The white-hot indignation of a white Hillary supporter

(Note: Further down in this thread, we get into the question, what are Hillary’s supporters angry about?)

Do not miss seeing the living, breathing, tough-New Yawk-talkin’ embodiment of the pro-Hillary rage I discussed and linked here. This woman, who has an old-fashioned New York accent that sounds as if could cut through glass (and, combined with her white-hot anger, sounds as if it could cut through steel), has the surprisingly genteel-sounding name Harriet Christian.

Seeing white Democrats furiously protesting that they are getting a raw deal, as whites, reminds me of a remark by a southern paleocon at Chronicles many years ago, that he could never adjust to the idea of the Republicans being the party of white Southerners. There’s definitely something to that. The Republicans—and their predecessors the Whigs—were the party of the commercial, rising classes and the infant globalists, not the party of the aristocrats, and not the party of the common man, the working man. The Democrats were the party of the working man, specifically the white working man. And the amazing spectacle we’re witnessing now is the resurgence of the white working man and woman (albeit in a changed, modern incarnation) in the Democratic party. Or rather their rebellion against the Democratic party.

Did any pundit a year ago predict anything remotely like what we’re seeing now?

And here’s another truly strange thing. Just as many conservatives are determined not to vote for McCain and would prefer to have Hillary or even Obama as president, many Hillary supporters are determined not to vote for Obama and even declare their furious determination to vote for McCain for president. The conservatives want the Democrat, and the liberals want the Republican.

I’ve transcribed the YouTube video. Harriet Christian says (or rather erupts in a hot lava flow):

I’m proud to be an older American woman. [“Where are you from?” a reporter asks her.] New York City. Hillary state. The best nominee that’s possible, and the Democrats are throwing the election away. For what? An inadequate black male, who would not have been running had it not been a white woman who was running for president.

I’m not going to shut my mouth anymore. I can be called white but you can’t be called black. That’s not my America. It’s equality for all of us. It’s about time we all stood up for it. I’m no second class citizen. And goddamn the Democrats.

I came here for the vote of every American, and our Democratic party threw us down the tubes. I was a second class citizen before, now I’m nothing. Why? Because they want to do what they want to do. And they think we won’t turn and vote for McCain. Well I got news for all of you. McCain will be the next president of the United States.

It’s a tremendous diatribe, which must be listened to, not just read. But I’m still not sure it makes any sense. I don’t understand what their actual gripe is. Do they really think that Hillary should get the delegates of Michigan and Florida, and that it’s some terrible injustice that she is not getting them? It doesn’t make sense.

However, as I said before, it’s not the specific thing (whatever it is) that set off their anger that matters and is remarkable, it’s the anger itself, their sense of an injustice that has been done to them as whites, and their saying that they will not stand for it anymore.

—end of initial entry—

By coincidence, as I was drafting this blog entry, Ken Hechtman, the Canadian leftist, commenting on the thread, “The drama in the Democratic party,” sent this:

You want to know how bad it is? This [the same YouTube linked above] is how bad it is.

When New York City socialist grandmas in tennis shoes start talking like you, we have a problem.

By “you,” Mr. Hechtman means me, and by “we,” he means the left.

* * *

LA replied to KH:

Hey, if you’re talking about Harriet Christian, I watched it 15 minutes ago and am writing something on it now. Unbelievable. We’re in the middle of some cosmic eruption.

Ken Hechtman replied:

She’s the one …

As the poet said, there’s something going on and I don’t know what it is.

Ken Hechtman writes:

You wrote:

“And here’s another truly strange thing. Just as many conservatives are determined not to vote for McCain and would prefer to have Hillary or even Obama as president, many Hillary supporters are determined not to vote for Obama and state with furious determination that they will vote for McCain as president. The conservatives want the Democrat, and the liberals want the Republican.”

This should not be forgotten: In the grand scheme of things, the Republicans spent more years doing the right thing on race and the Democrats spent more years doing the wrong thing. Even now, the Democrats are going to end their convention singing some vague and meaningless happy-talk (“Happy Days Are Here Again”). The Republicans will end theirs with the best (and in other versions, the most racially-charged) political song ever written (“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”).

LA writes:

I did a Google of Harriet Christian and she is mentioned briefly at many blogs but they don’t have any discussion. Only at VFR do you get news and analysis.

However, I finally found some discussion about her at Free Republic.

One commenter quoted this comment by a Hillary supporter at the Hillary website (no link to the original):

You can’t make even the slightest anti-Obama comment without being called a racist. In my opinion (they) are the racists. If any white pastor or congregation shared the views of blacks such as they do at the TUCC do about whites they would call you a racist. I just don’t buy the idea that a man could go to a hateful obviously racist church for 20 years and not share their views. I think this whole TUCC thing will be sighted as the reason for our loss in the GE of 2008. I don’t know any Democrat in this area that will vote for Obama in the GE, I live in SE Ohio so they say f**k you people in Appalachia you are ignorant racists. I don’t think the Democratic party can win the GE without us ignorant hillbillies in Appalachia. I think the Obama supporters are going to have to eat a lot of crow this November and I am staying around to serve it up. Oh, I said crow they are black aren’t they, the Obomatons would say that is racist I’m sure.

The emphasis was added by me. Remember, that while I consider Obama loathsome for having belonged to a Farrakhanite church for 20 years and then presenting himself as the man of racial harmony and unity, I’m not exactly happy about the prospect of his dragging down the Democratic ticket to defeat. I want McCain to lose. That’s why, for the last couple of months, I’ve been holding out the hope that Hillary could still somehow pull it off and win the nomination, and I’m completely in sympathy with the angry Hillary supporters, though I still don’t understand their gripe about Michigan and Florida.

Here’s an interesting Freeper comment:

Well, it’s been great fun and classic theater watching the racist, sexist (that’s BS but racist isn’t), holier than thou democrats. They are US prime POS.

At least HRC has some American values unlike the magic obama.

My college-aged, know it all son, told me today he was voting for Obama. I told him fine, but if Obama wins Georgia and the general election, his funding (charity) from me, will decrease in the same amount my taxes will increase. Is that fair?

I still have two questions: 1)Why do Jews vote democrat; and 2) why is it that 95% of blacks can vote for a (perceived) black guy and that’s not racist, but if you say you are for HRC or Mac, you are automatically racist? The answer to #2 is easy; American blacks and those pathetic guilt-cursed rich liberals are the most racist groups in our society. Geraldine was right of course: If BHO were not a black he would be earning a living somewhere.

I don’t know why Jews vote democrat. FDR is dead OK?

I always was very impressed with the intelligence of Jewish people.

I can’t stand Mac. But, I love my country too much to see B.H.Obama elected without me trying to prevent it. I’m beginning to think he is totally toxic, antagonistic to our nation’s wellbeing, and stupid in ways that transcend his ability to beat Hillary like a rug.

That’s a really funny line: “I don’t know why Jews vote democrat. FDR is dead OK?”

The whole FR thread is worth reading. One commenter says that the Harriet Christian video has had 220,000 viewings.

Chris L. writes:

I believe I have a plausible theory of why Hillary supporters are upset about the Florida and Michigan delegates. Look back to the past two presidential elections and the mantra from the Democrats has been “Count every vote!” They were willing to count votes based on depressions in ballots. Voters who don’t have proper identification and are not permitted to vote are disenfranchised. A police officer near a polling place is voter intimidation. Suddenly though, the Democratic Party excludes the votes of two entire states because they held their primaries before a certain date. Obviously, the Party does have the right to set the rules for primaries and the states violating those rules should be punished. But by liberal logic, this has the hallmarks of a plot to deny Hillary the nomination. Add in the remark by Ralph P. that there is probably a lot of racial bullying going on behind closed doors and you have a great gasoline and burning match combination.

LA replies:

What Chris says makes a lot of sense. The angry Hillary supporters are just seeing things in accordance with the Democratic party’s own passionately espoused principles of recent years.

Clark Coleman writes:

I don’t think the anger of Hillary supporters is because of Florida and Michigan. I think they perceive what everyone else in the country perceives (incuding most Obama supporters). Namely, that Obama is unqualified and inexperienced, that he is shallow and vapid, that he has been given a free pass because he is black and everyone is afraid to criticize him because any criticism of a black person must be motivated by racism, and that the mainstream news media in particular have been openly on his side.

The Democrats have been down this road before. I vividly recall a Democratic debate in which the likes of Walter Mondale just stood there and giggled (literally) while Jesse Jackson made one outrageous accusation after another against them. They did not treat him as an equal, did not respond to his statements as they would have responded to attacks from white opponents, because they knew he was not going to win the nomination. They just had to tolerate his presence a little while longer and he would go away.

This time, the black candidate has figured out that if you don’t come across as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, lots of white liberals will think they have to prove their lack of racism by voting for you. If you are Sharpton or Jackson, that is not the case; if you are an inoffensive void, a total vacuum, your blackness gives you a pass among the party activists and hard core liberals (Obama’s strength, especially in caucus states).

Hillary’s supporters see all this. Their candidate might never get another chance at the presidency, and why is that last chance being ruined? Because her void of an opponent happens to be black, and only a few of the party leaders (is Geraldine Ferraro still a party leader?) have the courage to point it out.

LA replies:

This explains a lot. What Mr. Coleman is saying is that the Hillary supporters are seeing the truth of the Obama phenomenon with a clarity that even many conservatives and Republicans lack—because that phenomenon is affecting them much more directly. After all, it is widely believed that Barack is too “Obamaged” to win in November, so he doesn’t threaten the people who favor McCain and who also think Obama can’t beat him. But the Obama phenomenon with its black racial favoritism IS harming the Hillary supporters in the most direct and traumatic way, by stopping Hillary from being nominated and becoming president.

And this trauma sparks their fury at something that, as left-liberal Democrats, they might otherwise not have found bothersome: the liberal media’s and the Democratic party’s “normalization” and acceptance of Obama’s 20 year membership in a black racist church.

LA writes:

Here, following an article at the Los Angeles Times, about Hillary Clinton’s and Harold Ickes’s threat to carry on the fight, is a comment that tends to support Chris L.’s point. As the comment shows, the Hillary supporters have developed the metaphysical notion that “every vote must be counted” (even in a primary that the voters knew in advance was barred by the DNC from electing delegates), and that any violation of this sacred principle is the most horrible and wounding thing, even a cause for revolution:

The sorrow in my heart has never been this deep, I cried for the death of democracy. The committee choose to take the easy path on a trying journey, shirking the responsibility to do right. Half votes belong to second class citizens somewhere. I felt shred to smithereens because the diminished dignity of anyone is a subtraction from my own.

How can the soul be consoled, the gnawing anguish be extinguished?

A glimmer of an ember can grow to fire righteousness: such start crumbled walls in Jericho and in Berlin, toppled Marcos and Iraqi regimes, dismantled slavery and royal privileges. The DNC may yet to pronounce, this time in unanimous verdict, the full and inclusive decision.

This half-carrot half-stick approach has no name. “Fair Compromise” remains a menacing misnomer, and the goal to punish is a recoil, the boomerang of unforeseen destructive force.

Posted by: roly luis | May 31, 2008 at 07:49 PM

However, while I’ve been doubting the Hillary camp’s position on Michigan and Florida, I see that there is something to say for it too. After all, it wasn’t the voters’ fault that the state party leaders defied the DNC by moving up the primary to an earlier date. Those voters want to vote and elect delegates. Why should they be deprived of their vote by something that they had nothing to do with?

The Hillary supporters are looking at the fact that their party is about to nominate someone who probably can’t win, instead of nominating someone who can, because the voters in certain states, due to no fault of their own, were deprived of their opportunity to affect the nomination. So I can see why they are so upset and enraged.

Mark K. writes:

A lot of VFR posters are bemoaning the fact that Obama has won the nomination based on little merit. Yup, and so what? He won, she lost. He found a way to win, she found a way to lose. He won for all the wrong reasons and she lost for all the wrong reasons? So what? He won, she lost. That is what a contest is all about. Finding a way to win. The New York Giants won the Super Bowl they were not supposed to win. The New England Patriots were supposed to win the Super Bowl for all the right reasons. New York won, New England lost. Perhaps conservatives should find out what it takes to win and go out and just do it.

Funny how God is on the side of the conservatives, how history and civilization are their foundation. With all this on their side, how come they keep losing it and losing a grip on all these resources that are supposedly theirs? Bottom line is there is a winner and his name is Obama. The winner’s name goes on the trophy, not the loser’s. I do not like Obama but I can admire the fact that he went out and got the job done.

Bob Finch writes:

The biggest irony I see in this election is that leftist white grannies who detest Obama for his inadequacies are going to be called racists for voting for the liberal Republican McCain while conservative white males who abstain from voting for McCain, in large part because of McCain’s leftist ideas about immigration, will also be called racists.

The second biggest irony is that, today, no white candidate offspring of a serial-bigamist, foreigner father and a confused hippy mother is electable beyond, perhaps, the level of a liberal state legislature. Current expectations of media attention to details about his upbringing would immediately disqualify him from legitimate candidacy beyond that station; neither party would go out on a limb to help such a candidate through the ranks.

I’ve been saying to my political associates for a while that Obama’s presence on the scene would end up forcing lots of hesitant white folks to start thinking about themselves as members of a distinct political and ethnic interest; I just didn’t expect grannies from Manhattan to be leading the way.

Adela G. writes:

Mark writes: I do not like Obama but I can admire the fact that he went out and got the job done.

One of the “at least he made the trains run on time” brigade, eh?

Obama has gone out and got the job done in the way an opportunistic infection makes a person ill. HIs success may be cause for rejoicing among his supporters, it’s hardly cause for congratulations on a job well done. He has made gaffe after gaffe that would have forced him to quit the race, were it not for the color of his skin.

LA replies:

I also wonder what Mark K.’s point is. His point is both self-evident (yes, Obama has won, and therefore what?), and not relevant to this discussion. Our main focus has not been to complain that Obama has won unfairly, but to comment on the rage of the Hillary supporters at his victory and the meaning of this rage.

Like Adela, I also disagree with Mark that Obama deserves admiration for a victory that was only possible because ordinary standards were cast aside for his sake, the standard being in this case that no one who had been a member of a ranting hate-mongering black church for 20 years would be remotely considered presidential timber. Does Mark also admire minorities who get admitted to elite universities with SATs and grades far lower than the point below which all white applicant are rejected? Is he now completely on board with racial preferences for minorities, since, under the racial preference system, the minorities have “won,” and, as Mark has put it, “The winner’s name goes on the trophy, not the loser’s”? Was Barbara Grutter just a “complainer” for suing the University of Michigan law school when she was rejected while blacks with lower grades were admitted?

Or how about this: if a person commits a theft or murder and gets away with it, do we admire him, because he’s “won”?

Since Mark is a Christian, I am surprised to hear him sounding like the the sophist Thrasymachus in Book I of Plato’s Republic, who says to Socrates, “I affirm that justice is the advantage of the stronger.”

LA writes:

The blogger Glaivester, who occasionally posts at VFR under a different name, disagrees with the exchange between Clark Coleman and me.

I posted this comment at his site:

Re Glaivester’s comments on the discussion at VFR about the Hillary supporters, I’m trying to figure them out. I sort of know, but don’t really know, the reason for their huge rage. I’m interested in every good theory I hear. Even Ken Hechtman, an expert on the left, says he has no idea what’s going on.

Glaivester thinks that race has nothing to do with it, that there’s no principled reason for their anger, and that they would be just as angry at any candidate who had beaten Hillary. If that’s the case, why are they talking all the time about how they’ve been mistreated as whites?

Now, Glaivester may be right: they’re just upset at not getting what they want, and they are taking out their anger on Obama. They’re not really angry about race, they’re just striking out against a convenient target, the way women sometimes get angry at something other than the thing that they’re really angry about.

To believe this, we’d have to believe the Hillary supporters are wholly irrational. That’s possible, of course. But it seems unlikely.

Spencer Warren writes:

The tape of the lady was played this morning on Ingraham’s show, Tammy Bruce guest hosting. Tammy notes that if McCain runs against Obama, McCain will try to win by gaining the Hillary voters. McCain would be the Democrat candidate against the “Marxist” candidate. And he would not need the conservatives.

She talked about Hillary running as an independent, which I predicted a few days ago. Then McCain would need the conservatives. However, Tammy does not see that however McCain wins, if he wins, he will govern as a de facto Democrat, especially with a Democrat Congress. Because McCain in his heart is a Democrat.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 01, 2008 02:39 AM | Send