Reid All About It

It seems that way back in the 2008 presidential race, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had a strange way of talking up Barack Obama's qualifications. "He's light skinned" and "doesn't have a Negro dialect unless he wants one," the Nevada-based powerbroker would say in private conversations.

We know this now because it has been revealed in a new book about the campaign by Jon Heilman and David Halperin, "Game Change. Reid doesn't dispute the comments attributed to him, and in fact has apologized directly to the president for it. The president talked up Reid's long commitment to civil rights in his statement and said he accepted the apology "without question."

All well and good, but it's hard not to wonder how long these two reporters have known about these comments and whether they kept it under wraps until their book was finished. That's their right, but as Mike Flynn points out in this great Breitbart Report post, would they have done the same if the remarks were made by a Republican?

Racial controversies involving conservatives tend to have a longer shelf life. Remember when Trent Lott pined away for the age of segregation at Strom Thurmond's birthday party? Contrast that flap to Joe Biden suggesting that Obama stood out from other black politicians because he was "clean." The price he paid for that gaffe was to become vice president of the United States.

On Sunday, the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, not only didn't accept Reid's apology but said the gaffe was career-ending. "Either he's going to retire or I'm going to retire him in November, but either way he won't be the leader in January," said Steele, saying that Reid was getting off easy if Trent Lott's fate was the established standard.

Pundits will parse the difference, noting that lamenting the end of segregation isn't in the same universe as stupidly assessing a candidate's blackness. Where this controversy will lead us remains to be seen, but it will surely raise some questions and hopefully offer some insights into why the Democratic party remains the overwhelming choice of people of color, and why that shows no sign of changing soon.