Look at the demographics. What party is more of a mix of all americans and what party is predominantly white males?

Want to stand the Clinton cabinet and administration members up against Bush's and take a look?

Democratic politicians treat black people like a commodity, a set of votes that is theirs by right, and pretty much ignore them on off years. As I pointed out in another post, there is more than one kind of racism.

Read the article you linked. What did Clinton actually DO to help black people? Basically, he managed to convince them he cared by sheer force of personality--pretty much the only real thing he has ever done on most issues. This is raw political marketing. There's no "there" there. They don't call him "slick" for nothing.

The whole article gives examples of how good Clinton was at making people think he was sincere about his feelings.

Wickham, a columnist for USA Today, spoke to Salon about what that Toni Morrison essay really meant, why Clinton tops Colin Powell and Jesse Jackson in the eyes of black Americans and why it doesn't really matter whether Clinton's sincere or not.

...Here's the point of all this. No matter how I answer the question, I don't think black people will give Bill Clinton any demerits. In other words, does he know the words to the Negro National Anthem because he really studied hard? Did he read Walter Mosley because he wanted to be able to say in some convincing way that he's immersed himself in black culture? If the answer is yes, you still get the credit. You have to treat this like a motion picture, not like a snapshot and compare him to that long line of 41 white men who have been presidents of the United States. The answer is, he did it and no one else did. Whether he did it because he was serious in his intent to understand a significant portion of the population of this country, or whether he did it because he saw them as the Democratic Party's most loyal constituency, he did it.

...Question: I want to ask you what pieces of legislation you think he got passed to help the black community, but I'm also curious: How important is style? What impact does that make and does that mean more than a politician's legislative record in some ways?

They're both very important. In some ways the legislation is far more important to those who are close to the process. The vast majority of African-Americans aren't close to the process, have little if any knowledge about the legislative process or which legislation is in the hopper. But what they get on TV, whether it's about Bill Clinton or any other president, is a lot more style than substance. We see presidents walking across the lawn outside the West Wing with a head of state, or making a brief statement. Or they give a State of the Union speech that's 45 minutes long and covers 25 or 30 issues -- they're only giving a fleeting notice to any of them -- and all you get is style. That's what you measure. When you measure that, you come to some estimation of who this person is.

Legislation? Were we talking about legislation here?

"Record number of black appointees?" I want to see the numbers on that. And appointed where? Sure as hell nowhere they could be easily seen. Ron Brown is the only one that comes to most people's minds.

My favorite exchange:

Historians might say that LBJ was more important for the black community. Would you say that's accurate?

I would say that what is accurate about LBJ is that LBJ is unsurpassed in the efforts that he made to enact laws that uplifted African-Americans.

But he won't be remembered nearly the same way?

No, listen, LBJ fondled dogs. He picked them up by their ears -- remember that famous incident? You're probably too young to remember that, but he was roundly criticized by the people who belonged to animal protection leagues. He was photographed picking up his dog by the ears and kissing it and everybody screamed. LBJ, for all that he did for African-Americans, is better known for telling crude racial jokes than he is for having close and intimate relations with black people.

We give a lot of credit to people who show up and stand with us, who come into our community, who come into our homes. That's real important to us and I'm not sure that we're unlike any other race of people in that regard. Clinton showed up early and often, and did things that were quite unusual, like getting in his limousine and driving across town to have soul food dinner, eating chitlins with black folk.

If I had written the above as a satire, I couldn't have nailed it any better. Clinton makes superficial suckers of us all, and we LIKE it!

Does your mind work on that level, Buck?

Wickham, regardless of his own race, is an example of the "soft racism" I've been talking about. His assumption on the simple-mindedness and monolithic nature of what he calls "the black community" is obvious in this article.

(Here's one clue to detect this kind of racism: watch out for anyone who talks about their own race and starts using the term "we," as in "we all like mustard on our hot dogs.")

I also note in passing that Wickham seems not to have gotten the memo that welfare reform was actually a great Clinton triumph, and reminds us that Clinton was dragged into it kicking and screaming.