riverdaughter spells it out

She writes about John Judis' article in The New Republic, "The Autopsy Report". Judis actually admits to the press being in the bag for Obama, but he explains why in this snippet:

Clinton’s second great political mistake lay in how she dealt with Obama’s challenge. Sometime in December, having realized that Obama was going to be a genuine rival for the nomination, she and her campaign decided to go negative on him. They did the usual thing politicians do to each other: They ran attack ads taking his words somewhat out of context (Obama calling Reagan a “transformative politician”); they somewhat distorted old votes (voting “present” in Illinois on abortion bills); and they questioned old associations (Obama’s connection with real estate developer Tony Rezko).

John McCain and Mitt Romney were doing similar things to each other—and Obama did some of it to Clinton, too. But there a was difference between her doing this to Obama and McCain’s doing it to Romney—a difference that eluded Clinton, her husband, and her campaign staff. My friend David Kusnet, Bill Clinton’s former speechwriter, explained the difference to me by citing what ex-heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson had once said about Muhammad Ali. “I was just a fighter,” Patterson had said, “but he was history.” Obama, too, was, and is, history—the first viable African-American presidential candidate. Yes, Hillary Clinton was the first viable female candidate, but it is still different. Race is the deepest and oldest and most bitter conflict in American history—the cause of our great Civil War and of the upheavals of the 1950s and ’60s. And if some voters didn’t appreciate the potential breakthrough that Obama’s candidacy represented, many in the Democratic primaries and caucuses did—and so did the members of the media and Obama’s fellow politicians. And as Clinton began treating Obama as just another politician, they recoiled and threw their support to him.

Her response is so fucking spot on...

Is this true? Did Clinton go unfairly negative on Obama? The answer to this is unfortunately yes. See, while we weren’t watching, standards were recalibrated to adjust for the African-American candidate. There is no need to do this for the female candidate because it is expected that if she wants to play in the big boyz game, she will have to demonstrate that she can be beaten to a bloody pulp and still remain standing. This is a universal truth. It’s like gravity. The African-American male got the right to vote before females did. We are only following precedent. Plus, we must acknowledge the collective guilt that we Democrats share regarding the status of African-Americans in America. If it weren’t for Republicans pushing through all that civil rights legislation back in the 60’s, we would still be living with segregation. We must atone for our sins, therefore, Hillary is absolutely forbidden from saying anything negative about Obama. This includes saying something about him that is true because that might make him look like just an average politician and that would be negative.

She must also not compare herself to him as this may reveal him to be wanting in some capacity and that would be mean and prejudicial. Some people would say that this gives Obama an advantage that Hillary doesn’t have, that he starts off with a handicap of sorts. But this comes too close to saying that he is benefitting from affirmative action and that just shows that you are a bigot.