The Daily Background
| Clinton strategist: Obama is like Jesse Jackson
by Arlen Parsa
Despite the backlash against President Clinton when he compared the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama to that of Rev. Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary, a top Clinton adviser evoked that comparison again today.
Long-time Democratic National Committee member Harold Ickes, who served as deputy chief of staff for President Clinton and is a top aide to Sen. Hillary Clinton, made the comparison at a breakfast with reporters today when asked if he thinks stretching the Democratic primary on for three more months will hurt the Democrats in a general election.
“We have two really strong and very good candidates. This party has been blessed … to have a woman who, I think will be the next president of the United States [and] to have a powerful spokesman in the form of Sen. Obama and he is, that’s one of the reasons I supported Jesse Jackson in 19894 and 1988, I thought we needed a strong, powerful candidate, a black candidate, running for president,†Ickes said.
Ickes’ racial quota: it’s important for Democrats to perennially have a token Black candidate who can’t or won’t win. In previous years that role has been filled by Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Carol Moseley Braun. And this year, that candidate is Obama, or so Ickes hopes.
One thing that is the same between Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama is the message that instead of pitting Americans against each other —rich against poor, black against white, US against…just about everyone — it’s in our best interests to revisit the idea of “the common good”. In fact, our survival depends on it.