Last week, Bill Clinton — the “Big Dog” to his fans — schooled Black Lives Matters protesters on the facts of crime and punishment, including the facts that tough-on-crime measures from the mid-nineties helped save countless black lives. At the time I wondered if changing times meant that Clinton would soon be walking back the truth:
Clinton was bold, but 2016 isn’t 1992, and the Democrats aren’t desperate to reclaim the White House but rather are secure in their cultural and political position. The social-justice warriors rule the Democrats, and they were not amused.
Today the Washington Post’s Dan Balz offers a postmortem on the entire affair, and it looks like Sister Souljah, the sequel, was a flop:
The confrontation last week turned out not to be another Sister Souljah moment. Instead, it was a reminder to Clinton of the new terms of debate on racial matters and the reinterpretation of the 1990s through the lens of a quarter-century later.
After his exchange last week, Clinton said he almost wanted to apologize and said it was regrettable that the two sides had talked past each other. He then campaigned Sunday on his wife’s behalf in three African American churches, seeking to ensure the strongest possible minority support for her in next Tuesday’s New York primary (which looks likely). On Monday, he was still trying to explain himself for what had happened the week before.
The whole issue could well be reprised Wednesday, when Hillary Clinton is scheduled to speak to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference in New York. Sharpton criticized Bill Clinton for last week’s exchange.
The gods of social justice must be appeased, and they can smite even our nation’s vaunted “first black president.” The Big Dog has lost his bite.
Bill Clinton Backs Down to Black Lives Matter
