A couple weeks ago the New York Times columnist Frank Rich received a thumbs down from the Kalamazoo Post with his promotion of ancient anti-Clinton memes. This week, Rich makes up a whole new set of delusional memes to be cast about without regard for accuracy. He must be studying the swift-boat Kool-Aid recipe and his fellow liberals are drinking it up.
My critique of Frank Rich's most recent missive would be equally scathing and replete with references, but I'm not sure I want to make a mini-career of trying to clear up all of the inaccuracies in Mr. Rich's blather. I'll make a couple observations. First, we learned that Frank Rich watched Hillary's entire Town Hall broadcast but has absolutely nothing substantive to say about the actual content of that broadcast, only that it apparently wasn't as cool as the Barack Obama Youtube video. The horror!
We also learned that Bill Clinton is a racist for praising Jesse Jackson's 1988 South Carolina campaign and Hillary's strategist is a racist for saying the word "cocaine" (a word used in Obama's own memoir), but Rich is not bringing race into the conversation when he uses the term "ghettoize" or when he talks almost threateningly about a potential "race-tinged brawl" at the convention. And Rich accuses the Clintons of risking "shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America"? Methinks he doth protest too much.
Finally, Rich fictionalizes the current situation of the "ghost delegates" from the phantom primaries in Florida and Michigan. Somehow Clinton is the establishment candidate because she went against the Democratic establishment and entered those primaries and won delegates. As the primary season matures, it is becoming glaringly apparent that the Democratic Party may not have a candidate with the requisite number of delegates to win the nomination unless these two large disenfranchised states are somehow counted. According to Rich, Clinton is somehow being unfair for asking for consideration of those votes that loyal Democrats had cast for her and then he makes up some claim that she is being disingenuous because she never wanted them counted in the first place. Huh? Idiot.
Finally, Rich fictionalizes the current situation of the "ghost delegates" from the phantom primaries in Florida and Michigan. Somehow Clinton is the establishment candidate because she went against the Democratic establishment and entered those primaries and won delegates. As the primary season matures, it is becoming glaringly apparent that the Democratic Party may not have a candidate with the requisite number of delegates to win the nomination unless these two large disenfranchised states are somehow counted. According to Rich, Clinton is somehow being unfair for asking for consideration of those votes that loyal Democrats had cast for her and then he makes up some claim that she is being disingenuous because she never wanted them counted in the first place. Huh? Idiot.
If Mr. Rich likes Obama, great... he should vote for him. But he should refrain from this BS demonization of Hillary Clinton. At some level we should see the lunacy of this constant and pointless unsubstantiated malevolence towards the Clintons; it was wrong when the right-wing smear machine made stuff up, and it's wrong when soft-headed liberals do the same. If the left wing of the Democratic Party intends to win the White House, they will need to polish their tactics because such obtuse reasoning and rank inaccuracies will never make it against the right-wing Leviathan waiting in the wings.
