Hillary Clinton recently stepped in it when she made a point to counter Barack Obama’s rhetoric of hope. She said that despite the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s paeans to hopes and dreams, it took a president — Lyndon Johnson — to get civil rights legislation passed. Basically, she was saying that talk is cheap, and that it takes an experienced pol to actually get things done.
Critics jumped on her, claiming she was diminishing and demeaning King’s accomplishments. She was accused of being racially insensitive (an unusual position for a liberal Democrat). Clinton countered by playing the victim, saying she her remarks were being mischaracterized and that she was being unfairly attacked. Trying to protect herself from the racial brickbats, she fled into the arms of Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, who introduced her at a campaign rally by unflatteringly comparing Obama to the Sidney Poitier character in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” He also made a veiled reference to Obama’s drug use in his youth (which he has written about in his memoirs).
Identity politics have been a staple of the Democratic Party for more than 30 years — but usually as a strategy to be wielded against Republicans. But now it’s become an intraparty issue as its two leading presidential contenders are a white woman and a black man. What’s a Democratic voter to do?
Was Hillary’s King comment out of bounds? Are identity politics now obsolete?
