Democrats Are Different
Posted by Joe Klein
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
TIME
It's hard to imagine two prominent Republican pollsters slagging a sitting Republican President. And yet here we have Pat Caddell, who gave Jimmy Carter to the world, and Doug Schoen, who helped salvage a second term for Bill Clinton, disgorging an incendiary and outrageous argument against Barack Obama on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page. (Actually, both Caddell and Schoen are more emeritus than active when it comes to polling, but no matter.)
The argument is that Barack Obama is divisive. One reason he is divisive, they say, is that he supports immigration reform. George W. Bush supported immigration reform. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has supported immigration reform. Plenty of enlightened Republicans do--for moral reasons and, in the case of the Journal, for valid economic reasons. But Obama supports it--they aver, with zero evidence--solely for political reasons. He wants to gin up the Latino vote. One wonders--and I know I'm going out on a real limb here--if it is possible that the President supports immigration reform because it is the right thing to do. Caddell and Schoen don't even mention the possibility.
Another reason Obama is divisive is because his Justice Department hasn't paid sufficient attention to the New Black Panther Party case. You remember the New Black Panther Party, right? No? I can't imagine why. They were the jerks who dressed up in camouflage fatigues and looked threatening at a Philadelphia polling station on election day in 2008. One of them brandished a billy club, but didn't use it. Somehow the Republicans have decided this act of street theater is a major threat to democracy as we know it--well, actually no: the Republicans are hoping that they'll be able to tar the President as a crypto-black-racist. This has been a regular entry in the Republican playbook since Richard Nixon's southern strategy. Abigail Thernstrom, a George W. Bush nominee to the Civil Rights Commission, has pretty much said the case was hogwash. The idea that two putative Democrats would give it any credibility at all discredits them entirely.
(Read more here.)
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
TIME
It's hard to imagine two prominent Republican pollsters slagging a sitting Republican President. And yet here we have Pat Caddell, who gave Jimmy Carter to the world, and Doug Schoen, who helped salvage a second term for Bill Clinton, disgorging an incendiary and outrageous argument against Barack Obama on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page. (Actually, both Caddell and Schoen are more emeritus than active when it comes to polling, but no matter.)
The argument is that Barack Obama is divisive. One reason he is divisive, they say, is that he supports immigration reform. George W. Bush supported immigration reform. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has supported immigration reform. Plenty of enlightened Republicans do--for moral reasons and, in the case of the Journal, for valid economic reasons. But Obama supports it--they aver, with zero evidence--solely for political reasons. He wants to gin up the Latino vote. One wonders--and I know I'm going out on a real limb here--if it is possible that the President supports immigration reform because it is the right thing to do. Caddell and Schoen don't even mention the possibility.
Another reason Obama is divisive is because his Justice Department hasn't paid sufficient attention to the New Black Panther Party case. You remember the New Black Panther Party, right? No? I can't imagine why. They were the jerks who dressed up in camouflage fatigues and looked threatening at a Philadelphia polling station on election day in 2008. One of them brandished a billy club, but didn't use it. Somehow the Republicans have decided this act of street theater is a major threat to democracy as we know it--well, actually no: the Republicans are hoping that they'll be able to tar the President as a crypto-black-racist. This has been a regular entry in the Republican playbook since Richard Nixon's southern strategy. Abigail Thernstrom, a George W. Bush nominee to the Civil Rights Commission, has pretty much said the case was hogwash. The idea that two putative Democrats would give it any credibility at all discredits them entirely.
(Read more here.)
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