This morning, Kerry sounded like an angry white male Clinton hater.

It did little to try to unify the Dems as an Obama supporter. I do believe that Kerry feels that the Clintons did not help him enough in 2004 but that was mainly his fault. He, like Gore, in 2000 didn't ask for their help and he tried to distance himself from the Clintons, believing the MSM mantra that the Clintons had too much baggage.

I watched that Clip of Hillary's remarks about MLK and Johnson and she said nothing but the truth. All one has to do is listen to the historical Johnson tapes played every Saturday on C-Span. There is no question that MLK and the very brave civil rights activists of the '60s brought the civil rights issues to the forefront. They risked their lives and those of their families and friends fighting for civil rights and justice. To recognize the contribution that Johnson made to the process that enshrined the civil rights fight into law does not take away from MLK and others. But the truth of the matter, and those old civil rights fighters who still live among us know this, is that with out the strong-arm tactics and behind the scenes deals made by a courageous, tough President Lyndon Johnson, those laws would not have passed at that time. Even Kennedy was not strong enough or had enough southern support to pull that off and had Kennedy lived things would have been much more difficult for civil rights. Remember, Hoover had JFK just where he wanted him.
Besides not giving Johnson the credit due him, arguments that only blacks paid the heavy price for fighting against segregation and injustice, must offend the senses of the families of the whites who also gave up their lives and livelihoods to take a stand against racism in this country. And MLK was about more than just the evils of racism. He was about peace, reconciliation, forgiveness, redemption.

It's time for everyone to take a breath. HC was in no way demeaning MLK but rather pointing to the fact that a President not only needs judgment and a vision, but a President has to be tough enough, has to have built the relationships enough to take a stand and make it work. To allow the media pundits to turn HC's statement into diss of MLK is ruinous to Dems all over when we all really know that is not the case. John Kerry knows this as well as many others who will not help set the record straight. Clinton hate is blinding on all sides. It makes her supporters blind to real weaknesses and keeps her detractors in a divisive frenzy that will take the Dems down in flames.

Obama would get my vote over this one issue alone if he showed the maturity and decency to stand up for the truth in this instance.

Yeah, sounds like a real Clinton-hater. :eyes:

(note: I paraphrased the end because I didn't write down the whole thing. The video will probably be up at johnkerry.com within a day or so, maybe sooner.)

Sen. Kerry has said nothing negative against either Clinton or Edwards. He's gone out of his way to emphasize that he will support the Dem nominee, whoever it is, and has said some very positive things about Hillary while still endorsing Obama.
If she gets the nomination, I'm sure Sen. Kerry will do everything he can to get her elected. This OP is very unfair, and doesn't help Sen Clinton in the least.

That's what all the Kerry bashing is about. People need to try to put kerry down to make their own candidate seem better. Heck. We don't need Republicans to bash our candidates. We give them the weapons to chose from.

Personally, I think that this person decided to bash Edwards and Kerry all in one blow. I'm not supporting Edwards, Obama, or Clinton yet. But posts like the person posted above makes me wonder if the people doing it realize they're not helping their candidate but instead hurting them.

Juxtaposing "angry" and "white male" is always a nice strategy.

sound familiar? "Bush hater" You just hate!" That's it... people just hate her, yeah. Geez

I am so offended that they are attempting to call Clinton Racist to gain votes. That is stooping too low for me.

I did not see the Kerry comment to which you refer, is it on a morning talk show?

I'm biased, but I thought he was as gracious as he could be in his comments with respect to Hillary and Edwards, while speaking in support of Obama.

That is one of the reasons Kerry is the #1 politician I support: I have rarely if ever seen him bash another Democrat. Of course, I think that explaining why one sees things differently than another, is not bashing in and of itself; it is how one refers to the other person that matters. (A lesson that a few people on DU could use; myself included, sometimes.)

Anyway, the video will be available on ABC's website at some point, I think, and usually they are posted on johnkerry.com as well. I think it is available on abc's site about an hour after the broadcast in the last market.

Scrutinizing the flaws and gaffes of Hillary Clinton is not "hate". It's the truth. That's something the Clintons are not very familiar with.

:sarcasm:

Obama hating seems quite "blinding" as well...

Yes it is. But what I find sick is when people post "That if Hillary wins, she will bring back Jim Crow to the White House."

The same kind of moron who suggest that an Obama administration will be homophobic.

We have plenty of morons to go around, it seems.

What happen to staying with the issues? :shrug:

Kerry gets angry over things that matter and are wrong. Diplomacy though is the first tool he naturally goes to. (Clinton is far more reasonable to label as an angry white man in recent weeks.)

:rofl:

I am genuinely curious. I just watched, and I thought Kerry made an effort to NOT cut down the other candidates, while at the same time being clear why he thought Obama is a better choice. Note that he also said the others would be good; his point was that Obama would be better.

he is going to get a real surge in supporters. I wish comparisons in oratory, to MLK could have been left to the public...I guess you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. At least this has all high-lighted, and exposed the attitudes towards race that so many 'democrats' have. I don't think it really matters.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2673076&mesg_id=2673076

Unfortunately, there are lots of angry, white male Clinton haters in both parties. If it comes down to McCain and Clinton, we'll have Grandpa McCain for 8 years.

if they let mccain, an old phony admiral's rich kid (who was choppered off the uss forrestal before questions could be asked by survivors of that disaster) get into office, then the office isn't worth anything...as bush and regan quite proves already

what reality you were in but in the This Week show that I saw, Kerry was very balanced in what he had to say about that.

He made it very clear that he was supporting Obama not because he had something against Clinton or Edwards but because he saw in Obama a transformational candidate.

I watched Kerry because I support him more than any candidate currently running and wanted to hear his justification for supporting Obama - support that at least initially disappointed me.

My take on what he said was that he was placing emphasis on what MLK and people in the streets did without diminishing LBJ's role, as you say (in reverse) what MLK and the people in the streets did doesn't take away from LBJ. Kerry basically said Obama could play both roles - not sure I buy that but I didn't see his comments as "Hillary hate."

And btw I interpreted Hillary's comments exactly as you did.

because there weren't any. There were a couple positive ones, though, about his support for the eventual nominee. He wants a Dem in the WH, and is smart enough not to trash the person who gets that chance.

Regarding the potential for Republican swiftboating -
"... not Barack Obama not Hillary Clinton, incidentally, either. Whoever our nominee is. I intend to fight like crazy and I will lead the effort."

Regarding the candidates -
"I'm here supporting Barack Obama, not against Hillary not against John Edwards, either of whom would take this country, and fight to take this country in the right direction."

I just can't find angry white guy or Hillary hatred in anything the Senator said.

I don't know what you were watching, but what I saw went like this:

Stephanopoulos said Senator Clinton seemed to get into a little bit of trouble for seeming to enhance Pres Johnson's contribution at the expense of MLK.

Then he showed a clip.

Then George said Clinton seemed to blame the Obama campaign.

Then he showed a clip of that.

Then George asked if the Obama campaign owed Sen Clinton an apology.

Then Sen Kerry said he's not here to get between the two campaigns interpretations of that.

Then Sen Kerry cited several events relative to civil rights history, and agreed that yes, it takes a president to help do that, and he thinks Obama is the right one to be that president.

I think Sen. Kerry made a great case for Obama and was very fair to the other candidates. He made a point to say that his support of Obama was in no way negative toward Clinton or Edwards.

Where is angry white man in all that?

at -60 (i.e. 60% disliked him as a person) nationally, and among Independents and in the swing states and in the south, his "likability" ratings were slightly lower (between -61% and -63%). Polls consistently showed that the public wanted Al Gore to distance himself from Bill Clinton. (And even if you set aside the specific people involved, what person has ever gotten a job by spending the job interview by praising their boss to the sky, rather than discussing their own qualifications and accomplishments?) At the same time, there was a minority of Democratic voters and influential Beltway opinion makers that gave Clinton high "likability" ratings and wanted the 2000 campaign to be about Bill Clinton. As a result, both Gore and Hillary Clinton "used" Bill Clinton the same amount - - they discussed his record of accomplishments, had him do "behind the scenes" work like fundraising, but only let him appear at rallies or give local interviews in the very, very, very few areas were his likability rating was high, and tried to keep the media away from him. At the same time, there was some person or persons who leaked to the media every time Bill Clinton (supposedly) had a negative reaction to something happening in the campaign.

In 2004, the Kerry campaign faced a similar problem. They publicly mused that the polling had not changed much since 2000, and they were having trouble finding a way for Bill Clinton to publicly campaign that won more votes than it lost. They ended up using him in a way similar to the way Hillary Clinton and Al Gore used him. At the same time, there was some person or persons who were feeding the media with stories that Bill Clinton was playing a much larger role in the Kerry campaign than he had played in Gore's campaign. There were stories claiming that Kerry spoke to Bill Clinton for "hours" each night to ask about strategy. When Kerry's poll numbers went up there would be a new, unattributed story claiming that Bill Clinton was playing an even larger role in the campaign - - when Kerry's poll numbers went down there would be a new, unattributed story claiming the Bill Clinton was worried because Kerry wasn't using him enough. The most bizarre moment in all of this was when Kerry's poll numbers went up soon after Bill Clinton had his heart attack, and that same person or persons leaked a story to the media that Bill Clinton had been working the phone from his hospital bed, shoring up party support for Kerry.

Anybody who has been paying attention to the 2008 campaign has seen that having Bill Clinton campaign for you has its downsides. Even when Hillary was polling far ahead of the other candidates, he caused a number of negative press cycles by stating his own opinions rather than sticking to script. At the same time, he has proven to be an ineffective campaign surrogate, because unlike Elizabeth Edwards or Michelle Obama, the media treats his statements defending Hillary and/or attacking her opponents as gaffes or dirty politics.

He was VERY complimentary to all the candidates and just simply thinks Obama is the best choice of the three. He CLEARLY stated he thought any of the three would be wonderful Presidents.

He was not ANti-Clinton OR Anti-Edwards and I say that as and Edwards supporter with HIllary as my second choice.

what a fucking asswipe - but he's only better than ANY repuke...

Kerry did not get into who said what - he specifically said he wouldn't. What he then did was to refocus the question to address the issue, of who creates change and said things that he has said since at least the 1990s (the earliest I can find) but I assume it was there earlier. Kerry made the case that activists pushing issues is the momentum that forces politicians to take actions. I have heard him make that case with the environmental example at least 40 or so times - when he was speaking of his book and whenever speaking to college students. (It has been in every graduation speech I have heard or read.) I have heard the civil rights one several times. This was not something he came up with to attack HRC, it is a statement of his roots as an environmental and antiwar activist.

In Kerry's speech on Thursday, Kerry spoke of Obama's choice to be an advocate on the streets of Chicago after graduating Harvard Law as head of the Law Review. I think that part of what draws Kerry to Obama is their mutual beginnings as activists. That comment likely was personal to Kerry as well. HRC seems to attribute all passed legislation to the President at the time. In LBJ's case, he did knowingly take a very courageous step, but so did the Congress and both were after MLK and many heroic people took to the streets.

Kerry refused to attack Edwards or Clinton, he said that he would be there to defend any of them. He made a solid case for his preference, Obama.

To those wanting to make it based on person slights, there are 2 things I advise.
1) Read (or watch) Kerry's Thursday speech and listen to his reasons. His idea that you need healing, coming together and change were things he spoke of for many years - years when he hoped he would do those things.

2) Remember that Kerry endorsed Webb in the primary because he thought he would have a chance to be elected and that he would help on Iraq. He did this even though Webb wrote an oped in 2004 questioning Kerry's patriotism and had refused to shake his hand for 30 years. That is who he is. He sees Obama's views as more in line with his and makes the case that he is the candidate that fits the moment.

clintonista's kiss my ass if you don't like it.

The Teacher's union as of yet has not endorsed HC. And they are merely trying to make the case that some effort should be made to place caucuses in places accessible to teachers as well as casino workers. How is that surpressing the vote. Is there anything like "fairness" important?

people through the lens your post title reveals?

Or is this an attempt to fan the flames of discord and division?

Lest you forget, that is a very significant demographic in this election.

Are you accusing Kerry of pandering to them? lol

He just happens to feel that Obama can bring people together in a non-partisan way to make Washington and America a better place. Senator Obama is accomplished and has much to offer this country in new and different ways. To suggest that Senator Kerry is sexist is wrong. I would recommend that you don't go down this path. He has a record of supporting women's issues.

MLK was just spinning his wheels and not getting anything done. THEN the WHITE guy comes along and does the HARD work.

Nothing offensive here. :shrug: