"[I]n politics, it appears that the first victim is history."

When proxies for Obama make remarks about the Clintons "racist" remarks, that's okay with Obama, but when individuals not in Hillary's capaign make remarks (mostly truthful or supportive of the Clinton's), that's the Clinton campaign speaking. He says he hasn't said anything and then describes Hillary's remark as ill-advised.See here.

We can see the pictures of MLK behind Obama and it is rather obvious how the Obama campaign plans to use any race advantage they can get. All is fair in war but remember, this is the honest, uniting campaign of Obama. Under uniting, I suppose we place the singular voice by which caucus union memembers are supposed to vote. I find it rather funny coming from a campaign stressing minority rights and the opposition as the "evil empire". Frankly, I've grown tired of the Obama pretense and consider his tactics as those of any ordinary candidate trying to win at all costs.

The race issue bugs me and to think that it was played by supporters or potential supporters of Obama to blunt a fair review of Obama's record is ugly. It has introduced a racial element not seen since the Bush camp suggested McCain had fathered a little black baby (as though race made it worse).

Obama now has to his credit, introducing racial issues into a DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY CAMPAIGN, though I can't say some play here on this issue was unavoidable and not wholly of Obama's making. To a certain extent, Hillary has let gender help her as media uses it against her. Liberal media feeds this racial tension issue in a twisted view to get their nasty fight. David Corn, who has fed some crap to readers, today admits the union issue in Vegas is unfair to Hillary and bodes badly for the process, never acknowledging his prior infammatory remarks.

If Obama wanted to shut the race tensions down, he could deliver a clear speech and stop making MLK the cornerstone image of his campaign while claiming a "what did I say?" attitude. I could see this coming several miles away, but I did not expect the Obama campaign to dip and dodge and not defend the Clinton's over being "racist" when describing Obama's autobiographical record on Iraq as a fairy tale. Same for Hillary's remarks. Shall the Obama claims questioning Hillary, be considered an attack on women or on white people? By Obama reckoning, why not? This is a foolish and dangerous digression by the media and Obama side might help him in the primary, but it will be remembered in the general election,

I agree with Clinton's point while I can't imagine what sort of profit she imagined she'd gain from making it.Who was the audience?

I don't agree with the notion that Clinton was "disrespecting" MLK, but I understand why it ruffled feathers. Decontextualize it into a sound bite and people are going to draw the conclusion that Clinton was declaring LBJ the co-pilot. And that's not really accurate IMO. Because you could have replaced LBJ with a number of other humans and civil right legislation may well have still passed within a similar time frame to the one in which it did. But MLK was an irreplaceable force of nature if you ask me. There's no telling how much longer it might have taken without his contribution.

The sin that Clinton has been unfairly accused of is basically that of equatingMLK with LBJ, which she clearly didn't. In more than one discussion with some of you folks here, I've been accused of the same sin of equation when I was making a more subtle point. So I know that more than one of the regular posters here are guilty of doing the same sort of thing that you're outraged Obama is doing.

I don't say that to throw you guys under the bus. Just to say that it happens a LOT. Mention someone's hero in the same sentence as someone they regard much less highly, and there's always the chance they'll go ballistic. "How can you even compare the two?" they'll bluster,

It's some sort of corollary to the rule about when you mention [fuhrer who shall not be named], the thread is over. Because it sends the dialog into the same "how can you even compare" rut.

__________
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel. -Horace Walpole

this is disquieting to no end. First off, while the full quote is certainly easier to misinterpret, Clinton's point is still clear. The idea that recognizing the complimentary role of MLK and LBJ in the civil rights movement somehow diminishes MLK (as if MLK wasn't the leader of the movement, or LBJ was somehat equal in influence to MLK) is so ridiculous, the as it has been said, it either reveals an utter ignorance of history, or it is simply low-class race baiting. Hillary never equated LBJ to MLK. She didn't. I mean, think about it for a second. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman committed their lives to ending slavery, but it took their work, along with a war, and a Constitutional amendment to end slavery. Acknowledging this in no way diminishes Douglass, or Tubman, or Sojourner Truth, or William Lloyd Garrison, et al. Movements often require moral leadership as well as legislative action. The American Revolution, the abolition of slavery, the ending of Jim Crow, women's suffrage, civil rights, etc all required social activists to change hearts and minds, and legislators and Presidents to soliidify change into to law. After all, there is a strong desire among many (Obama included), to end the war in Iraq, but simply wanting the war over won't end the war, only Legislative and/or Executive branch action will do that (not that I'm saying that I want to end the war prematurely, or that the movement to end the war in Iraq somehow compares with the civil rights movement--although in the minds of some, it does).

Perhaps this explains why Obama continually trumpets his record of always opposing the war, and focuses less on his legislative record?

At the end of the day, this is the sort of ignorant blunder that makes Sen. Obama's top-notch intellect appear somewhat less top notch, and casts doubt on his ability to take on the mantle of the Presidency. Honestly, I have a real hard time believing Obama is that stupid, which suggests that he and his proxies knew full well the context of Clinton's remarks, and as Wilentz argues, playing a manipulative game with racial politics just to take a swipe at Hillary. It's a sirty trick if so, and exposes a disquieting and substantial flaw and Obmama's supposedly flawless character.

I could be overreacting here, but Simon has posted extensively on what he sees as Obmaa's disingenuous presentation of himself as being above the political fray. One might argue that this stunt by the Obama camp is a typical play by a politician. If so, then it adds credence to the idea that despite his rhetoric, Obama may be just as willing to fight as dirty as the rest of them.

"In the world you will find tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world."

John 16:33

Well, I'm gonna Clinton-bash here anyway, by pointing out some falsehoods and realities. Clinton claimed:

I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done

FACT: The first steps towards real civil rights momentum WERE taken by previous presidents, Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower. Roosevelt prohibited racial discrimintation in national defense industries and their training programs (Exec Order 8802), Truman signed the executive order integrating the military (Exec Order 9981) but it took Eisenhower to implement it five years later and deseg of all facilities took until 1963. Eisenhower created the anti-discrimination Committee on Government Contracts in 1953 (Exec Order 10479) and pushed hard for the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was gutted into wimpdom by (wait for it) Texas senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, and even in the weakened form passed only after Strom Thurmond set a Senate record for longest one-man filibuster. However the 1957 CRA did establish the Civil Rights Division in the DoJ and created the Civil Rights Commission, which gave some backbone to enforcing federal court decisions of the 1950's and led directly to the CRA of 1964.

It is sheer denial for Democrats to maintain to this day that the 1964 act was something never before attempted, when it was the Democratic Party that for decades fought to kill or weaken every bit of civil rights legislation that came before Congress, and to credit LBJ for something LBJ had stopped just a few years earlier, and that Truman's own party had prevented him from doing a decade before that. And if you check the vote totals on the 1964 act, you'll find that Democratic Party NO votes were the substantive resistance to it, far outnumbering GOP NO votes in both proportional and absolute terms.

It was great that JFK pushed for the CRA against resistance from his own party and that LBJ followed through, but please, let's put a little credit where credit is due, and quit pretending that the Democratic Party was some great force for civil rights legislation in the early and mid 20th century. They had to defeat themselves to pass it, and the GOP had been pushing it and being blocked by the Democrats for years. And "...the President before had not even tried"? Heh. Eisenhower quietly did all he could by executive order and through the DoJ and by judicial appointments, despite being blocked at every turn by the LBJ coalition in the Senate.