Hillary Clinton, in an interview yesterday with USA Today, referred to her appeal among "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans". She cited this as proof of her "much broader base to build a winning coalition on". Yet she has lost, after a long consistent record of losing in this presidential primary.
She sounds like George Wallace, who broke with the Democratic party to make an independent run for President in 1968 to exploit anti-desegregation sentiment. There's always someone who will take advantage of the worst parts of our character instead of acting to strengthen the better parts.
The phrase "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" clarifies her meaning at each comma-demarcated step, to assert that white Americans are the only hard-working Americans, indeed the only Americans who do any real work.
During the knickers-twisting over Jeremiah Wright, Pat Buchanan, who regularly says much more "anti-American" things than Wright did, was similarly seething mostly because Wright did not show sufficient appreciation to everything "we" (Americans, i.e., whites) have given "them" (blacks, i.e., Americans only by the magnanimous indulgence of whites).
And so here is Hillary Clinton, "appealing" to the same bigotry, to "white" America as the "real" America, working from the notion that it's "whites" who do all the real work so everyone else can enjoy their freedom and prosperity, which they only abuse by actually thinking that they, too, are Americans and have some right to speak out and even to lead.
American Independent Party: here she comes!
