Booker Rising on Geraldine Ferraro

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” — Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential candidate, to a newspaper last week but comments now coming to light

Damn, I check out for one day to attend to family business and another crusty, white feminist Democrat becomes unhinged at the thought that a black person isn't (1) being subservient to white interests and (2) has the audacity to not only not shuffle and move out of their way, but is outdoing them. As a black moderate-conservative feminist, I gotta do a mini-rant. On Monday, it was Sen. Hillary Clinton's condescending, white arrogant appeal for Sen. Barack Obama — who is the Democratic frontrunner — to be her number 2. Now a blast from the past back when I was a kid, Geraldine Ferraro, is cutting up. Ms. Ferraro — who is backing Sen. Clinton for president — yesterday claimed that Sen. Barack Obama wouldn't be where he is in the presidential race if he weren't black.

Sen. Obama put Ms. Ferraro in check though, and also said that if someone in his campaign had suggested that Sen. Hillary Clinton "is where she is only because she is a woman" then she and Ms. Ferraro would be offended. Never mind that Sen. Obama has more experience as a legislator than Sen. Clinton has — I don't count sleeping with President Bill Clinton to be significant policy experience, since Sen. Clinton won't release her First Lady papers — but Ms. Ferraro wants to diss Barack. Oh wait, Sen. Obama has more experience as a legislator than Ms. Ferraro too. Talk about someone who got a vice presidential nod due to race and gender — that would be Geraldine Ferraro. White girl needs to sit down somewhere and check herself.

But that ain't all. With a growing backlash against her comments, Ms. Ferraro is now playing the victimologist, claiming she is being attacked because she is white (while attacking Sen. Obama's blackness by not-so-subtly arguing linking his race to being unqualified for president). A Baltimore Sun piece claims that Ms. Ferraro had the same attitude when Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for president.

The Clinton campaign is getting ever more ridiculous, and racist. White folks in her camp are jealous of Sen. Obama's success, feel he (and black Democratic primary voters) are getting "too uppity" on the political aspirations front. Damn, I'm not even a Democrat or a a liberal, but I call it as I see it. I've been talking about the neo-Southern Strategy, even taking hits for it. Andrew Sullivan shares my view, although I disagree with him that (1) Ms. Ferraro's original comments were merely a gaffe; and (2) this is only Rove-Morris (as if Democrats haven't pulled the racist political card before): "The Clinton campaign's decision not to reject or denounce Geraldine Ferraro's racial gaffe strikes me as a conscious and deliberate one. The Obama campaign saw Samantha Power resign for a less offensive remark. But Ferraro is now on the networks and airwaves amping up the volume, and Clinton, in classic passive-aggressive mode, is merely 'disagreeing.' Isn't this obviously about Pennsylvania? Isn't this classic Rove-Morris politics - to keep designating Obama a beneficiary of affirmative action and Clinton a victimized white woman in order to racially polarize a primary where Clinton needs white ethnic votes? Ferraro's original gaffe was an accident. The compounding of it is a strategy."