Understanding

It's a good day to repost one of my favorite sections of the famous "Race" speech Obama made back in March, "A More Perfect Union." It's a marvelous example of how he again and again takes understanding beyond where you expect a living, breathing politician to take it - let alone one who very well might be our damn president!

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

This kind of thoughtful consideration makes Hillary's attacks look even more clumsy, disingenuous, and, um, bullshitty.