The O’Reilly Factor

[Daveparts]

The O’Reilly Factor
By David Glenn Cox


There’s a war going on right now, not the one that you read about overseas but, a war within the Democratic Party. Not a war for the soul of the Democratic Party, for they sold their soul to the devil a long time ago. This is a war for control of the party machinery.
As Senator Obama collects delegates and holds on to his lead against Senator Clinton, pictures of Obama appear in the press in foreign garb. The Clinton campaign complains that Senator Obama is getting a free ride in the press. The Clinton campaign and the mainstream media fail to mention that Clinton’s recent heralded victories in Texas and Ohio were due either in part, or in total, to Republican voters crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary, but mums the word.

This is just politics; I get you, you get me, but there is a limit, isn’t there? I mean, doesn’t there come a time when some candidate steps up and says, "That’s over the edge." Maybe I’m naïve, a dreamer looking for a candidate with scruples. I was talking to an elderly, conservative Republican in the doctor's office who told me. "I wish we had a Harry Truman running for President." A far left liberal and a far right conservative Republican in complete agreement. Just somebody, anybody, who would do what was right because it was right and damn the political torpedoes.

When Truman ran for the Senate, some local supporters put him in a car to speak to a local gathering. When they arrived they discovered it was a Klan rally. Truman stood on the back bumper of the car and told them, "Half of you I know, the other half I can figure out and if I need your votes to get elected, then I hope I lose." Brutal honesty, not in the civil rights 1960’s but in the racist, lynching 1930’s. Truman said what he thought and did what he said, simple and direct. When asked not to run for reelection for the good of the Democratic Party in 1948 he said, no.

He took his case to the American people and won by over one million votes, without the south and without New York. He was a real person, not a media image, and he’d be the first one to tell you he wasn’t the smartest man in the room. But he was probably the most honest. I can only imagine what he would say about the recent remarks made by Geraldine Ferraro regarding Barack Obama. Harry was pretty salty in his speech and I doubt Ms. Ferraro would have been spared one syllable of it.

The very idea that a candidate for the highest office in this land would be referred to as having some sort of advantage because of his African American heritage is obscene; it would be akin to saying John Kennedy had some advantage because he was a Catholic. For every vote Senator Obama gains because of his race, he loses at least one vote because of his race. For such a comment to come from his Democratic opponent’s camp shows either gross ignorance or a planned attack. Perhaps fearing Obama’s gaining momentum, they feel that their only chance now is to trip him up by playing the race card. If so, it is an ugly specter, unworthy of anyone aspiring to the highest office in the land.

President Truman fired the most popular general in the America military for making statements after he had been told not to speak to the press. Senator Clinton should have given Ms. Ferraro 24 hours to apologize, to her campaign, to Obama’s campaign and to Senator Obama personally. Senator Clinton strives to draw distinctions between herself and the other candidates. She had her chance and she blew it, given a chance to take a principled stand on her own car bumper, Clinton answered, "I do not agree with that," she said. "It is regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides, because we've both had that experience, say things that kind of veer off into the personal. We ought to keep this on the issues."

Huh? Both sides? What are you talking about? At the very least she should have said that it was so regrettable that she would personally call Ms. Ferarro to tell her not to speak for her campaign anymore and, that if she feels that way, I don’t want her support. Instead, we get finger pointing and Ferarro continues on, "Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up. Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Obama was attacking you? It’s really hard to decide whether Ms. Ferarro’s second comment wasn’t worse than the first. In either case, it is an obscenity, a redneck abomination with no basis in fact. Senator Obama defeated Senator Clinton in Utah with a small African-American community. Senator Obama received over 40% of the white vote in Georgia. Yes, it’s true that Obama received 90% of the African-American vote in Mississippi but the majority of the white population are registered Republicans.

There are battle lines being drawn; the disallowed delegates from Florida and Michigan are suddenly in play again with talks of do-overs. The party spokespeople for Clinton’s campaign offer Senator Obama the VP slot; are they kidding? Or do they see a convention coup? A battle royale behind the scenes of Super delegates and party apparatchiks disavowing the voter’s choice to do what the party thinks is good for the party. Senator Clinton has the bulk of the party machinery behind her and, by her failure to do the right thing, now calls into question her integrity to do the right thing come the convention. The remarks were unfit for a Democratic campaign just as they would be unacceptable from a Republican campaign. They were remarks only acceptable on programs such as the O’Reilly Factor.

[tomreedtoon]

1. It's not just Clinton. It's a lot more of the Party.

When Lyndon Johnson instituted the kind of racial reforms that others only talked about, he drove a lot of the Southern racists out of the Democratic Party and into the hands of the Republicans. That brought about the election of Nixon and the long run of Republican Presidents we've had.

Well, maybe that's simplistic. But it seems that, whatever Johnson may or may not have done, he didn't drive all the racists out of the Democratic Party. The Ferraro affair suggests that a lot of people in the Party apparatus never learned the lessons that were drummed into us since kindergarden.