Black Voters Did It

07 May 2008 12:51 am

Here's what now seems obvious: African-American voters killed the Clinton candidacy. It is a fitting end to the Clintons' campaign and an almost Shakespearean coda to their career. The Clintons were exposed in their long-running exploitation and reliance on minority votes. No group was more loyal to them than African-Americans; and in the end, like everyone else, African-Americans realized that the Clintons are frauds, disloyal to the core, cynical to their finger-tips, and finally, finally, returned the favor. A reader writes:

I found it striking that Clinton did not even pretend to be courting African Americans in North Carolina. Had the tables somehow been turned and had Obama's soul been implanted in her body, he would have made a show of at least organizing one major African American outreach event there or in Indiana. Obama went bowling in Altoona, after all. I kept expecting Hillary, ever since South Carolina, and certainly since Louisiana, to give her own major speech on race to a black audience in which she expressed sincere regret for Bill Clinton's Jesse Jackson and related comments by her surrogates. She could have done that while still stressing that her and Bill's mistakes were innocent in their intent, but that she is someone who looks not only at intentions but effects and regrets the rift.

Instead, she let Ferrarro rub salt in the wound. Don't get me wrong. Obama is such a talented candidate and such a symbol of hope to African Americans that he was going to get 80% of the black vote no matter what. But 92% and even higher than that in Gary! She got numbers in the past few states worse than Nixon and worse than Reagan.

After what the Clintons did in this campaign, and what they've revealed about themselves, and their alliance with Fox News and Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan, this couldn't be more appropriate.

This will be history's verdict: in the end, the Clintons were defeated not by Republicans, but by African-American Democrats. How wonderful. How poignant. In the end, the karma gets you. Maybe it had to be this way. But this final coup de grace against these awful, hollow, cynical people is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

(Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty.)

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