achieve even the smallest degree of influence in the party? Wait, nevermind. It all makes sense now.

So what is your point, Kevin? Should Kos and other bloggers self-censor when they learn of important events that are not yet national news? Why? Out of hope that they don't become national news?

Wouldn't we want to know about an affiliate of McCain if he or she were spouting similar trash?

I really can't get your point. Ferraro's statement was newsworthy because (1) she had been on a Democratic national ticket, which gives a kind of lifetime focus, (2) in her particular case, she had only been on the ticket as a strategy to excite voters, based upon her gender, not her deep resume, lending her statements a deep hypocrisy, and (3) her statements linked in with a long series of Clinton campaign statements and actions that at a minimum raise the temperature of the race issue in the first election cycle in which a major party candidate may well be African-American. (I read your earlier post and agree that some of those statements were blown out of proportion, but that doesn't make them disappear completely or moot the question of why the campaign has had such a stream of these little racial teasers.)

It seems to me that Kos did exactly what he should have done.

Ethel Tilly,
Obama captured the white vote pretty well here in VA. If Hillary had run her red phone ads here she would have made sure to ruin that. Don't you see the strategy? The Clintons and their supporters make me sick. They really could care less about trashing the Democratic nominee if that person isn't Hillary. As I said before what Hillary said glorifying McCain should be considered treason - she has acted as a traitor to the Democratic Party. If the Clintons take control of this Party, quite a few of us are leaving.

You're really shooting for most naive blogger of the year award, huh? Yea, the last 72 hours have just been one big misunderstanding. Nothing to do with racial politics in Pennsylvania. No sirree.

Hey, Ferraro can donate all she likes to the DNCC, who could really use the money a lot more than either Obama or Clinton right about now as the election cycle starts spinning up for Congress.

hmm. Where oh where to begin?

How about with RedSox04 . . .

You all are missing the point. You're assuming that somehow racism, dogwhistled or otherwise, would help Hillary in a DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY, RIGHT BEFORE MISSISSIPPI????

Hello, deterioriation of the US education system...

As is clear from all the outrage, real and feigned, that we're now hearing, this clearly did NOT help Hillary. It did help Obama.

Damn. Jim beat me to it.

The Clinton folks had already kissed Mississippi goodbye. It was bad for her to lose another state, but good for her that Ferrarro managed to bring race front and center on both the eve of Mississippi (black) in the runup to Pennsylvania (white) where she has a chance.

Everything else about excitable Obama supporters--here, Ethel-to-Tilly's remark is handy--reminds me of another mindgame term: gaslighting.

Even though it's pissing some excitable people off by saying something they don't want to hear and are twisting out of context, good for Ferraro for holding her reality-based ground.

This is what the Clintons excel at, gaslighting. They use the most egregiously underhanded tactics to undo an opponent, then protest their wide-eyed innocence ("Whatever do you mean?") and then suggest that, you know, you're crazy for suggesting it. "There's nothing wrong with the lights, my dear. (But I will try to murder you and inherit your money/delegates before the movie/election is over.)"

"Dogwhistle" politics is really stupid. I am curious when the phrase was first used. Kevin, would you consider lexis/nexising this?

In 2004, when Bush spoke in code about Dred Scott, that was code, that was not dogwhistling. People could document exactly what Bush said, how often he said it, and link to websites of legal, political, and religious analysis that demonstrated Dred Scott was being used to take down Roe V. Wade.

This dogwhistle stuff is complete bullshit. What you hear as a dogwhistle is not what other people hear as a dogwhistle. It says more about you than about anyone else.

I am not a dog. I don't hear dogwhistles. Why do you hear a dogwhistle call to racism? Perhaps you hear it, because YOU are a racist, or sexist, or anti-semite, or any of the stupid things being attributed to dogwhistle politics.

Instead of hearing dogwhistles, why not put to use some of those English skills that got you so far on the SATs and in college and actually discuss what the various people have said. In context.

Dogwhistle politics is just another way of othering speakers that you dislike. Dehumanizing them. Deligitimatizing their arguments through an ad hominem, unprovable, attack.

Whoeever smelt it, dealt it. And people that hear dogwhistles wherever they turn? Those people got issues.

This post totally misses the point for reasons listed above. Ferraro was initially just sharing her (quite possibly racist) views, but the responce to the controvercy by Ferraro and Clinton has dog whisle written all over it. Though actually something this obvious to everyone isn't even a dog whisle - it is just straight up open race baiting.

Yeah, and what lampwick said.

OK, since most of you cannot read plain English, I'll do the "shorter Kevin Drum" bit:
Ferraro is dumb, rather than calculating.

"Even though it's pissing some excitable people off by saying something they don't want to hear and are twisting out of context, good for Ferraro for holding her reality-based ground."

Why, exactly was Hillary EVER the front-runner for the nomination?

She's no-more charismatic than Chris Dodd. She's got a less impressive resume than Bill Richardson. She's not more "ready on day one" than Joe Biden. And the only public policy she was ever explicitly in charge of turned into one of the greatest debacles in political history.

So why was Hillary EVER the Democratic front-runner? Answer that question and you'll know who's really the "lucky" one in the race.

Mike

Kevin, you've got to be kidding me. She's been saying the same thing all over the place. Hell she said similar things about Jesse Jackson in 1988.

Damn, those Clintons are good . . . er . . . I mean, evil! They were able to get Ferraro to begin laying the groundwork for her dogwhistle campaign against Obama all the way back in 1988, all in preparation for Hillary's run 20 years later.

Kevin, don't you realize by now that if someone says something bad about Hillary Clinton, it must be true? Any charge of racism against her campaign is by definition the absolute truth. Why is it, I ask you, that the candidate who speaks at every Hillary Clinton event and who appears at every debate and who "approves" every one of her campaign ads is white? I mean, if the Clinton campaign weren't racist, wouldn't their candidate be black? Think about it . . .

Anyone who still believes the Clinton people do not want race front and center is terminally naive. Because despite what Geraldine Ferraro thinks about the advantages of being black, African-Americans are 0-for-43 in going for the presidency; and even if they aren't racist themselves, anyone running for political office against a black person on the state or national level needs to decide how far they are willing to go to explicitly seek the votes of racists. In the case of the Clinton campaign, the answer is apparently "pretty damn far."

Ethel-To-Tilly,

Are you really so tone deaf?

The point is that Ferraro ascribed Obama's success only to the fact he is of African-American descent.

Could his success not be ascribed to his intelligence, his oratory, his ability to move legions of young folks into the electoral process, or any of a host of other attributes? The white democratic voters of Iowa and many other states apparently thought so.

And, yes, I have read Ferraro's remarks.

The Daily Breeze is read in a largely affluent, significantly liberal area of Southern California. This isn't some obscure newsletter with a circulation of 3,000 being sold in a town in southwestern Wisconsin.

More importantly, as others have noted, Kevin's post displays a surprising innocence about how dogwhistling and dirty tricks work. They don't come from an interview given by a major campaign aide to the New York Times, precisely because you want to be able to disavow them or say that they're incidental, unintended, or peripheral. You don't ask a major political figure to carry out a dirty trick in broad daylight, you nudge the equivalent of a Donald Segretti to engage in a bit of ratfucking so that if he gets caught, you can say, "Never heard of the guy". If you dogwhistle, you do it in a couple of one-off speeches, casual remarks, and out-of-the-way publications knowing that eventually someone will pick it up and it will disseminate and you can mostly keep your hands clean.

jerry, i don't know where you've been lately, but dog-whistle has been part of the lexicon for political observers for about five years now.

It describes the very nuanced application of wedge politics

Check the archives here, for Kevin's post some time, IIRC, as recently as January.

What evidence is there that "racism", which has seemed to surge at two points in time: first, right before the South Carolina primaries, and second, right before the Mississippi primaries, has benefited Hillary? I call bullshit here.

First, why the hell would it be in California? And why would they use Ferraro?

Second, given that this is the Dem party, what poll evidence do you have that any of this alleged "racism" is helping Hillary anywhere? The poll #s I've seen have all indicated that Hillary's #s surged after NH, and then dropped after the "racism" stuff started bubbling up in SC. If this racism crap wasn't in the air, Hillary would be winning this thing going away.

Furthermore, the fact remains: Obama has clearly tried to call Hillary a racist. They have been pushing this narrative. So to the extent that any "dogwhistles" were ever present (and frankly, that's idiotic, as some of the "examples" they cited in their memo were of black people talking to other black people), if this benefits Hillary, why the hell is it the Obama campaign that keeps trying to make this a national story?

You guys keep pointing to folks who are attenuated from Hillary (and the Finance Committee is not the same as tied into Hillary- every well connected lawyer, lobbyist, and pundit is tied into one of the two campaigns at this distance), and trying to tie them into Hillary. I'm pointing directly to the Obama campaign, and saying "You have decided to call Hillary Clinton a racist to score political points".

again kevin, pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

psst.TPM has v i d e o.

jerry, i don't know where you've been lately, but dog-whistle has been part of the lexicon for political observers for about five years now.

It describes the very nuanced application of wedge politics.

Check the archives here, for Kevin's post some time, IIRC, as recently as January.

Nice gaslighting, though!

Yeah, I think the post is pretty naive. She's a top fundraiser for Hillary. She talks to voters all the time. Is there any doubt this is the line she's feeding to them, all the time? And doesn't it seem likely that other surrogates are getting the same message out, under the radar?

I agree she may have wanted to keep it under the radar, but the underlying message is clear, and she wants it out there. And so does Clinton.

I'm sorry, but Ferraro is nuttier than a pile of elephant shit

don't dare do that again while I'm drinking coffee in front of my computer

Thanks paxr55 for that link. It seems to indicate, as I thought, that in the US at least, it kinda sorta started with George Bush's use of Dred Scott. But as I think I pointed out, Bush used Scott over and over, and people were able to easily find websites of legal and religious analysis to show how Dred Scott was a code word.

What happens now is someone takes offense, right or wrong, with a single statement someone makes and immediately jumps up and yells, "Bingo!"

I think it's lazy and sloppy to yell dogwhistle with your soul evidence being, "if you don't agree that this is a dogwhistle, YOU are the racist!"

Accusations of racism and sexism are devastating and should only be made when you have strong evidence. Outrageous claims require outrageous evidence.

Again, thanks for the link.

Second, given that this is the Dem party, what poll evidence do you have that any of this alleged "racism" is helping Hillary anywhere?

MSNBC: "It's also interesting to note that in Ohio, 1-in-5 Democratic voters said race was an important factor in making their decision. In that group, 8-in-10 voted for Hillary Clinton."

It's helpful, you know, to consider how demographics vary in different states. Do you actually know anything about Ohio and Pennsylvania?

Off the deep end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUR0MBnl6d4

http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/opinions/Obama_support_riding_on_racism.shtml

"Obama support riding on racism

RACISM: Edward Mulindwa

After all the crisscrossing opinions about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I have not failed to notice one poignant factor in all these deliberations. As Africans/Blacks, we are often ready to identify with people we think are more like us rather than with what will benefit us.

If Obama was standing for presidency in an African country, all those from his ethnic group would identify with him. In that case, we would call it tribalism.

Now that Obama is standing in USA where tribes don’t matter, we see 90 per cent of African-Americans voting for him. But rather than call it racism, we claim he is a unifier. I wonder what uniting he is doing.

Indeed he has united the African-Americans to vote for him. Does this tell us as a people and for that matter a race that there is something significantly amiss in our reading into situations? And what is more interesting is that President Bill Clinton is the first president to not only fly into Africa but he and his entire family have worked so hard to highlight problems of blacks in America. "

Also for those of you who buy into this dogwhistle crap, why is a dogwhistle even necessary? Does Hillary really need to employ a proxy to remind this huge group of Democratic racists that-- horrors!-- Obama is... black????*

As I've said before, Obama, not Hillary, is the one who has clearly benefited the most from this debate. There hasn't been a logical argument that I've read yet on why Hillary would engage in this type of behavior.

Mr. Cohn's interpretation of the Ferraro quote was a dog whistle to Obama fans who insist that everyone else is a racist, or at least marketing to racists.

(Side note to all racists... you are not welcome in the Democratic Party... please leave. The other side will welcome you with open arms.)

I think that Kevin is correct on a technical point: if you are dogwhistling you say something to as many listeners as possible, but with a component that only a few will interpret correctly. "Dogwhistling" is only a useful term if it means that; otherwise what is said is just trolling or pandering or plain stupid or any of a dozen other specific things.

Here's what I have NOT seen commented on and would like an explanation of.

What the heck did she mean by "if he was ... a woman [of any color] he wouldn't be in this position."

Hellooo. Clinton is a woman [of any color] and she's pretty darned near (a couple of hundred delegates short) in the same position.

Hillary is a one and a half term legislator with absolutely NO relevant experience otherwise. She got where she is simply because she was MARRIED to the President. Who thinks, and for what reason, that she would otherwise have been elected Senator from New York within months of moving there?

Tell you what, if Hillary IS the nominee, don't count on the black vote unless she rejects AND denounces Ferraro.

Also for those of you who buy into this dogwhistle crap, why is a dogwhistle even necessary? Does Hillary really need to employ a proxy to remind this huge group of Democratic racists that-- horrors!-- Obama is... black????*

You remind me of frankly0.

(Patiently) Ferraro's repetitive messages aren't about announcing that Obama is black. They're about tapping into the resentment of certain segments of the white Democratic population, prevalent in Ohio and Pennsylvania, about "political correctness," black people getting things through special treatment that rightfully belong to whites, whites being the people who are really discriminated against, etc.

I agree with most others here that the original remarks may have simply been Ferraro expressing her own idiocy. The way this has been handled since by both Ferraro and the Clinton campaign--not so much.

jerry,

Tell you what. Let's agree that Bush's really obscure allusion to the Dred Scott case (in the 2004 debates, right?) is the perfect example of a dog-whistle. Audible only to highly trained, receptive listeners, in this case wingnut conservatives intent on overturning Roe v. Wade.

So what do we call Ferrarro's remarks? They're none of them very nuanced. Every freakin' disgruntled, working-class white voter can hear them. And the rest of us too.

Shall we settle on just racist?

Kevin, the FIRST time she made those remarks was in February on the John Gibson dogwhistle show.

I posted this on the earlier thread.

BTW, apparently, Ferraro said the following on GMA, regarding her comment on Obama:

Ferraro told “GMA� she was drawing a comparison to her own history, contending that if she was not a women she would not have been chosen to be Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984 — a point she also made in the newspaper interview.

Are Obama supporters trying to get us to feel guilty for not voting for him? It seems like all they do is whine.

As one of the the 3 people that voted for Mondale/Ferraro in '84, can I ask that she kindly go back into the hole she's been in for the last 2 decades?

The particularly noxious aspect of Ferraro's initial comment is what it suggests about *any professional* who isn't a white man. Female academics, black attorneys, Latino/Latino attorneys,..., etc. are such by virtue of the fact of their minority status, rather than their abilities. And she has absolutely no idea why people find this offensive.

Didn't she say the same thing about Jesse Jackson back in the day?

Dog whistling?
Or just....
The old wink-wink?

It would be nice to see people square their outrage over Ferraro's remarks with her admission, as I've quoted above, that she herself was a beneficiary of the sort of "luck" she attributed to Obama.

Do you think that she was criticizing herself? Was she doing a dog whistle on affirmative action with regard to women candidates such as herself?

Can you answer those questions, please? Or is that too hard a conceptual task for the braintrust of WashingtonMonthly commentariat?

Frankly pissed! Brilliant. Thanks for the link. Made my day.

Which provides a useful context for understanding her remarks; she's certainly not excluding herself from the sort of "luck" she attributes to Obama.

Except that Obama's "luck" is nothing like her own. She is saying that, like her, he was placed into a particular position because, and entirely because of his identity. No one would have ever heard of Ferraro if she was not chosen by Mondale specifically because she was a woman. As you say, she admits as much.

He, on the other hand, has run a campaign and gone out and gotten votes. She would like us to believe that the only reason he has received those votes is because he is black. She wants us to believe that like here VP appointment, his primary campaign is some sort of gift of largesse on the part of the American people, who really have no other reason to vote for him.

Further, she would like us to believe that questioning her bat-brained assumptions on this are somehow "playing the race card."

Are Obama supporters trying to get us to feel guilty for not voting for him? It seems like all they do is whine.

I cannot speak for anybody else MaryAnne but I don't particularly care who you vote for. But if you, like Ferraro believe that all of Obama's achievements are just so many gifts that have been handed to him because of his incredible "luck" for being born black, then I will tell you as well: you're an imbecile. If that sounds like whining to you then perhaps you have some sort of unfortunate hearing problem.

brent,

You of course don't deal with the fundamental issue: if Ferraro herself admits that one thing that boosted her career and visibility -- to the point that she was chosen as a VP candidate -- was that she was a woman, and she finds that not in the least embarrassing or wrong, why do you think she is implying that it is in any way embarrassing or wrong if Obama likewise profits from his historic role?

Where's the malice in the remark?

Kevin, you've really jumped the shark with this stuff. I'm starting to think you would be better off just not touching this issue because you are clearly having a difficult time accepting what is right in front of you and so you are left making these tortured posts where you try to explain these things away.

Like a lot of us you are probably taken aback by the way the Clintons have used race in this campaign. Like me, you heard Republicans say 2-3 months ago that the Clintons would play racial politics and like me you probably thought these people were just pathological Clinton haters. Now that the evidence is in and we see that the Clintons are in fact playing racist wedge issue politics you just can't believe and accept it. But it is true and there is no longer any point in rationalizing or denying it.

The genie is out of the bottle and the Clintons let it out deliberately in order to mobilize downscale white voters.

This post from Andrew Sullivan (of whom I'm not a fan) sums it up pretty well:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/the-ferraro-gam.html

Bill Clinton never appeared on Rush Limbaugh. Get your facts straight. Geraldine Ferraro is a surrogate, much the way that guy who couldn't claim one accomplishment for Obama was, calm yourselves. The Clinton campaign made several substantive rebukes and denunciations of Ms. Ferraro -- they came both from Maggie Williams and Senator Clinton. Glad to see people's hackles are still up about Power calling Clinton a "monster"...

It would be nice to see people square their outrage over Ferraro's remarks with her admission, as I've quoted above, that she herself was a beneficiary of the sort of "luck" she attributed to Obama.

Another repug spewing repugnant bile.
Here again is what she said:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position...

To wit:

He is where he is not because of talent. Not because of hard work. Not because of sacrifice. But because of his skin color.

Why don't you go spread your racist venom over at Little Green Footballs where you belong? You sad miserable little fuck...

Ethel-to-Tilly: Do Obama supports NOT want to acknowledge that a not insignificant part of Obama's support DOES come from African-Americans who often are motivated to vote for him simply because he is an African-American - that he most likely would NOT get that level of support from the African-American voters if he was, in fact, a white guy? Is it racist, and therefore off-the-table to point that out?

I'm reposting this: And yet some of Obama's biggest victories have come in states with very small to virtually non-existant African-American populations:

The percentage of votes Obama received in the following states:

• Alaska (74%)


• Colorado (64%)


• Hawaii (76%)


• Idaho (80%)


• Iowa (38%, 30%, 29% - Obama, Hillary, Edwards)


• Kansas (74%)


• Maine 59%(%)


• Minnesota (67%)


• Nebraska (68%)


• North Dakota (61%)


• Utah (57%)


• Vermont (60%)


• Washington (68%)


• Wyoming (61%)


• Wisconsin (58%)

Hillary would have been out of the race months ago if she weren't white and receiving not only a wildly disproportionate share of the white vote but also a record numbers of REPUBLICAN votes (we're still
waiting for Hillary to both 'reject and condemn' Rush Limbaugh's support).

Yes, it is true that Obama has frequently received around 80% of the African-American votes in some Southern states. But that's only half the story - and obviously the only side the Clinton campaign wants to focus on.

The flip side of this is that the white vote in the South has been similarly skewed to the extreme. Among Southern states, only Georgia gave Obama more than 30% of the white vote.

Obama's share of the white vote in the South

• Mississippi 26%


• Alabama 25%


• Georgia 43%


• Louisiana 30%


• South Carolina 24%


• Tennessee 26%

But I'm sure all the white southerners had good, substantive reasons for voting for Hillary Clinton whereas all of the black people voting for
Obama were just voting their race.

After all, isn't that more or less what Ferraro is implying?

I agree with Dresden's shark jumping comment. A) the size of the publication is not relevant to the comment she made, B) While I'm sure it wasn't some orchestrated campaign, it was part of a general strategy, probably so habitual that it's just knee-jerk by now, that employs these kinds of repugnant dog whistle tactics.

Most of the time KD is very smart and insightful. This is not one of those times.

It would be nice to see people square their outrage over Ferraro's remarks with her admission, as I've quoted above, that she herself was a beneficiary of the sort of "luck" she attributed to Obama.

I would be happy to address your inquiry franklyo. I believe I started to in an earlier comment. Suggesting that Obama achievements as a Presidential candidate are comparable to her appointment as a VP candidate because she was a woman is an insult to him. It presumes that what he has achieved, like what she achieved, was unearned and that further, he could not have achieved those things if they weren't somehow given to him as a gift for his ethnic identity.

Now I have a question that I have asked before on this blog. What would Ferraro, or you if you agree with her, have Obama do to prove that he deserves his position? What set of criteria would indicate that what he has done is based upon his own abilities and appeal as opposed to his race alone? How would we ever be able to tell if a black person actually earned what he/she has as opposed to it being given to them because of their race?

Holy cats Kevin! Another day, another frenzy. Its starting to feel like DailyKos here. How much more red meat have you got in your freezer?

How's about we start paying attention to what our government is doing, while we patiently wait for the rest of the american public to vote in their primaries.

troll hunter,

Sorry to spoil your bile, but of course logic fails you.

Essentially, Ferraro was saying that she too would never have achieved her career and position if she had not been a woman. Now, unless you are arguing that she too thinks that getting where she did did not also require hard work, etc., as well as being a woman, then your argument, as flowery as it is with emotion, simply fails.

But it was good to hear from you!

Better luck next time!

I don't know who troll hunter is, and I don't know who frankly0 is, but I know from long time reading that there is zero chance that frankly0 is a republican, a troll, or a racist.

As for reading LGF, I think that people that go around shouting troll and racist at anyone that disagree probably got their start shouting at their fellows at LGF, Free Republic, Hot Air, and the like.

There is bile being spread around here, but it's not being done by frankly0, or anyone else that wants to discuss this and doesn't feel the need to stifle dialog with cries of racism, sexism, or any other ism. I'm looking at you troll hunter.

Bill Clinton never appeared on Rush Limbaugh.

Yes he did troll:

http://donklephant.com/2008/03/10/bill-clinton-was-on-rush-limbaughs-show-the-day-before-tx-primaries/

Actual radio interview here:

http://images.radcity.net/5155/2461772.mp3

Kevin, optical weenie has an excellent point.

Rachel Maddow last night gave us a whole list of topics that our two candidates could be discussing wrt the economy, the war, and especially John McCain.

You could be doing that too.

One thing is indisuputable. If Obama was a white man, we'd be having a discussion of his merits as a candidate, not this sad self-destructive quarrel. This is not Obama's fault, nor is it a reason to not support him. It's just a damn shame, and it reflects badly on all of us.

Where's the malice in the remark?

I have no idea whether there was any malice in her remark. I don't particularly care. It doesn't change the meaning of her remarks which is that Obama is just some ordinary unaccomplished schmoe who everyone wants to be president only because he is black.

It presumes that what he has achieved, like what she achieved, was unearned and that further, he could not have achieved those things if they weren't somehow given to him as a gift for his ethnic identity.

Great strawman.

I'm sure that Ferraro was not claiming that what she achieved was entirely "unearned", or that what both she and Obama received were "gifts".

I'm sure that what she would say was that both possessed important necessary conditions for achieving the prominence they did, but that those conditions weren't sufficient by themselves, and required something further, namely an historic role based on their identity, to put them over the top.

This point really isn't too hard to understand, but first you have to want to grasp it.

Kevin,

You forgot about the number one rule in the left blogosphere: anything connected to Clinton is evil, always, without exception. The number two rule is any criticism of Obama is either blatant racism or stupidity.

Keep those rules straight and you won't get into trouble.

What I have learned from this thread:

Ferraro is spelled with 3 r's, not 4.

Kevin is so rational he cannot think rationally about (1) irrational subjects like racism and (2) the terrible people who wield racism as though it were just another handy campaign tactic. He's Hillary's last best hope among the A-listers!

I'm sure that what she would say was that both possessed important necessary conditions for achieving the prominence they did, but that those conditions weren't sufficient by themselves, and required something further, namely an historic role based on their identity, to put them over the top.

And nothing gives you a leg up quite like being a woman or a racial minority in America. Must be why they run the place.

Quit while you're behind.

I'm sure that Ferraro was not claiming that what she achieved was entirely "unearned", or that what both she and Obama received were "gifts".

What part of here statement makes you so sure of that. Perhaps the part where she argues that he would not be able to achieve any of the things he has if he were a white woman?

Your parsing of Ferraro's statement is woefully inadequate franklyo. You want here to be saying something innocent but she simply is not. She made it very plain that she believes that Obama has not earned his position in the way that say Clinton has. She made it very clear that it without his race, he could not compete as he has. You seem sure of what she would say but she did not in fact say that and in all of here clarifications since, she has only amplified her original statement. So nice try, but no sale.

As the comments at donklephant state, as this comment found by google at Free Republic state, Bill Clinton was not interviewed live on Limbug's show.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1983461/posts#9

Clinton WAS interviewed by the guest host, on the guest host's show at WBAP, and the guest host REPLAYED that interview on Limbug's show.

But let's not let an opportunity to smear people get away. You may as well stick to your statement.

Big Troll Hunter ... Seriously, this nonsense was debunked days ago and you are still peddling it?!

Bill Clinton was interviewed by Mark Davis of WBAP, a local radio station in the DFW area. Davis replayed the interview that he taped with Clinton later when he guest hosted the Limbaugh show.

Personally, I am not remotely a fan of WBAP but it is a station listened to by a lot of people in the DFW area.

FranklyObnoxious:

This point really isn't too hard to understand, but first you have to want to grasp it.

Yes. And when Russ Limbaugh works in the word 'spade' a few times he really is just talking about shovels.

See you just have to bend over and spread your mind... then you'll get what Ferraro is saying. It is so simple, it just takes logic...

Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

Even so, it's not the original but the response to criticism of the original that's illuminating.

It would be nice to see people square their outrage over Ferraro's remarks with her admission, as I've quoted above, that she herself was a beneficiary of the sort of "luck" she attributed to Obama.

Do you think that she was criticizing herself? Was she doing a dog whistle on affirmative action with regard to women candidates such as herself?

First, she wasn't commenting about herself. She was commenting about Obama. Only when she got called on it did she include herself among the underachievers.

But maybe nobody cares if she goes around telling anybody who'll listen that her career has been based on dumb luck. Maybe what they find offensive is the fact that she wants to minimize the accomplishments of every other minority.

Two points:

One, some view that Ferraro is just stating the "obvious" fact that Obama receives 80 percent of the African-American vote by benefit of being black. Let us suppose, then, that he were white. Would he be a viable candidate? Yes. How do I know that? The answer is John Edwards. Edwards actually had less political experience in 2004 than Obana has today, yet Edwards caught fire and ended up being the only serious challenger to Kerry. Why? Because Edwards had certain political gifts, especially as an orator. Well, I've seen Edwards and Obama and let me tell you Obama's gifts are ten-fold what Edwards' are. The idea that charisma and eloquence matter in leaders may not be fair to those without either, but that's the way it works. I am certain the more experienced Republicans running for president in 1980 against Reagan and the more experienced Democrats running against Clinton (Bill) in 1992 that it wasn't fair that charm trumped, but that's the way it is. Some have it and some don't. Obama has it; Hillary does not. (And by the way, the extra black voters picks up by his race are likely offset by the loss of white voters who just aren't ready for a black president.)

Point two, to those who claim it is the Obama campaign is keeping this alive, the Obama campaign did not expose Ferraro's comments. Further, there is a simple way to move on; Ferraro could acknowledge she said a grossly inappropriate thing and apologize and Hillary could renounce and reject it. Since neither one is willing to do that, it appears they are the ones who see an advantage in keeping this issue alive. I hope it bites them in the ass, but that will be up to the good voters of Pennsylvania and beyond to decide.

Bill Clinton was interviewed by Mark Davis of WBAP, a local radio station in the DFW area. Davis replayed the interview that he taped with Clinton later when he guest hosted the Limbaugh show.

It is debunked when you show me that Clinton denied permission for it to appear on Limbaugh's show.

Until then... it is viable.

Are Obama supporters trying to get us to feel guilty for not voting for him? It seems like all they do is whine.

Posted by: MaryAnne on March 12, 2008 at 4:20 PM

Nope, just trying to persuade you, your candidate and the rest of her supporters not to poison the well because you're all so bitter about her blowing her shot. And she did it. Nobody else. No more whining, no more excuses. She voted for a disastrous war and ran a disastrous campaign.

I am an Obama supporter and an American Jew. I feel as sensitive about these inappropriate comments as anyone else. But you know what, enough is enough.

Each and every comment is not the end of the world. For the past six months we have been besieged by calls for resignations and firings by every utterance short of a belch made by news people and politicians across the land.

People say stupid things every day (just as they write them as I am doing) Every stupid comment even if racist is not an impeachable offense.

Whatever happened to the notion that we simply should not listen to stupid people? Don't invite them back and don't quote them. Let them just go back under the rock from whence they came.

It is debunked when you show me that Clinton denied permission for it to appear on Limbaugh's show. Until then... it is viable.

Why bother with facts or reason, when we have good people like the troll hunter to tell us who is racist, and who is not, and when a good smear becomes no longer viable?

Tell me again troll hunter and everyone else about Clinton's nasty campaign....

PS:

And no: I am not interested in arguing about what the definition of "appears on Limbaugh's show" is.

And since when does Ferraro take the time to do interviews with the Torrance Daily Breeze? Criminy.

Here's the thing: everyone knows that racial and identity politics are used in campaigns, but how do you prove it. Very hard to prove a motive (Philadelphia, Mississippi anyone?).

And yet everyone knows it happens and is used. The question to be explored is HOW it is used:

1) under the radar
2) lots of exposure
3) appealing *somehow* to get voters to vote either for or against based on racial stereotypes

So, on 60 minutes, Obama isn't Muslim "as far as I know" (seemingly innocuous), but a high profile but somewhat disconnected supporter in an interview across the country in a small paper says, "he's lucky to be where he is" etc.

At some point, all this shucking and jiving, all this Barack Hussein Obama, all this well he just wins because "those" people support him...

Are you telling me that a $200 million campaign is doing all these things by accident when nearly everything else they are doing is intentional?

Come on now.

Why bother with facts or reason, when we have good people like the troll hunter to tell us who is racist, and who is not, and when a good smear becomes no longer viable?

Yes because Jerry slinging the truth: "This dogwhistle stuff is complete bullshit.

Good old rational Jerry with all four paws choke-holding the truth.

People say stupid things every day (just as they write them as I am doing) Every stupid comment even if racist is not an impeachable offense.

I am actually of the opinion that the call to "fire" Ferraro by Axelrod was a poor move. I think the whole "you must fire" x strategy is pretty stupid. But it is just as clear that Obama and his people cannot just let crap like this stand. He has to respond, not just because he is going to be asked the question, but because he cannot leave the impression out there that there is any truth to the statement. That would be the Kerry strategy.

Geraldine Ferraro is leaving the Hillary Clinton campaign via CNN.

Just some back-of-the-napkin math here... Seems like there are about 10-15 people in the liberal blogosphere willing to defend these comments.

Haven't checked right-wing blogs though.

Just sayin.

I'm still waiting for Kevin to update or retract his post, in view of the fact that Ferraro FIRST made her racist commentary on John Gibson's radio show on February 27, 2008.

Dog whistle - 1
Kevin Drum - 0

Perhaps a better strategy with a fellow Dem would be: "That's the sort of nonsense my fellow candidate likes to indulge in, If you want to ask Ms. Clinton about Ferarro's comments, enjoy yourself. I'm here today to talk about McCain and NAFTA.

But yes, I agree that when it's McCain making that sort of statement you need to slap him back.

But when it's dem on dem violence it may be wiser for you and everyone to try and take the highroad and encourage your fellow dem to do the same.

(But I agree, neither will do that.)

Note to troll hunter, is this like your second day at this site? If not, are you just Al, mhr, Roger Norman, or tbrosz? Who did you post as yesterday, or last week, or the month before?

I miss tbrosz. *sniff*

Regarding Power's and Ferraro's resignations....

Now both candidates can claim their military experience extends to playing battleship.