Dems Blame Each Other for Race Problem

It is pretty comical to see the Obama and Clinton campaigns fighting over who made the election about race. Clinton-supporter Charlie Rangel got into the act today:

"How race got into this thing is because Obama said ‘race,’” New York Rep. Charlie Rangel, one of the highest-ranking African-Americans in Congress, said in an interview on NY1.

“But for him to suggest that Dr. King could have signed [the Voting Rights Act] is absolutely stupid. It's absolutely dumb to infer that Doctor King, alone, passed the legislation and signed it into law."

Which is not quite what Obama said. It is, however, close enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, and identity politics. Rangel was reacting to what Obama said this weekend:

"I am baffled by that statement by the Senator. She made an ill-advised statement about Dr. King, suggesting that Lyndon Johnson had more to do with the Civil Rights Act. For them to somehow suggest that we're interjecting race as a consequence of a statement she made, that we haven't commented on, is pretty hard to figure out."

Let me get this straight. These two are fighting over whether a black man or a white man was more important when it comes to civil rights. There is irony here. In fact, there is so much irony that my head is spinning.

These liberal paragons of tolerance and virtue are having a very public fight over which of them gets to lay claim to which dead-guy proxy for values. More than that, they're trying to puff up their own proxy's credentials at the expense of the other's. And it's all about race.

Charlie Rangel, like all Clinton supporters with a microphone, can't help himself. He has to talk about the drug thing. And in his cynical view, the only reason Obama would reveal his teenage drug use is because it would make him some money.

Rangel also implied that Obama’s admission of prior drug use in his autobiography may have had a financial motive: "I assume that the book was not written for political purposes. It was honest….It was a big mistake for him to have done it [used drugs.] For him to be honest enough to write about it, I guess he thought it might sell books."

WHOOPS: While I'm thinking about it, these folks need to learn the difference between the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. They are, in fact, different laws.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 01:30 PM

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