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Hillary’s MLK Comments Warrant a Closer Look at the Dems On Race

As I said in my prior (and first) posting, I heart politics. Though, with all the back and forth and in-fighting going on in the Democratic and Republic campaigns, some of you may be tuning out the rhetotic. I, however, can’t help myself. It’s unfortunate, but I long ago accepted the geek in me. Hopefully, you’ve at least heard the flap over Hillary’s comments that arguably marginalized MLK’s civil rights accomplishments. All of the debate about what she meant made me decide to revisit our sordid history on race relations.In the aftermath of Clinton’s comments, Chris Matthews or Tucker Carlson (one of those MSNBC pundits) had Bruce Bartlett on as a commentator.

Bartlett, the author of “Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past,” makes the case that Republicans aren’t the only ones with unclean hands when it comes to race in America, and contends:

 ”[The Democrats] were openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and “Jim Crow” laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.”

- Wall Street Journal (December 24, 2007)

We all know that the Democrats do indeed have a long history of segregationist politics (right??), but a refresher course wouldn’t hurt. So we’re reading this next, along with Paul Krugman’s “The Conscience of a Liberal” (for a little balance).