{"id":625,"date":"2003-09-12T11:31:59","date_gmt":"2003-09-12T16:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/625.html"},"modified":"2003-09-12T11:31:59","modified_gmt":"2003-09-12T16:31:59","slug":"deans-weak-response-to-race-claim-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/deans-weak-response-to-race-claim-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Dean’s weak response to race claim controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to update you on a post from Wednesday<\/a>, Howard Dean is still facing some criticism for claiming in a recent Dem debate that he’s the “only” white politician talking to white audiences about race.<\/p>\n

To review, after Dean made the claim, John Edwards began reminding everyone<\/a> how wrong Dean was to make the claim, noting that he, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman talk about race with white audiences all the time. Indeed, it’s a standard part of Edwards’ stump speech that he delivers to every audience.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Dean campaign started to respond<\/a> to the controversy. The defense was less-than-compelling.<\/p>\n

“This is not about whether any of the other candidates are committed to the issue of civil rights,” Dean’s spokeswoman Tricia Enright said. “What Governor Dean is talking about is not just the need for civil rights. He is out there talking about how when the president uses the word ‘quota,’ it is a race-loaded word designed to instill fear of African-Americans and other minorities.”<\/p>\n

Nice try, Trish, but this is a classic non-sequitor and has nothing to do with the controversy. Was Dean wrong in Baltimore when he claimed to be the “only” white politician talking to white audiences about race? Was Edwards right to call this unfair? Will Dean apologize (once again) for an unwarranted snub of his Dem rivals?
\n
\nEnright tried another defense, saying that no one complained the last time Dean made the same claim.<\/p>\n

”Back in June at the Rainbow\/Push Coalition, [Dean] said the same exact thing and there was no righteous indignation and there was no discussion,” Enright said.<\/p>\n

This is flawed, too. As The Note said<\/a> yesterday, this explanation suggests that “a public figure can say something that is wrong with impunity forever if no one stops him after the first time.”<\/p>\n

Putting that aside, however, if Enright is correct about two different responses to the same claim, the campaign may have a point. If Dean said the same thing in June — when he wasn’t in the lead — in front of the same rivals without a controversy, then maybe the criticisms are motivated by poll numbers, not principles.<\/p>\n

There’s just one problem. The Dean campaign is wrong about this, too. Dean did not say “the same exact thing” in June.<\/p>\n

“I don’t just talk about quotas here in front of a predominantly Latino and Black American, African American, audience,” Dean said<\/a> at the Rainbow\/Push Coalition event. “I talk about quotas and affirmative action in front of white audiences, because white people need to hear from white politicians that this is an important issue.”<\/p>\n

Similar, but substantively different. The reason there was a flap following the comment in Baltimore was that Dean claimed to be “the only white politician that ever talks about race in front of white audiences.” In the June comment, which the campaign claimed to be “the exact same,” Dean never made that claim.<\/p>\n

In other words, doc, you still owe some folks an apology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to update you on a post from Wednesday, Howard Dean is still facing some criticism for claiming in a recent Dem debate that he’s the “only” white politician talking to white audiences about race. To review, after Dean made the claim, John Edwards began reminding everyone how wrong Dean was to make the claim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}