On Feb 10, 2010, at 12:49 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> In reference to views of Obama, I don't think we should overlook the
> shock to a substantial number of whites of having a black man as
> president. Many Republicans hated Clinton, being totally unalbe to
> grasp
> that he was implementing their program for them as neither Reagan nor
> Bush 1 had been able todo. But I think the intensity of the reaction
> to
> Obama is much greater -- and that would go far to explain why the
> response to Obama, unlike that to Clinton, has taken organizational
> form
> (the teabaggers).
A while back I got Kindle for my iPhone and for reasons I still can't fathom downloaded Taylor Branch's interviews with Clinton as my first title, just to see how the thing worked. I read it every now and then when I'm stuck somewhere with no other text to cling to. Branch is such a gasbag - he takes forever to get to the point - but there are some gems in it. Like Clinton's meeting with Jiang Zemin, at which Jiang read and read and read from a long prepared statement and Clinton interrupted him to say a few things, among them that he had nothing against prisons in fact he'd like to put a lot more people in them. But there's a lot about Clinton's reaction to the right-wing assault on him. I'd sort of forgotten how relentless and crazy it was. I think Carrol's right that Obama's tint adds some intensity to the opposition, but the American right now finds anyone to the left of John McCain to be a threatening Bolshie. Even McCain is under suspicion, actually.
Doug