I had a brief bit about this in yesterday’s Capitol Fax and more in the subscriber-only blog, but today Lynn Sweet based her column on the subject so we’ll talk about it here now.
Washington - Seeking to solidify African-American backing for Barack Obama’s presidential bid, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. told black Democrats meeting here last week they don’t “owe” anyone, alluding to, but not mentioning by name, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Obama, said Jones, “is our son.”
And here’s the Politico.com article that started it all
Jones concluded his speech with a reference to the jobs and appointments Bill Clinton had given blacks, including many people in the room, and asked when they would stop owing the Clintons for that patronage, attendees said.
“You could hear a pin drop,” said one person in the room who doesn’t currently support either Obama or Clinton. “It was one of those moments when you say, ‘I can’t believe he just said that.’”
Jones’ call was received frostily by Clinton allies, including Minyon Moore, the former White House aide who now heads Hillary Clinton’s black outreach, and former Clinton and Gore campaign aide Donna Brazile, according to some attendees.
Moore walked out of the room when Jones stopped speaking, according to two people who were there. Moore said Sunday she’d left because she had somewhere else to be, and that she would “agree to disagree” with Jones.
Neither Moore nor Brazile could be reached for comment. But another Clinton supporter who was who at the meeting said Clinton’s camp took Jones’ remarks as an affront.
“The feeling was, ‘Who is [Jones] to tell us how to be black?’ ” said the Clinton supporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.
Back to Sweet:
The controversy triggered by Jones was picked up by CNN Monday, and the Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN that Jones “could offend people by saying you got to unite just because someone is your race.”
Sharpton noted that Obama endorsed Mayor Daley for re-election over two black candidates, so it would not follow to ask blacks “to do something for Obama that he himself is not doing at home.”
Good points on all sides. First, many of those very same Hillary supporters have been whispering to their favored DC pundits hacks that Obama is somehow “not black enough,” which is pretty ironic since they’re working for a white person whose husband gave most of them jobs and contracts. And, frankly, it’s about time that the DC consultant establishment - white, black, purple - was called out for what it really is: an intensely cynical, purely self-serving money-making machine. Then again, as Sharpton pointed out, there is the matter of that Daley endorsement. Nobody is perfectly clean here.
To be fair, many of Clinton’s top African-American supporters have a long and strong relationship with the Senator and her husband, regardless of patronage.
And even if her high-level support is purely patronage-based, Senate President Jones is really in no position to argue. For instance, Jones absolutely hates it whenever people link his campaign finance and other relationships with ComEd to his support for the utility company’s often anti-consumer legislative agenda. Glass houses. Stones. Etc.
In the end, this internal struggle with racial identity might turn out to be healthy, but it’s undoubtedly gonna get a whole lot uglier before it’s all over.
The funniest take on Jones’ comments was from Matt Stoller over at MyDD, who wrote that the controversy “revealed a generational split among black political leaders between the old patronage model and a newer movement model.”
Apparently, he doesn’t know Emil Jones very well.
Also, as I told you yesterday, John Edwards was in the Bloomington area this week. Apparently, he was just there for a private fundraiser and didn’t notify the media, so most of them missed the story. A local radio station did manage to get a sound bite, however.
Oops. I forgot to mention the party in honor of Obama’s announcement at the Firefighters Lake Club Friday evening. Here are the particulars:
Firefighters Lake Club
940 West Lake Drive, Springfield
Friday, February 9th
5:00p - 7:00p
Free Food and Drinks
Donations for Senator Obama’s Exploratory Committee will be accepted!
Contributions to Obama Exploratory Committee are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes. Federal law prohibits the acceptance of corporate checks.
Contact Neil for more information at: email4neil@yahoo.com
LIVE session coverage...
- Old Shepherd - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 9:26 am:
If Sen. Obama’s “black enough” for his race to even be an issue, then he is, indeed, “black enough”.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 9:30 am:
Excellent point, OS.
- Anon - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 9:41 am:
Whites in Illnois are so used to anti-white cracks by black politicians that this Emil Jones
classic would be barely noticed if not part of the Obamarama phenomenon. I won’t even bother
mentioning what would happen if somebody stood up and said they were voting for Hill because she’s white.
Liberal white elites in Illinois love being beaten up by black politicians. It makes them feel relevant.
The country as a whole might not find Emil as
harmless, though. Better give him a low profile in the campaign.
Of course all of this diverts attention from the fact that Obama doesn’t have a clue about how to get us out of Iraq and, other than raising our taxes sometime down the line, doesn’t seem to have much of idea about what to do about Bush’s outrageous 2008 budget either. Saying you’re going to fix things (the war, the budget, the uninsured) by 2010 or 2012…hey, that’s too easy; the Dmes are in charge now. Why can’t you show some leadership in the Senate and some movement towards fixing it now.
- Papa Legba - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 9:42 am:
Good old Emil is proving why Madigan will always have the upper hand in the Illinois legislature. Just another bright comment from a dim bulb.
- Pico - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 9:42 am:
Well, apparently Obama may not think it is important to debate his fellow candidates:
Obama, Clinton May Skip Early Debates
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2627.html
Typical Illinois machine politics no debates required….the public isn’t as important as their climb to glory.
- grand old partisan - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 9:55 am:
As a Republican, it’s hard to hide my schadenfreude at the way the Democrats are already tearing themselves apart with these demographic rivalries. With friends like these, who needs Trent Lott, right?
As a white American, it’s hard to hide my frustration with the double standards that exist in racial politics today. Imagine if a white politician had tried to explicitly rally white voters to “our son†in this way. Any doubt that they’d be eviscerated in the press?
- Justice - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:07 am:
It never ceases to amaze me that being ‘Black†plays only when there is something to be gained….as opposed to being “American.†The media continues to push the black issue regarding voting, and pushes the black issue regarding what someone said that alludes to the persons black heritage. What the h does this have to do with anything. You are either a US citizen, an American if you will, or you are not. I am not an African American, a Latino American, an Italian American, a Chinese American, or a Scots American. I am simply an American. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Sound familiar? We are Americans, each with pride in where we originated. Our ethnicity should not be used as a weapon for or against us simply because that’s how it has always been. The sooner we get off this who is blackest kick, the sooner we can once again become a great nation with great “Americans†leading it.
- Fan of the Game - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:09 am:
Perhaps by the “our son” comment Sen. Jones simply meant that Sen. Obama lives in Illinois, while Sen. Clinton has forsaken the Land of Lincoln for New York.
Perhaps.
- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:17 am:
So we are seeing even more backroom opposition from Clinton against Obama. Hmm, perhaps it can be spinned again as an attack of the Right Wing Conspiracy. Clinton’s goons attack, Fox News reports on the attack, and Democrats attack Fox News over it. Nice!
Obama has to be far more concerned over the vocal support coming from “leaders” like Jones and George “Denazify the US” Soros, Public Official A Blagojevich and Hired Truckster Daley with each passing day. Obama will be challenged to hang with these people and keep looking clean.
Sometimes your “friends” ruin everything with their help.
African Americans have brains too. But for too long the MSM has painted them with one brush. “Their” canidate is Jesse Jackson in 1988, or “Their” candidate is Al Sharpton. The whole “is he black enough?” is moronic nonsense from a moronic media looking to sell newspaper ad space.
- Justice - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:20 am:
And by the way, I think it’s great that Edwards pops into Illinois just long enough to grab the money and run. I like an open, honest guy who sneaks in and out of places. Can’t you just feel the trust and love!! Perhaps its because of his inability to answer politically charged, hard hitting questions away from his handlers? A little different than grilling a defendant. Yeah, sounds like he is Presidential material. Weasel in and weasel out as quickly as possible. Hey, sure he isn’t a personal friend of Blogo’s?
- Paying Attention - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:23 am:
Justice - You’ve said about all that needs to be said! Too bad all the “citizens” of this country don’t get it!!!
- grand old partisan - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:26 am:
“Fan of the Game” - That might be a plausible interpretation if Jones was speaking to an exclusively Illinois audience. He wasn’t. He was in Washington addressing “black Democrats,” according to Sweet.
Pingback ArchPundit » Blog Archive » Sharpton aims to be the Voice of Reason - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:49 am:
[…] Hysterical. Rich has a good take on it over at Capitol Fax as well. […]
- Punley Dieter Finn - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:50 am:
President Jones was dealing with a barrel full of nasty crabs. Crabs in a barrel rip, slash, grab, pull and poke to keep other crabs in the barrel. He knew what he was saying and to whom he was saying it.
- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 11:30 am:
“I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, my G*d-d*mned friends… they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!”
- President Warren G. Harding.
- Wumpus - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 11:41 am:
“The feeling was, ‘Who is [Jones] to tell us how to be black?’ †said the Clinton supporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.
That is what democrats have been doing for years, telling Blacks how to be Black.
- ZC - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 11:55 am:
I agree in theory with how Democrats take the black vote for granted, and how we ought to move past a politics of racial identity in this country, but I’d find it all a lot more convincing if Rush Limbaugh weren’t on the airwaves referring to Obama as a “Halfrican-American.” Gee, I wonder why most blacks aren’t attracted to the Republican party these days …
- leigh - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 12:02 pm:
Does that mean all woman have to vote for Hillary? What if you are black and female, which is the deciding factor? Perhaps Mr. Jones could draw us a priority chart.
- Truthful James - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 12:41 pm:
I looked at my calendar and it said February 2007. The conventions are in late summer 2008, and there will still be a time until the national election.
The media love it, all that space to fill between the ads. But really, gentlemen, this campaign (and the primaries should begin much later. Otherwise we will have voter fatigue.
Oh, and all the campaign staffs, they love an early payday too.
The problem is that Barack Obama needs to go into the fray as new news. The early start puts him back with the ’same old stuff’ candidates.
There is a year of this Congress to be gotten through. It should be up to the putative nominees to be shaping the national debate, not chewing up each other’s behind.
- Lovie's Leather - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 12:44 pm:
Emil is right, all whites need to support Hillary, because, she is our daughter. Ah, isn’t it so nice to see such beligerent racism so accepted… It makes you realize why Robert Byrd is a democrat even though he is a white racist… Democrats make a big deal about race. Plain and simple.
- Bill Baar - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 12:51 pm:
In the end, this internal struggle with racial identity might turn out to be healthy, but it’s undoubtedly gonna get a whole lot uglier before it’s all over.
I just don’t hear people talk about his racial identity much. I mean all kinds of people. The most common talk I hear about him is that he’s a celebrity. And most people like him, but whether that means they’ll vote for him I don’t know.
But the questions about his race, his middle name, the school… I just don’t think those are real factors.
- i d - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 1:14 pm:
Male, female, black, white, brown, Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, republican, democrat, independent…..all the candidates need to shut up for at least 9 months. The length of a normal human pregnancy would give everyone time for a viable plan for Iraq. I will not consider nor would I vote for any of these people until they quit acting like my grandson in a toy store trying to decide between his need for a fighter plane or a farm tractor. Hey folks, even kids realize they have to do their homework before writing a platform and running for class president.
- what a joke - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 1:15 pm:
Unreal — what an embarrassment for
Illinois politics!
Jones = dinosaur
- Wumpus - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 1:46 pm:
The only one smart enough not to make racial identity an issue is Obama. He simply lets people say what they will and capitalizes on it all. Halfrican American is offensive to some, inoffensive to many.
- Truthful James - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 1:54 pm:
i d
Well said.
- Bubs - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 1:58 pm:
I think the more significant issue is how much of this racial solidarity stuff is being pushed by Obama or his surrogates, and how much is just the individual opinion of some black leaders.
I gravely doubt if Obama is either race-oriented enough, or dumb enough, to be promoting this. He has the time and opportunity to win a huge majority of the Black vote the right way, without resorting to any “race card” nonsense.
- Anon - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 2:29 pm:
As a democrat that really likes OBama and Clinton it is comments like Jones that make me not want anything to do with Obama. Not that this is Obamas fault…it just reflects poorly on him that such a big supporter of his can make such ignorant comments. Jones seems to have gotten a little big for his britches lately.
- Anon - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 2:36 pm:
Jones is not helping Obama. He is not helping the Governor in what he expects; hires, contracts etc. And he is not helping the people of Illinois.
I hope he is helping the people who vote for him, otherwise they may be voting for him just because he says so.
- Frank - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 2:55 pm:
For weeks now we’ve been hearing in the mainstream media about what a great guy Barack Obama is. Never a word about his support for abortion. Now Obama is about to declare his presidential candidacy. The honeymoon is over.
When Obama announces his intention to run for president in 2008 at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, IL Saturday, we will be there to show just exactly what Barack Obama has voted in support of again and again and again: the barbaric dismemberment of unborn babies in their mothers’ wombs.
America needs to know the truth about Barack Obama’s abortion extremism. He even voted against the Born Alive Infants Act in Illinois!
Here’s what you can do to help:
* If you live in or near Illinois, JOIN US:
WHERE: 7th and Adams Streets, Springfield, IL
WHEN: Saturday, Feb. 10, 2007 at 9:45 a.m. SHARP.
* If you have any friends or family in Illinois, especially within 2-3 hours drive from Springfield, FORWARD this e-mail and URGE them to join us.
* If you can’t be there, PRAY that we get a good turnout on Saturday, that the press covers our demonstration, and above all that Obama give up his support of abortion.
NOTE: We are meeting a block away from the Old State Capitol so we can walk down to the announcement site. Obama’s announcement will be at 10:00 a.m., so please don’t be late. And dress warmly for the cold.
- amy - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 3:38 pm:
oh come on, it’s not just Jones saying these things. please do not mistake Emil Jones for
the only voice speaking this stuff in this story.
Obama’s going after all African American electeds
and made a big deal of going into new york to
get support in Hillary’s state. so I cut obama
no slack at all. remember, women of every color
stepped up to support Carol Moseley Braun over
a sitting senator, Dixon, white. African American
women who have stepped up so far understand
what is really happening here. history is
not just for men.
- Snidely Whiplash - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 5:47 pm:
Jones is the master of racial politics, yet if Madigan, for example, publicly told a group of white Dems they had to vote for Clinton because she’s “our white candidate” and “you don’t owe Obama anything for being from Illinois”, Jones would be screaming bloody (racial) murder. The double standard continues. By the by, Mr. President, if you think all tax money should go for the benefit of blacks, that means I don’t have to pay my state taxes, right? ;)
- So Blue Democrat - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 7:27 pm:
It is time for Jones-not the Secretary of State to retire. I cringe whenever I hear Jones speak.
- Bill Baar - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 7:34 pm:
it is comments like Jones that make me not want anything to do with Obama. Not that this is …Obamas fault…it just reflects poorly on him that such a big supporter of his can make such ignorant comments. Jones seems to have gotten a little big for his britches lately.
Roman Puchinski would have said the same of a Pole from Chicago in Obama’s place. Nothing wrong with Emil’s line here. Nothing wrong with backing the local guy.
- grand old partisan - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 8:33 pm:
Bill -
There is when the “local guy” is claiming to be someone who can and will transend the divisions in our country and bring us together.
For Obama’s sake, Jones should retract that statement and not try to “help” him out anymore.
- Disgusted - Tuesday, Feb 6, 07 @ 10:00 pm:
Emil sure was behind the ComEd door when the brains were being passed out but his hand shot right out there when the money appeared and appeared and appeared. He should hold his tongue because his house is not only glass but very brittle.
- Bill Baar - Wednesday, Feb 7, 07 @ 7:44 am:
GOP, the problem with this blackness talk, this talk about his middle name, his church, is it gives Obama a pass from talking about real issues. If overthrowing Saddam such a mistake, if it creates more insecurity than less, vote to defund, if not, how can your vote to confirm Petreaus but non binding resolution of no confidence in Petreaus mission be anything but demoralising? Obama goes to bed thankful everyone talks about is he black enough instead.
- Anon - Wednesday, Feb 7, 07 @ 9:45 pm:
Take a look at the 2002 campaign contributions for Senator Emil Jones, and State Rep. Madigan. Opensecrets dot org shows they each received over
$90,000 that year from electrical utilities. I wonder why our legislators have forsaken us, to allow utilities to go on a feeding frenzy.
Pingback Obama’s Toxic Mentors | REBEL CENTRAL - Monday, Mar 24, 08 @ 6:32 am:
[…] Back to Emil Jones. In February of 2007, he told a “black Democrat meeting” that they should support Obama because the Clinton dues had expired and Obama “is our son”. Meaning, our black son. In other words, Jones was urging people to support Obama because they share a race. I’m fine with that, but then don’t later shred to pieces a woman who points this out on a TV interview. (Geraldine Ferraro. Read that story here: Capitol Fax blog A quote about the Jones speech: Jones concluded his speech with a reference to the jobs and appointments Bill Clinton had given blacks, including many people in the room, and asked when they would stop owing the Clintons for that patronage, attendees said. […]