NYT Editorial Must Read: Unite, Not Divide, Really This Time

[flpoljunkie]

(Emphasis mine.)

January 9, 2008
Editorial

Unite, Not Divide, Really This Time

The New Hampshire primary has done Americans a service by leaving both parties’ nominating contests open and giving a truly broad range of voters a chance to participate in these vitally important choices. The coming contests will be colored in large part by how the contenders and their backers answer a basic question: Just how far are they willing to go to win?

If the Republican fringe plays to type and decides to savage John McCain, the party’s winner in New Hampshire, once again, and if the Clinton camp continues to allow its baser instincts to rule, they will do more harm than good to themselves, to their parties and to the political process. The danger signs are there on both sides, but are glaringly evident among the Democrats.

Senator Barack Obama did not refrain from dropping cutting comments about Senator Hillary Clinton into his speeches. “I’m not running because I think it’s my turn, that it’s somehow owed to me,” he would say. But he generally pitched his speeches on notes of inspiration and hope.

Mrs. Clinton ran an angry campaign in New Hampshire, and polls showed that voters noticed. She won narrowly, but came perilously close to injecting racial tension into what should have been — and still should be — an uplifting contest between the first major woman candidate and the first major African-American candidate.

In the days before the voting, Mrs. Clinton and her team were so intent on talking about how big a change a woman president would be — and it surely would — that some of her surrogates even suggested that it would be a more valuable change than an African-American president. Mrs. Clinton managed to energize the women’s vote in New Hampshire to win the contest, but the Democratic Party should be celebrating its full diversity, a refreshing and notable difference from the field of Republican contenders.

<>Why Mrs. Clinton would compare herself to Mr. Johnson, who escalated the war in Vietnam into a generational disaster, was baffling enough. It was hard to escape the distasteful implication that a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change. She pulled herself back from the brink by later talking about the mistreatment and danger Dr. King faced. Former President Bill Clinton, who seems to forget he is not the one running, hurled himself over the edge on Monday with a bizarre and rambling attack on Mr. Obama.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09wed1.html?hp

[Rageneau]

1. The NY(w)T should just shut the f*ck up. Who cares what they think?

When the NYT isn't printing palpable lies, or wild-eyed wingnut diatribes, or spurious speculation, or
neocon ramblings, it takes a break to advise American politicians to be careful what they say.

The NY(w)T is part of the problem, not the solution. Were it not for the staff and editorial slant of the New York Times, we would not be in Iraq, nor in half the other trouble we're in -- nor would we have had to endure Monicagate, Travelgate, or the phoney "Whitewater" witch hunt.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. and I think people willing to trash the NYTimes

so quickly are part of the problem.
They do a lot of good in addition to the not-so-good.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

3. What I really want to know is what the scumbags Bill Kristol and Maureen Dowd think

No I don't.