'There's No Crying In Politics!'

The Clinton Campaign Unleashes Its Southern Strategy
Monday, January 07, 2008 Portsmouth NH


On the heals of a devastating defeat in Iowa, and polls showing her main opponent with a double digit lead, the desperation and disarray of the Clinton Campaign became rather transparent today as Hillary Clinton took a few cues from the impassioned speech of John Edwards during the Saturday night debate and the overwhelming surge of emotional fervor in favor of Barrack Obama, by making a terry-eyed appeal for her candidacy in a New Hampshire café.

Immediately upon seeing this white woman come to tears in the midst of her possible second sound defeat by a Black man, my own primal African American sensibilities went into overdrive. It was difficult for me to fight back the bloody images suddenly emerging in the back of my mind in a haunting montage of so many tens of thousands of innocent Black men just decades ago who were summarily kidnapped, lynched, roasted, and mutilated simply because some poor white gal felt upset or simply rejected and dutifully sought to solicit the infernal bloodlust of an entire community, knowing that they would so easily channel her anguish towards a Black man. “Lynch him! Lynch him!” The crowd would scream with so much lust in their eyes. Sad to say that even on threshold of such astounding historical events in many ways this nation has not truly evolved that far beyond those terrible days of rope and fire. Evidence the bizarre rise in racist bloodlust even in our own day. In my own lifetime I have been privy to quite a number of incidents where the frantic cries of one white woman in a crowd was enough in itself to send a throng of even the most passionate Black nationalist into a frenzy. Like some evil twin kept hidden in the basement, feelings of primal fear and retribution lie forever just below the surface of the American racial contract. That’s what happens in the absence of justice. But, opps, “we not supposed to talk about it!”

The first clue that the well oiled Clinton machine was very much out of touch with the political realities on ground came in an Iowa ad on Christmas day. Who could ever forget the scene of Hillary crowned so early by the corporate media as the inevitable frontrunner sitting in front of her Christmas tree like some kind of queen making a play of handing out gifts of universal heath care and lower taxes to the American people? Woe to the arrogance of ‘inevitability’! Now, but hours away from what appears to be yet another sound thrashing from the younger more attractive Black male upstart why not reach for the political entrails applying the all too familiar All-American tactic that has worked so well for every last white politician that has come before her; her husband included? South Carolina is right around the corner and several southern states are to follow soon thereafter. In the face of sure defeat we may never really know just what John Edwards might do, but you had better believe that somewhere held closely at the ready they all do have a southern strategy of their own. Hopefully, Tavis Smiley was indeed correct and “that dog just don’t hunt no more!”