Commenter SRV in an earlier thread made an interesting and somewhat snarky remark:
Will Hillary knock out her Sister Souljah Moment early or wait until next year?
There is no need for any Democrat who is planning to run on maintaining and perhaps expanding the Obama Coalition to Sister Soulijah anyone.
This Vox map explains why:
The Obama Coalition is white liberals, urbanites, union members and everyone who is non-white.
The Bill Clinton Coalition had a significant component of socially and economically conservative people who were scared of the Other and Cocaine and the Loud Music of Kids these days. Sister Soulijah was a signaling mechanism to elite opinion makers, shapers and leaders that Bill Clinton would respect the views of this marginal portion of his winning coalition even at the expense of a significant but insufficient for a win portion of his base coalition.
The people who were soothed enough by Clinton’s Sister Soulijah comments in 1991 are either dead, or hard core Republican base voters now. The marginal member of the Obama coalition is not scared of changing times anywhere near as much as the marginal member of the 1992 Clinton coalition.
Furthermore, we have to remember the times; Democrats had just gotten their asses handed to them three Presidential elections in a row as they were seen as too soft on crime. 2016 will see Democrats as the incumbent party with a better than even chance of holding the White House for a third term if they can actually get all of their naturally predisposed to like them voters out to vote. Depressing the base vote in order to chase a few marginal votes is stupid.
c u n d gulag
All of the above, and Hillary will probably do a lot better than Obama in the Appalachian states.
They liked Bill, and Hillary did well there in the primaries.
Cacti
Highly educated whites, women, youngs, and racial/ethnic minorities.
That’s the coalition that Obama rode to two big wins.
Chasing this generation of the white working class vote is a fool’s errand for a Dem candidate.
Dance with the ones that brung ya, as they say.
Marc
Why bother responding to a sneering Naderite troll?
SatanicPanic
Obama has referenced Lil Wayne favorably at times and has had Jay Z in the White House and it hasn’t hurt him. Hillary would be better off criticizing Ted Nugent or the Duggars.
dr. bloor
Who’s she hiring to run her campaign this time around? As smart as HRC is, her campaigns have never been beyond engaging in needless stupidity.
Archon
Looking at the map it really is hard to see how a Republican gets to 270 electoral votes.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Cacti: Hillary will get all of those AND a substantial proportion of working class whites who still remember her husband’s presidency as something other than a tragedy.
The GOP is going to get crushed and I suspect most of them know it, because the grifting is starting strong and early.
Amir Khalid
If Hillary doesn’t have a Sister Souljah moment on her own, the Republicans will try to invent one for her. Which has worked so well for them with the past couple of non-scandals.
Knowbody
Balloon Juice Days Without Inane Hillary Clinton Post Counter set to zero again. This being the third fucking HRC post of the day, a penalty will be assessed.
Linnaeus
@Cacti:
With the exception of those who are unionized, but you probably don’t need to “chase” those voters.
Minstrel Michael
I agree with dr. bloor. If Marc Penn is lurking around, he should be kneecapped.
Tree With Water
The “Sister Souljah moment” always received more attention than it deserved. Hell, by the time Bill Clinton made that speech, he had already made a special flight back to Arkansas to insure that a half-wit on the state’s death row be executed. That killing was at least as important as the speech in terms of introducing himself to the aristocrats (as you will have it). Certainly to the fellow executed, it was.
A bigger tell with Clinton was his pronouncement the “the era of big government is over” (except for the pentagon and intelligence agencies budgets). He’s never said otherwise, either. I assume Hillary still endorses that political philosophy, global warning be damned. Do any of her partisans know otherwise? She certainly didn’t have a problem with big government launching the 2003 War in Iraq, did she?
Belafon
@dr. bloor: I forget his name, but he ran the governors campaign in VA, where Democrats won even in an off year.
Belafon
@Tree With Water:
Why do you think that?
dmsilev
@Minstrel Michael: Mark Penn was last sighted acting as some high-ranking strategic strategist for strategy at Microsoft.
Might explain Windows 8, come to think of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon: More to the point, what is the evidence that she ever endorsed it?
Roger Moore
@Archon:
The map is actually a map of partisan swing between 2004 and 2012, not a map of absolute partisan leaning.
sharl
@dmsilev: Haha, beat me to it!
Belafon
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, I’m kind of curious why someone would assign to a woman the 20 year old views of her husband.
Bobby Thomson
@Omnes Omnibus: see, back in 2008, I thought it was illegitimate for her to run on Bill’s record. But I’m consistent. I also think it’s unfair to tag her for things he did. Stuff she did in the Senate, at State, and as point person on health care are all fair game.
Richard mayhew
@dr. bloor: she hired a good chunk of the team that worked both Obama 2012 and macaulife 2013 in Virginia, so base mobilizers
Bubblegum Tate
This reminds me: There’s a D-list wingnut blogger who goes by the nom de blogge “Sister Toldjah.” Who says conservatives don’t do humor?
Cervantes
@Belafon:
Robby Mook.
srv
They’re not dead Jim.
Probably half this Liberal site of the Left are closet Reagan Democrats, and your average Obot is weary of Hillary. They might not vote for Walker, but they aren’t going to march out for Hillary’s coronation either. The kids, voting for Hillary is like voting any other crusty old white guy. Minorities – they’re going to turn out en masse for Hillary?
I have an urban Hispanic BIL and his bros and sister you should have a chat with about Hillary.
There are tens of millions of people out there who don’t watch Fox News, are weary of Hillary and have been living on the economic precipice for 6 years now. You could say a lot of them don’t vote too, but they’re out there.
When they do manage to turn on the TV, they don’t see people talking about their problems. They see riots. And they’re going to see more. And they will see all that as a threat to what little they have left, and 8 years of Obama and they’re still one paycheck from the trailer park.
We’re one economic burp, one terrorist attack, one burning city away from your base cracking up.
fuckwit
@SatanicPanic: He’s an acknowledged Jay Z fan. And he called Kanye a “jackass”. Because Kanye is a jackass. To get called a jackass publicly by the President of the United States is proably a first.
charon
@Roger Moore:
If you follow the links and comments from the Vox piece, there is another map adjusted to offset the swing from GWB +2.4% to BHO +3.9% – so-called “normalized” map.
I think the other map overcompensates, given an underlying demographic trend about half as large.
charon
@Roger Moore:
This is the alternate map: http://i.imgur.com/dfpxhHB.png
fuckwit
@srv: “your”?
Brachiator
@Tree With Water: Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton. Nor is she Obama. We have seen some of her strengths and weaknesses from her last presidential bid. The question is, can she rise above them?
The Sister Souljah dig is particularly dumb. Fear of Negroes is officially a subdivision of the GOP. Before any serious campaigning begins, the only thing I would even mildly be concerned about would be if Hillary said something that could be twisted to be anti-whitey, insufficiently kissing up to the white working class, or maybe something supposedly anti-male. But who knows. Maybe like the actor Chris Pratt, Hillary should issue an apology in advance.
Meanwhile, I guess that Hillary doesn’t really have to worry about the Democratic Party base, and consider what might be done to ignite voter enthusiasm.
And people can keep flogging Hillary’s position on Iraq in 2003, but it will not do much for you.
Aaron Morrow
While I am too busy to make a lame Jonathan Chait joke, I’ll always wonder if Bill Clinton was pandering more to media folks who project their conservatism onto the general public. (Whether you define “project their conservatism” as “assume everyone agrees with me” or “convince everyone to agree with me” doesn’t really matter in this case.) While there are no remaining Reagan Democrats outside the media, I remain concerned about living in a world where Joe Klein still has power.
charon
@charon:
One thing the alternate map really clarifies is the influence of the growth in Hispanic population, also recall GWB did exceptionally well with Hispanics for a Republican.
Valdivia
@Aaron Morrow:
you touch on something I was going to ask. Isn’t this Sister Souljah all about the media? Aren’t they the ones who always ask of Democratic candidates to distance themselves from the ‘left’ or the base. All based on the (erroneous) idea that this is a ‘center-right’ nation. I may be wrong, but do they ever insist on this quite the same way with the GOP?
I remember Stephanopoulos yelling at Obama during a debate about rejecting Farrakhan. It went on for a whole debate segment, it was of utmost importance that he do it the way they wanted him to do it, otherwise it didn’t count. It’s along the same lines no?
FlipYrWhig
@Aaron Morrow:
I still think this was Gore ’00’s chief problem, and to a degree a major problem for Kerry ’04. I’m not sure Obama ’08 or ’12 cared about it, and Clinton ’16 is starting to show signs of active contempt for them–a good thing.
lol
@dr. bloor:
The Clinton campaign has hired a lot of the same people that got Obama elected & re-elected.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@fuckwit: This can’t be a surprise. srv’s leanings have been obvious since day one.
SatanicPanic
@Valdivia: yeah, Aaron makes a great point. It reminds me of how every time a black person goes on TV about something like Baltimore they have to condemn rioting, even if they have nothing to do with it. It’s just reflexive media behavior. I don’t get who it’s supposed to appeal to, but it’s definitely there.
shell
Can someone explain this ‘Sister Souljah Moment’ reference?
Marc
He’s a pure troll; who knows whether he believes anything that he types. Just getting a rise out of people is reward enough for some.
srv
@Brachiator:
Bill could get away with it and still be the First Black President. Obama can still emote about the “absentee” black fathers and get away with it.
Hillary? Nope. She’s going to have to pick a side and run with it.
AxelFoley
@Cacti:
This. All this.
Fuck worrying about rural whites. There aren’t enough John Coles among them who would vote Dem.
Adam Lang
Absolutely. If she does have a Sister Soulijah moment, it won’t be until after the election. (And no, I’m not saying ‘SHE WILL’, I’m just saying that’s the time. It’s certainly when Obama started doing it.)
Linnaeus
@shell:
Here’s a brief explanation.
Valdivia
@SatanicPanic:
I remember also in 2012 the many OpEds telling Obama that he had to reject this or that from the Democratic platform, that only this way he would be seen as serious. It’s a constant trope, the idea that only when the Dems betray their own constituents will they prove to the Village that they are worthy candidates.
Now I think that it is different with the GOP because their base is batshit insane, so rejecting them is just common sense.
mdblanche
@c u n d gulag:
I wish I shared your optimism there. But I fear that voters in that region will be slow to forgive the Democratic Party for electing a black president even after he leaves office and may not like Hillary as much now that she served as his Secretary of State. LBJ’s “lost the South for a generation” is now two and a half and counting…
Brachiator
@Valdivia: But Sister Souljah didn’t represent the left or the base or anything significant. And in the end, this interlude had no impact on Bill Clinton. BTW, where is Sister Souljah today?
Getting after Obama about Farrakhan was even dopier. Obama had already passed the Scary Negro test, except in the minds of fools who believe that all Chicago black political figures know each other and live in the same building.
Cervantes
@shell:
I’m sure you can find various interpretations of that “moment.”
You can look at it for yourself as well.
charon
@shell:
Black entertainer given to saying over-the-top stuff about whites. During campaign, WJC called her out on it, risking alienating blacks to pander to whites.
Brachiator
@srv:
Why do you hate America? Is this all that conservatives have, fear mongering?
charon
@mdblanche:
Also Bible belt – people who do not compromise and feel a religious duty to support the GOP. Not worth chasing, considering unlikely to be productive enough to justify the effort.
Also coal and energy – these people have an economic grudge against Democrats.
Valdivia
@Brachiator:
Good point. I guess in my mind Sister Souljah has come to represent a Dem candidate distancing themselves from key constituents or policies that benefit them because of constant pressure by the media.
The Farrakhan thing was imbecilic: he kept hammering at him “will you reject and denounce him”.
Brachiator
@srv: Sorry, you just don’t understand what you are talking about, so there isn’t much point in trying to correct you. Also, arguments about hypothetical controversies may be standard fare for blogs, but still a waste of time.
AxelFoley
@Adam Lang:
Oh? Could you provide any examples of Obama’s “Sistah Soulijah” moments?
jl
@srv:
” We’re one economic burp, one terrorist attack, one burning city away from your base cracking up. ”
The racial rioting has been very civil and minor, both historically, and IMHO compared to the severity of the provocation. So far it is the kind of thing that will be long forgotten come election time. And the Obama administration is visibly taking measures to address the provocations, and I am sure it is being noticed in the affected communities. And other than die hard white racists in the GOP, the majority of white Democrats and Independents see something wrong with the way police are acting, at least if polling on the Gray killing is any indication. A little over 60 percent, IIRC, which is not marginal.
As for potential economic burp or terrorist attack causing political problems, how is that different from any party in any election.
But, maybe you are doing humorous comments now?
srv
@AxelFoley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBSirsXcAoI
Gravenstone
Can we apply DNFTFT to front pagers as well? Richard, I know you mean well, but jeebus wept, ignore that little fuckstain will ya?
mdblanche
@charon: I’m not thinking about people who’ve been dutifully voting straight Republican for decades, I’m thinking about people who stopped voting for a Democratic president in 2008 and for down-ballot Democrats in 2010. The good news is that Hillary doesn’t need their votes to win. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the other hand…
Germy Shoemangler
@srv: The person who uploaded your link to youtube also uploaded this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU4hm6QHgsc
“ABC News Defends Obama’s Perverted Ways”
Fair Economist
@srv:
Pam Gellar is doing her best to incite that terrorist attack.
Gravenstone
@Knowbody: Ya know, no one FORCES you to log in here.
Mike J
@Brachiator:
Bernie voted for the AUMF too.
srv
@Germy Shoemangler: Also noted:
Not that you watched the video.
SatanicPanic
@Gravenstone: Half of our front-pagers are trolls
Scott S.
@Marc:
Why bother responding to a sneering Naderite troll?
Is srv a Naderite? I was pretty sure he was a Republican.
On the other hand, there probably isn’t a difference between the two anymore…
jl
A good offense is the best defense. How about asking GOP pres candidates to ‘Sister Souljah’ the culture of white violence.
We got the Palin family riots, which are getting to be such a regular thing probably will be sending out schedules soon. The Bundy deadbeat squatter insurrection.
Outlaw biker gangs would be good targets, but maybe they are Hillaryistas?
The infamous Mason County MI complimentary breakfast buffet and ice cream sprinkle riots come to mind, That would combine Sister Souljah with broken windows policing of civil disorder and social disintegration. And I thought Mason County would be a good example of small town and rural, lily white community going wrong. I just checked and it definitely trends Democratic in big elections, so I guess it would be a good candidate for a Democratic white violence call out. Send Biden.
Gravenstone
@SatanicPanic: Well, that’s only fair, since half of them are also Doug J.
jl
@Gravenstone: I thought it was well established through rigorous geometrical logic that 90 percent of the BJ commenters are DougJ sockpuppets.
SatanicPanic
@jl: I am DougJ!
srv
Dig at Ageismist O’Malley, old man Sanders or Obama? You decide:
Linnaeus
@Mike J:
He voted for the AUMF in 2001, but not the Iraq AUMF in 2002.
Roger Moore
@charon:
You have to be careful about exactly how you do it. One of the things that the fully normalized map does, though, is show just of geographically concentrated the Democrats’ voters are. If you think about it, all of the color in that map adds up to a total swing of 0 voters, since it’s been deliberately constructed that way. That means the comparatively small and lightly colored blue areas still manage to completely cancel out that giant swath of bright red running through greater Appalachia.
Librarian
@jl: “Ahh, but the strawberries that’s… that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with… geometric logic… that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I’d have produced that key if they hadn’t of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers… “
jl
@srv: None of the above. I think HRC sees friendly competition in primary as a help not a hindrance in primary. She is focusing on general already, and a mostly younger GOP field, and sexist and agist BS that the corporate media will spout.
Reagan could die his hair and it was a joke. Trump can do whatever unearthly thing he does to whatever is on top of his head, and it is a joke (a scary joke, but still a joke). HRC will be different I predict.
Also, perhaps a carefully planned desultory leaden exhibition that HRC has humor and a ‘light side’ in public.
Myiq2xu
@c u n d gulag: Which is proof that they are all racists.
raven
@srv: “I have an urban Hispanic BIL”
how does he he keep from kicking the shit out of you?
lamh36
@Brachiator: Sister Soulja is a best selling author, speaker and activist.
She may still be considered to be some sort of “thing” for the white political press and voters of a certain age, but she has not just fallen by the waist side.
I’m certain she isn’t paying Clinton or any of the other folk no never mind.
Linnaeus
IMHO, there wasn’t even a need for Clinton to do the original Sister Souljah-ing in 1992.
Roger Moore
@lamh36:
Nit: the correct phrase is “fallen by the wayside“, not “waist side”./pedant
charon
@Roger Moore:
The non-normalized map has a trend of 3.9%-(-2.4%) = 6.3% bluer over an 8-year period. So the 0% normalized map is 6.3% less blue.
I have some curiosity of how demographic trends affect elections, and examined this a while back by building a spreadsheet model. My models estimated about 1.5% to 2% per 4-year election cycle – roughly half of 6.3% over 8 years. So a map about halfway between the two would be a good model for demographic trends, assuming my model is realistic.
My model is probably conservative, considering recent polling showing the country becoming less socially conservative faster than demographics alone would project. Whatever.
I noticed every major city in Texas is in a blue county, BTW. (That is a LOT of population.)
jl
@Roger Moore: probably a typo, or lamh meant anyone who remembers and understand the significance of WJCs SJ moment is so old and fat now, and set in their ways, that the demographic won’t be swayed by a new one.
Chet
@Cacti: Because white proles, each and every single one of us, are hopeless wingnuts.
Fuck you and your classist bullshit.
FlipYrWhig
@jl:
See, now, that’s interesting. Given the tendencies of the media and the punditocracy (essentially affluent Northeasterners who are OK with gay people, lukewarm on religion, and grumbly about crime and tax rates), you’d _think_ the media would dog Republicans to distance themselves from gun nuts. If the way politicians prove their Seriousness ™ is to gore some important ox — like “entitlement reform” for Democrats — guns should be the thing they harrumph about. But of course they don’t.
Joel
Look at southwestern Texas!
Cervantes
@Linnaeus:
But you are aware that he was responding to — or, if you prefer, utilizing — words she uttered of her own free will?
Omnes Omnibus
@Chet: No, it’s that those have gone GOP are gone and they ain’t coming back. As a result, chasing them at the expense of Obama coalition voters is pointless. But do chose to be insulted if that validates some emotional need.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m absolutely positive Obama didn’t give a shit about pandering to the Beltway media. His barely concealed contempt for them is one of his better traits.
Janelle
@shell:
This is actually a pretty accurate explanation of the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Souljah_moment
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: Only reason I hedged is that Obama clearly benefited from media coverage of his star power in ’08, especially in the primaries. So part of the reason why he didn’t need to worry about what they thought is that they already liked the idea of him. He had the luxury of not caring. Gore and Kerry, the opposite. Hillary Clinton ’08 too. Like I said, giving fewer fucks about the media seems to be an improvement in Hillary Clinton ’16.
Janelle
@AxelFoley: Some consider Obama’s distancing himself from Jeremiah Wright to be a Sista Souljah moment. Obama referring to Kanye West as a “jackass” for drunkenly interrupting a lily-white pop star’s silly MTV award acceptance speech to argue that a black pop star was more deserving of the award also had a bit of the Sista Souljah moment vibe to it.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
But the (offending?) comment was a little more general than that:
I don’t agree with it, either.
Maybe ask Kay to see if she can explain!
catclub
@FlipYrWhig:
Funny how ‘making those tough decisions’ always turns out to be making thing harder on weaker groups. Raising taxes on rich people is the tough decision the GOP can never make.
Brachiator
@Janelle: Clearly, the some who felt that Obama was distancing himself from Jeremiah Wright were a tiny few whose objections had no impact. And Kanye West was a jackass who subsequently had a few more jackass moments.
Janelle
@mdblanche:
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer need rural white voters to get re-elected? You do know who their respective constituencies are, right?
It’s people like Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu who can’t survive without the votes of the people who won’t ever forgive Democrats for electing a black POTUS, not Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
Hillary’s going to lose badly in states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and (ironically) Arkansas, but she still has a pretty clear path to the White House.
PaulW
That map is incredible to look at. Going by county, you’d think there would be a massive political advantage to the Democrats in nearly every state outside of the Bible Southern Belt between North Texas/Arkansas and West Virginia. You’d have to factor in the skewed dimensions of gerrymandered districts to realize just how narrow a hold the Republicans have on Congress, and you’d have to factor in the failure of the Democrats to pursue a more aggressive state-level campaign to win back the state legislatures…
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh no. For the kind of Northeastern centrists you’re talking about, and especially pundits, the far right’s excesses are ALWAYS on a lesser and more forgivable level than the far left’s, or even the center left’s.
Why is anyone’s guess, but I think it’s simply because the far right’s excesses just don’t affect them. Guns? Who’s getting shot down in the streets with guns? Probably not them. Who’s having trouble affording or getting access to abortion or gay marriage? Probably not them, or their families. Who’s getting racially profiled or swept up in the drug war or denied the vote on account of white identity politics? Certainly not them. So they don’t care about any of that. All they care about is that the Fucking Pinkos are raising their taxes – from their lowest point in eighty years to their previous lowest point in eighty years, true, but still, who do these peons think they are?
FlipYrWhig
@catclub: I think the way it’s supposed to work is that for Democrats it’d be easy to promise more slop from the government trough, so for a Democrat to prove himself courageous he has to do the opposite of that. It’s truth-telling, it’s honest, it’s What They Need To Hear. (House of Cards did that.) For Republicans there doesn’t seem to be the same notion of what it would be easy to do, which means that proving yourself to be a courageous Republican requires very little. Think John McCain, who became The Thinking [Media] Man’s Republican by (1) telling dirty jokes and war stories, (2) not being ostentatiously religious. He basically Sister Souljahed Jerry Falwell in the 2000 primaries. I can’t think of another instance of a Republican getting brownie points for distancing himself from a Republican constituency.
Brachiator
@lamh36: Thanks for the update on Sister Souljah. And to be fair, her work as an activist has often been impressive. But the thing with Bill Clinton was trivial in its political impact, and rightly so.
Kay
@Cervantes:
Kay would say that assumes there is no commonality between “white working class” and everyone else and I would say there is. Commonality.
One shouldn’t “chase” them if by that one means running away from other people, but really that’s unnecessary and also cowardly and disloyal.
We all knew what Clinton was doing while he was doing it and it was considered necessary to win. That doesn’t make it right.
I differ a little on Clinton’s law ‘n order focus. I think it was part of his political “brand” and that’s related to being such a young AG in Arkansas. Again, it goes back to what was good for Bill Clinton.
Janelle
@Linnaeus:
Agree completely.
I had forgotten the exact context of how that played out until I watched the C-SPAN clip of Clinton’s comments, and I don’t see why he was even commenting on something that nobody had asked him about. I previously misremembered the moment (I was pretty young at the time) thinking that Clinton had denounced Souljah’s comments in direct response to being asked a question in some public forum for his thoughts on what she said, but watching the video I see that he just came out and gave his unsolicited opinion on the matter in a speech. That definitely changes the context quite a bit. There was no need for him to say anything one way or another about Souljah’s provocative remarks, and I see why it put a lot of people off in hindsight.
mdblanche
@Janelle: Not to get re-elected, but to become Speaker and Majority Leader.
Kay
Because I’m on this local school commitee, I think one of the things we have to deal with honestly re: school to prison pipeline is that there are a substantial group of parents who like draconian discipline for public school kids.
They feel their kids are harmed by kids who misbehave and really? They want them removed. Obviously you can’t just go along with that, compromise has to be reached, but they are loud and they want action. I think it’s also important to recognize that these are NOT (by and large) the most priviliged families so it doesn’t break out along (maybe) the expected class lines. . Race isn’t an issue in this school because it’s white and rural, so obviously that’s a huge factor that has to be addressed, but if you assured these parents that discipline would be applied equitably they are all for it. It is the single complaint I have heard most often. If I said “we’re putting them all in uniforms and after 3 strikes they’re out” that would get substantial support.
Janelle
@Cervantes: But there wasn’t an actual need to respond to them. Nobody actually asked him what his thoughts were on Sister Souljah’s comments were, he just came out and gave his unsolicited opinion on them because she happened to have been a speaker the day before at the same conference he was speaking at (Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH event).
What makes Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment” problematic isn’t the fact that he found Souljah’s comment, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” troubling (she was stating her thoughts on the 1992 LA riots in a WaPo interview), it’s the fact that he felt some need to tell a largely African-American audience that he found them troubling when nobody had ever asked him his opinion on them in the first place.
Janelle
@mdblanche:
Gotcha. Well that certainly makes a lot more sense, but I still disagree. While there has been a notable demographic shift in the coalition of the Democratic base in the general electorate, the two houses of Congress are still quite a distance from reflecting the progressive shift in the base in terms of the makeup of the Democratic caucuses in each respective house. They’re still very much sticklers for tradition in Congress, and as such, it’s extremely unlikely that we’re going to see Senate Majority Leader Elizabeth Warren in the next Congress or probably anytime in the next decade, for that matter. There’s a very definite pecking order, and Pelosi and Schumer are likely to remain at the top of that pecking order for at least the near future. We don’t get a vote on Senate and House leadership, and the people that do will almost certainly stay stuck in their tired ways for at least a few more election cycles. If we’re lucky, we might get to a slate of truly progressive Congressional leadership in about 10-15 years, but I have substantial doubts given how much Citizens United has changed the game for the worse.
Cervantes
@Janelle:
Not sure why telling people something they haven’t asked to hear is per se “problematic.” I could list a few counter-examples but, instead, can you elaborate? If it was something specific to this instance, then can you specify?
Bill
@Brachiator:
I know 2008 is ancient history in America’s political memory, but I seem to recall the Clintons saying some things in South Carolina that makes me question if is really just a GOP problem.
johnnybuck
@Mike
Yeah but Hillary’s vote was the reason Bush launched the war you see.
Or does this disqualify Bernie Too?
Janelle
@Cervantes:
It’s problematic because there was no need for Bill Clinton to say anything at all about Sister Souljah’s comments. There seems to be an assumption that if Bill Clinton hadn’t denounced her remarks that it would have amounted to an endorsement of those remarks, but there’s no evidence to back that up.
If a reporter or a town hall audience member had asked Bill Clinton what his thoughts were on Souljah’s comments, it would have been an entirely different thing. I don’t think he would have received as much grief from the left over what he said if he had been put in a position in which he would have had to actually take a position, but that isn’t what happened. He just came out and gave an unsolicited opinion on something that nobody had asked him about. Not only that, he did so at a predominantly African-American conference before a predominantly African-American audience. It very much came across as a white guy lecturing black people on what is or is not proper opinion to hold about the interracial tensions surrounding the LA riots (and the principal event which led up to them, the Rodney King beating).
Again, the issue isn’t so much that Bill Clinton had a problem with what Souljah’s said to WaPo, it’s that he felt compelled to share his thoughts on the matter to an audience that never asked him for his opinion on the subject. He was needlessly pandering to a particular segment of white people who constantly need to have their belief that black people who say racially polarizing things are just as bad as people like David Duke.
Barry
@Archon: “Looking at the map it really is hard to see how a Republican gets to 270 electoral votes.”
1) A recession. If the economy goes into the sh*tter, then it would be the GOP’s to lose. And the GOP is in a good position to trash the economy.
2) Clinton f*cks up. She has a record of hiring people she shouldn’t have, and if her ego gets in the way of poaching Obama’s best people, she could lose.
3) Voter suppression. It’s clearly the GOP’s main move now, to the point where the SCOTUS Five are considering whether they should add a finall ‘f*ck you all!’ to a long list of sins.
4) The ‘liberal’ mass media, d*mn their souls to Ach E double hockey sticks. Those scum made sure that Gore lost, and didn’t suffer a bit for it. They facilitated every single action of Bush/Cheney, and didn’t suffer a bit for it. They treated the Tea Party and the GOP scum wave like it was honest, and didn’t suffer a bit for it. They’ll play ‘both sides do it’, and when that happens, the dirtier side wins.
5) The elites. A GOP Presidency, combined with the House, the Senate, most governorships and state legislatures, would be worth several trillion $$$ of profit. More than during the Bush/Cheney regime, because there’d be even fewer limits: the GOP SCOTUS is an open GOP wh*re, and moving it back to 6-3 or so for a decade would produce results which would make Rhenquist’s corpse drool. Voter suppression would be written into the Constitution for all practical purposes, giving the GOP control of the House for 20 years or more. Corporations would have even more rights and privileges, to the point where the only thing they’d have to fear is an even bigger corporation using bribed officials against them. The treasury would be pillaged yet again, with more pillaging ‘property rights’ written into law and case law.
Janelle
@Bill:
It isn’t, but it’s far more of a Republican problem than a Democratic one.
It’s definitely trending in such a direction that it’s more of a GOP problem in 2016 than it was in 2008, and that gap will only continue to widen as older, less tolerant Democratic voters die off to be replaced by younger, more tolerant ones.
Betty Cracker
@Janelle: I agree. And from what I understand, it was a very calculated thing, too — Clinton and his team debated the pros and cons and decided that denouncing SS in that context would be politically advantageous with an entirely different audience. I didn’t just fall off the grapefruit truck — I know politicians do this kind of thing all the time. But it still sucks.
Brachiator
@Bill: Different situation and different political context; and the residual effects of this might cause problems for Clinton, but this is entirely different from the fear and trembling, and sickness unto death that the GOP has in relation to black people.
Bill
@Janelle: No doubt it’s a huge GOP problem. And a very small one in Democratic circles. Racism is a plank in the GOP platform. All I’m saying is that there’s remnants of the old Democratic party hanging around, and it’s still a problem on our side of the aisle. One that our front runner may have to address.
Adam Lang
@AxelFoley: Really? You’re just going to flat-out deny that Obama and his administration have lectured everyone to the left of him on their unrealistic expectations, repeatedly?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam Lang: It seemed more like he was asking you for examples of what you considered SS moments from Obama. And, quite frankly, I don’t think telling people that their expectations are unreasonable counts.
collin
The thing I don’t understand about the infamous Sista Soulja moment is I don’t remember it one bit. I am surprised people act like it was a major moment of the the 1992 election. In 1991, in my senior college year was moderately watching the coming 1992 election in the news and I was a huge Ice Cube/NWA fan so I knew who Sista Soulja actually was. (I bought Cube’s Death Certificate/the Predator the first day at Tower records.)
Personally, I blame 1992 on Eazy-E attending a George Bush fund raising dinner.
Janelle
I think the biggest mistake that Hillary Clinton could make would be to not fully utilize the president when the time comes.
Given that tradition dictates that a sitting president isn’t supposed to come out and officially endorse a candidate from his or her own party until the nomination is effectively clinched, I understand and expect HRC to keep a certain distance between herself and her former boss between now and (probably) March or April of next year. That said, once she hits the delegate threshold to become the presumptive nominee, her team needs to get both of the Obamas out there stumping for her as much as possible, and disregard the asinine Beltway punditry who will surely play the nonsense game of inane “some people say embracing this president might not be a wise move” villager douchebaggery.
One of Al Gore’s biggest failures as a presidential candidate in 2000 was going out of his way to distance himself from his very popular predecessor. If Hillary Clinton uses that same playbook, it could have severely dire consequences not just for her ambitions, but for the very health of this country.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I agree — saying single payer ain’t gonna happen doesn’t come close. One could make the argument that Obama’s denunciations of Reverend Wright rose to Sister Souljah status. It’s not an argument I would make, though — the situations weren’t analogous.
Janelle
I take back what I said previously about Jeremiah Wright and Kanye West being Sister Souljah moments for Obama. In both cases, he was responding directly to being asked (and in the case of Wright, essentially demanded) to give his thoughts on them. To be a true Sister Souljah moment, the comment you make has to be completely unsolicited.
Chris
@Janelle:
That is the single biggest mistake I hope she doesn’t make.
Barry
@Richard mayhew: “she hired a good chunk of the team that worked both Obama 2012 and macaulife 2013 in Virginia, so base mobilizers”
That is good news, indeed!
Brachiator
@collin: It wasn’t a big thing then, and it’s not a big thing now. Even to say that Bill’s denunciation was politically calculated doesn’t say much because it was an easy calculation to make, and one with no downside. And to extrapolate any of this to Obama or Hillary is just idle chatter on a spring day.
Linnaeus
@Cervantes:
Yes, but I agree with Janelle’s comments – it was wholly unnecessary to bring up the issue in the way he did, at a Rainbow Coalition event, of all places. Not only that, I thought then (and now) that Sister Souljah’s words were misinterpreted.
Brachiator
@Janelle:
I agree with you here, although there might be some sentiment in 2016 that Obama or his policies are unpopular or toxic to other candidates running for other offices or some similar nonsense. But who knows. It’s early yet and we don’t know what the political landscape will be in 2016.
Barry
@raven: @srv: “I have an urban Hispanic BIL”
Raven: “how does he he keep from kicking the shit out of you?”
That would be like catching an STD from your ‘girlfriend in Canada, whom nobody sees because she can’t visit, because she lives in Canada, you see’.
Cervantes
@Janelle:
Re the “need” for Clinton to say anything about her remarks: it was not that silence from him would have been an endorsement. That’s not the point at all, and perhaps it’s not what you meant, either.
Anyway, suppose I hear someone propose a crime (murder, say). Should I say anything about it? Should I ask others to do so?
I’m not saying the situation was as simple as that — Clinton was acting out of self-interest as much as any other motive — but what do you think of that comparison?
Suppose further that I have an audience that already knows about the criminal proposal and has not said a word about it. Should I say anything about it to that audience? Should I ask the audience to speak out? (This may be a separate question from whether the audience has a responsibility to speak out.)
I don’t understand the principle you’re enunciating; that Clinton shouldn’t have spoken about it because he wasn’t asked. How far do you take this line of thinking? Suppose presidential candidate X is addressing a group of oil-company executives. Should she say nothing about global climate change because her audience would rather not talk about it? That seems bizarre. Wouldn’t not talking about it be “pandering”?
Again, I’m not saying these scenarios are all precisely the same; but what do you make of them?
That’s one way of looking at it, and I’m not unsympathetic. One could also say that he was asking for help from the audience, to make common cause, and to attract support for that cause from the wider (read “whiter” if you like) community.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Remember that he was speaking to the National Leadership Summit of the Rainbow Coalition. Only the previous night Sister Souljah had been a guest at the very same event — which may place a limit on how “very calculated” his remarks about her were the next night.
(Not saying his remarks were spontaneous.)
Cervantes
@Linnaeus:
To this line of thinking I have already responded.
The previous night, when Sister Souljah had been a guest at this National Leadership Summit of the Rainbow Coalition, they weren’t honoring her remarks about the gangs and the riots. To the contrary, the event — and the Coalition itself — was meant to bridge gaps between communities. What better place to discuss remarks such as Sister Souljah’s?
I am aware of this argument and am not unsympathetic to it — but it should be made explicit — so that, if Clinton made a mistake that day, we can see what it actually was.
Kerry Reid
@Valdivia: While of course Hillary was not asked to “denounce and reject” Billy Graham, who counseled them during the Monica thing and is a straight-up anti-semite. (I mean, that would make about as much sense.)
Meantime, McCain’s own Jeremiah Wright, John Hagee, was never hung around his neck in that way as I recall. Just another moment in IOKIYAR.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: lol!
Janelle
@Kerry Reid:
In fairness, John Hagee wasn’t McCain’s personal pastor and as far as I know, McCain had no relationship with the man prior to his presidential campaign. So it’s a bit of apples and oranges comparison in that regard.
Despite that, your point is valid that the media lets Republicans off the hook for their questionable ties far more often than they ever do for Democrats.
In any event, I have far more contempt for anything John Hagee has ever said and done than I could or would ever have for Rev. Wright (who I happen to think is right about quite a bit in his theological beliefs).
Cervantes
@Janelle:
Do you mean “theological” there as opposed to “political”?
Major Major Major Major
A Facebook friend is trying to argue that we shouldn’t care about the “women in tech” issue because men are underrepresented in education.
I posted
“By your logic women aren’t overrepresented in education anymore than they’re underrepresented in tech. They get the vast majority of Education degrees, and degree choice is a completely rational decision made absent any internalized stereotypes or social pressures, after all.”
Bleh.
Linnaeus
@Cervantes:
I’ll respond to a couple of your comments (stated to avoid confusion).
Well, even Clinton didn’t call what Sister Souljah said a “criminal proposal”. The fact that he didn’t suggests to me that he (or his campaign staff) knew he couldn’t seriously make that claim. If it were that obvious, it should have been no problem for him to say so. Which then poses the question of why he needed to bring that up in the context of that event? Why not call out the Rainbow Coalition for welcoming speakers who incite to murder, if that’s what it was doing?
Perhaps if Clinton had phrased his remarks differently, I might be less critical of him. If you listen to what he says, there’s no context given to his quotation of her and a pretty lazy equation of her with David Duke. Stuff like that leads me to believe that the Rainbow Coalition wasn’t the intended audience of his remarks at all. It’s no coincidence that the Rainbow Coalition was led by Jesse Jackson – Clinton was assuring white voters that he wasn’t like Jackson.
Kerry Reid
@Janelle: The thing which got me about Wright was all the hysteria about “for 20 years Obama sat and listened to this hate!” — and yet, there was just the one speech.(And I agree that what he said, while intemperate, was probably in line with what I’d feel if I’d grown up as a black man in America during the time he did. Or now, even. Shit, even Mike Fucking Huckabee acknowledged that.)
And a lot of his stuff had been recorded. By comparison, Hagee had a LOT of hateful things out in the open BEFORE McCain courted him, so I actually think what McCain did was worse.
revrick
Two words: Electoral College. That’s what determines who becomes President. And raw polling data, while useful, doesn’t illustrate the great structural advantage Democrats enjoy here. And here’s the thing: Hillary will surely do better than Obama among whites in places like PA, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, cementing those EV’s into her column. If the Republicans try to play the “she’s old” card, that would likely backfire big time in Florida, especially among older women. With Florida in her column, it’s game, set and match.
The just released Quinnipiac poll has her leading all potential Republicans by 4 -11 points, but that’s despite some substantial unfavorables for her. You can be darn sure she and her campaign team will do everything in their power to portray whoever her opponent may be as a REPUBLICAN, and attach every loathsome policy that party has proposed to Marco/Rand/Jeb/Scott/Ben/et al.
Her best allies are Republican Congresscritters and legislators, because they will remind women, African-Americans and Hispanics why it’s essential for their welfare to make sure an R is never let in the White House.
Canadian shield
@Brachiator: At the end of the day it is: “how can you trust her? she went along with our horribly wrong position!”
NickM
@Janelle: A little more context is that Sister Souljah was an absolute nobody at the time — while she was a rapper with Public Enemy I was a huge fan and I recall exactly one line she delivered on one album. The average person white or African American had never heard of her. It was completely gratuitous. He was criticizing remarks few had ever heard and no-one else in the closed media environment at the time was defending. It was pure signaling.
And another key piece of context is he was really trying to kneecap Jesse Jackson, who had established himself as something of a Democratic kingmaker in the 1988 primary/convention. What Clinton was really signaling is that he would give Jackson (who scared the bejeezus out of whites, including many Democrats) little attention and a key part of what Clinton was trying to do, in my opinion, was to put Jackson, as designated voice of African Americans, in a box of defending outrageous comments or falling in line behind Clinton.
Marc
What she said was actually vile, which is relevant. The hard left was very unpopular, and the current call-out culture that we have had been in swing for years at that time, pitting liberals against one another and driving young people away. The SS bit wasn’t an attack on liberals; it was an attack on the hard left, it was popular, and on the merits it was actually right. The quote that he criticized was
“If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”
Does anyone want to actually defend that?
Linnaeus
@Marc:
NickM nails it. Virtually no one in white America knew who Sister Souljah was, much less was familiar with anything she said or did. The real target audience was nervous white voters and the real person being “called out” by Clinton (yes, even those who aren’t very leftist can participate in “call-out” culture) was Jackson. That’s why Clinton said what he said at the place he said it.
And as for “hard left”? That’s a right wing meme. No need for anyone here to traffic in that.
Cervantes
@Linnaeus:
Yes, I know. As I said, those questions were hypothetical. I suggested them as thought-experiments.
Here’s the relevant part of the interview she had done with the Post (her remarks were published May 13, 1992):
(Emphases mine.)
So, is her meaning in these paragraphs clear to you? Was she explaining the violence that everyone saw? Or when she said the violence was wise, was she justifying it?
Cervantes
@NickM:
She was hardly “an absolute nobody.” As Lisa Williamson, at Rutgers she was active in the divestment movement, not only succeeding at Rutgers but also with the state of New Jersey. These successes were remarkable, and they were remarked upon. After college she worked for the Commission for Racial Justice, developing a range of opportunities for poor kids in inner-city New York. In fact, when the UCC subsequently chose to honor four people for “working to end problems facing minority children in the United States,” Williamson was one of the four. She then went on to lead the National African Youth Student Alliance, and in that capacity was quoted in the NYT from time to time. (All of this happened in the ’80s.)
So … hardly “an absolute nobody.”
Her remarks had been reported in the Washington Post (May 13, 1992; front page of the Style section).
So you think her comments were outrageous? Not everyone agrees!
Be that as it may, I am certain you’re right about the politics of the thing, at least from Clinton’s perspective.
It’s worth recalling that just before the event, Jackson had been hinting broadly in public that he wanted the Vice Presidency in return for his support. And it was right after the event — that very night, in fact — that Clinton told him in a private meeting that no such deal would be forthcoming.
Matt McIrvin
To me, the most interesting-but-not-really-surprising thing about this map is all the pink in my backyard, eastern Massachusetts. The state’s still deep-blue in presidential elections, but a fair number of suburban Massholes went Republican when Obama was the candidate.
Also, there’s what it doesn’t show: I’d gotten the impression somehow that the upper Midwest, places like Minnesota and Wisconsin, was gradually losing its former liberalism and trending more Republican, but I don’t really see that here.
Cervantes
@Matt McIrvin:
Perhaps it was Romney they were responding to as much as Obama.
Matt McIrvin
@Cervantes: Quite possibly, though I’m also put in mind of the Scott Brown coalition. I am a bit surprised that the same phenomenon isn’t visible in New Hampshire here; even the most Republican parts of NH (and my impression is that the part closest to me is very very Republican indeed) got more Democratic or stayed the same between 2004 and 2012.
Matt McIrvin
@Cervantes: This map of the 2008 to 2012 swing suggests you may be right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012#/media/File:Presidential_Elections_2008-2012_Swing_in_County_Margins.svg
Since Obama’s margin was generally smaller in 2012 than in 2008, most of the map is red, with the most notable exceptions being the Black Belt in the South, upstate New York, and parts of the Southwest. But I do notice that New England went more for Romney than for McCain all over.
Linnaeus
@Cervantes:
The thread’s probably dead by now, but I’ll reply anyway.
My own sense is that Sister Souljah’s remarks were conveying her assessment the mindset of the rioters – she was saying that we really shouldn’t be surprised at the violence we saw when the same people commit violence in their own communities (hence, the “and I see why” comment at the end). That doesn’t mean that I agree with how she expressed that (I don’t), but I do think the “why not take a week and kill white people?” was taken out of context when Clinton made his remarks at the Rainbow Coalition event. It was a calculated political move for which Sister Souljah’s words were the vehicle.
charon
@Matt McIrvin:
Had bad luck your link, this worked better for me …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Presidential_Elections_2008-2012_Swing_in_County_Margins.svg