Hillary's Outsourced Hate

In 1984 I took a visit to Michigan State University. I was a politically aware senior in high school. Right there in front of Beaumont Tower was a political rally. None other than Geraldine Ferraro came out to speak against Ronald Reagan and his divisive politics, his race baiting of welfare mothers, his draconian budget cuts. Of course Reagan seems tame by comparison now, to the race baiting divisiveness of the last eight years. But Ferraro was a dream. She was brilliant, unabashedly liberal. And symbolic as the first woman to grace a national ticket, a barrier breaker in her own right. In those final embers of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket, the writing was on the wall, but she soldiered bravely on, mocking the Spartans for Reagan who had assembled a counter-rally nearby with seeming glee.

Since yesterday, when I posted this at Candide's Notebooks, I've tried to refresh my memory on Ferraro's liberal creds. When I saw Ferraro in 84, I was 18 and the only kid in town who wasn't in Club Gipper and had a subscription to Harper's, I was thrilled to hear her take down Reagan's foreign policy and opposing the tax cutting regimen that was leaving no money left for higher ed--I paid attention to that, at least--and social programs after the defense department got their cut. Remember, the Mondale campaign was crucified on the honesty of pledge to raise taxes to restore the social programs liberals like us care about.

She was anti-nukes, if I remember, the big liberal issue of the day, and refreshing my memory on wikipedia (I know, the Clinton supporters are editing her entry madly right now) I found her comments on the Contras:

We're not moving toward a more secure area of the world. As a matter of fact the number of troops that the Sandinistas have accumulated since the administration started its covert activities has risen from 12,000 to 50,000, and of course the number of Soviet and Cuban advisors has also increased. I did not support the mining of the harbors in Nicaragua; it is a violation of international law. Congress did not support it and as a matter of fact, just this week, the Congress voted in cut off covert aid to Nicaragua unless and until a request is made and there is evidence of need for it, and the Congress approves it again in March. So if Congress doesn't get laid on, the covert activities which I opposed in Nicaragua, those CIA covert activities in that specific country, are not supported by the Congress. And believe it or not, not supported by the majority of people throughout the country. (not sure about the word laid there, but you get the idea)

I'd like to have more of that in our current Congress: cutting off funding for illegal administration activities. By current standards its not only liberal but downright revolutionary.

How disgusting then, to see her now, using the worst racist dog whistles, a shameless and transparent Clinton surrogate, able to burn the fiery rhetorical turpentine that the Clinton juggernaut fuels itself on now while the candidate herself remains safely outside the ring of fire. First Ferraro argued that Obama is where is because he’s black. Think about that: he is successful because he’s black. Where then, are the other black senators? Why no black president before now, if it’s such a winning strategy? Why so few black CEO’s in America, if the top prizes are set aside for them? Ironically, as Clarence Page pointed out today on MSNBC, it wasn’t long ago that pundits wondered out loud if Obama was black enough. But now according to Ferraro, his success is all due to his race. Reminds one of the criticisms against her own 84 candidacy: Mondale chose her because she’s a woman. Wikipedia also reminded me of the controversy of Ferraro being called a "witch", while now she is the paid mudslinger. The sad irony seems lost on her.

The Obama campaign has, for once, struck back, using the righteous indignation it earned itself with the unbecoming canning of Samantha Powers, to ask the logical question, why hasn’t Clinton denounced–-pardon me, denounced and rejected--these remarks? To which Ferraro responds, turning to victimhood in classic conservative style, “any attack on Obama is racist.” A remark which is, in itself, racist, and patently dishonest. But she goes further: He’s attacking me because I’m white. Classic Bush up-is-down-ism: He’s the attacker, not me.

What a shame. The great barrier breaker becomes the Clinton camp pit bull, engaging in the worst sort of politics, the kind Americans have become sick of, the kind she once symbolized a break from. Another liberal icon fallen.

Postscript: Here is Ferraro's Who, me? defense.

"I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential candidate," Ferraro said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It had nothing to do with my qualification."

Ferraro said she has a 40-year history of opposing discrimination of all kinds, including race, and that she was outraged at criticism of her remarks by David Axelrod, Obama's chief media strategist, because he knows her and her record.

"David Axelrod, his campaign manager, has chose to spin this as a racist comment because everytime anybody makes a comment about race who is white — he did it with Bill Clinton, he was successful; he did it with (Pennsylvania governor and Clinton supporter) Ed Rendell, he was less successful; and he is certainly not going to be successful with me," Ferraro told CBS' "The Early Show." "He should have called me up ... He knows I'm not racist."