The president of the United States is a “light-skinned” man “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” That, at least, is the carefully considered opinion of soon-to-be-former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, quoted in a forthcoming book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change, about the 2008 election of Barack Obama. The thing is, Hapless Harry meant it in a good way.
At least he did until now, when the news of the explosive statement found its way into The Washington Post and Politico. Already reeling in his hopeless, doomed-as-Chris-Dodd campaign for re-election this fall, the Sage of Searchlight no doubt thought he was being complimentary in his usual clueless, white-guy-of-a-certain-age way. After all, when Harry was growing up, “Negro” was the polite term you used to show you weren’t a racist, and as for light-skinned, well, we all knew what that meant. Why, the next thing you know, Unhorsed Harry will be describing Obama as “a credit to his race.”
The authors write: “Reid was convinced, in fact, in fact,that Obama’s race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.” Gee, that sounds a lot like what Geraldine Ferraro said, and her reward was practically being drummed out of the Democrat Party.
This isn’t the first time the scrappy little Mormon boxer has found himself on his keister over race. He had some ‘splainin’ to do when the seat-warming, monument-building senator from Illinois, Roland Burris, explicitly charged him with racism for trying to block indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich from appointing an African-American to replace Obama in the senate. Watch and listen to Harry dance as David Gregory grills him on Meet the Press:
But there’s bigger game afoot than one pathetic little man’s attempt to cling to his rapidly diminishing power. With Dodd and Byron Dorgan having defenestrated themselves, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, two of the nastier people in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, are busily greasing the skids for obvious Democrat losers like Reid, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and other endangered-species types.
As the cataclysm that is the Obama presidency becomes ever clearer even to the most apolitical Americans, “Schemer” Schumer and “Turban” Durbin know they have no chance of keeping their 60-seat majority in the Senate unless they can replace the sure losers with fresh faces and hope the Democrat-Media-ACORN-SEIU complex can turn out the vote in the fall. Yes, it’s The Night of the Long Knives again, playing out right before our eyes. But will the media see it?
If Reid had been a Republican, his head would already be on a pike on the 14th Street Bridge in Washington. Just look what happened to former Sen. George “Macaca” Allen, hounded relentlessly by The Washington Post after an goofy, offhand remark to a political stalker provided the Enemedia with the “racist” stick with which to beat him until he lost.
Similarly, Former Sen. Trent Lott lost his leadership role in 2002 after a brain-seizure in praising former Democrat Senator turned Dixiecrat candidate for President in 1948 turned Republican Senator: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” Well, that set the Left off immediately:
Even an obscure Illinois state senator named Barack Obama called for Lott’s head. But for some mysterious reason, when the shoe’s on the other foot in the mouth of the Democrat senator, the outrage is, shall we say, considerably more muted. Chris Dodd eventually issued an apology for his remarks upon Sen. Robert Byrd’s 17,000th vote in the senate:
I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment… He would have been right at the founding of this country. He would have been in the leadership crafting this Constitution. He would have been right during the great conflict of Civil War in this nation. He would have been right at the great moments of international threat we faced in the 20th century.
Dodd, of course, offered a non-apology apology: “If in any way, in my referencing the Civil War, I offended anyone, I apologize.” The ancient Byrd, you may recall, widely praised as “the Conscience of the Senate,” was once a member of this organization:
And let’s not forget Joe Biden’s famous forays into recreational racism, from his crack about Indians working at the 7-Elevens in Delaware, to his famous characterization of Obama as “clean and articulate.” And what happened to Biden? He’s now Vice President of the United States.
Makes one wonder: who are the real racists in American politics?