Clinton Didn’t Literally Murder Sister Souljah So What Do People Want From Biden?

Yes, 1992 was a while ago, but let’s clarify some things.

Former Republican House Rep. Joe Walsh posted on social media Monday that President Joe “Biden would really benefit politically from a Sister Souljah moment with these keffiyeh-wearing college kids. And it would be the right thing to do. But he’s just not capable of it.”

Someone reasonably responded, “What the hell does that even mean?” and Walsh said bluntly, “Google it.”

Well, I’ll save you the proprietary eponym time. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton spoke at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition where he repudiated statements rapper and political activist Sister Souljah had made in a Washington Post interview, as well as some specific lyrics in her music. Souljah had been a guest at the Rainbow Coalition the previous night, and this was a calculated effort on the Clinton’s campaign part to distance the “New Democrat” from Jackson, who wasn’t popular with white moderate Democrats.

“Keffiyeh-wearing college kids” is Walsh’s dismissive reference to pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses. Far too many of the protesters have expressed violent antisemitic rhetoric, which Biden has vocally condemned.

“Silence is complicity,” Biden said in a statement before Passover. “Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”

The White House had earlier condemned the “physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community” on Columbia’s campus. The most extreme protesters openly hate Biden’s guts, dubbing him “Genocide Joe,” which is not meant as a compliment. It’s unclear why Walsh thinks a “Sister Souljah” moment is even necessary.

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Why No ‘Sister Souljah’ Treatment For Creeps Like Ben Shapiro And Matt Walsh?

What do people really want from a ‘Sister Souljah’ moment?

White moderates and conservatives have often requested that Biden or Democrats in general engineer their own “Sister Souljah” moment in service of democracy. When Donald Trump was still squatting in the Oval Office, Bret Stephens at the New York Times declared, “We Need More Sister Souljah Moments.” The piece included a large photo of Sister Souljah, who wasn’t the president or a member of Congress or otherwise relevant to the current moment.

Stephens noted that “Jackson was furious” after Clinton co-opted his event to beat up on a single Black woman with limited power, but “Americans were reassured that Clinton really was a new kind of Democrat, not in thrall to the party’s left wing. He was elected president later that year.”

This is a “cherry tree” version of the 1992 election. The reality is that incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush’s approval sank to 29 percent in July because of the poor state of the economy. It’s not as if Sister Souljah was his running mate, even if she was more qualified. The Times could use a whole section in its style guide on how “correlation is not causation.”

I consider this specific presidential debate moment more responsible for Clinton’s victory, but he’s connecting with a Black woman not lecturing her, so it’s not as popular with a certain demo.

Columnist George Will wrote in 2020:

[Biden] needs a Sister Souljah moment . In 1992, this rap singer was pleased by the deadly Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating: “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” Candidate Bill Clinton’s criticism, not of extremism in general, but of her explicitly, reassured temperate voters that he was not intimidated by inhabitants of the wilder shores of American politics.

Anti-Trump conservative Max Boot made a similar request in November 2021:

Biden needs a “Sister Souljah moment”: He needs to attack the far-left activists who want to defund the police, boycott Israel and divide Americans by race. He could start by criticizing what liberal columnist Jonathan Chait describes as the “kooky, harmful, and outright racist ideas” peddled by “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo. Biden should champion liberalism, not leftism.

The common theme here is that Clinton publicly distanced himself from his party’s left wing. However, Biden has done this consistently without prompting. He rebuked primary rival Elizabeth Warren’s “elitist attitude,” and he rejected calls to defund the police.

This week, when a reporter asked Biden if he “condemned the antisemitic protests on college campuses,” his response to this “well duh” question was “I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

Walsh denounced Biden’s words as “cowardly,” and others on his feed suggested that it was fundamentally no different from Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” remarks after Charlottesville.

I’ve personally been accused of antisemitism because I sympathize with the Palestinian people, so I appreciate the distinction Biden makes. That’s obviously not good enough for Walsh, but I dare say the refusal to fully recognize the humanity of everyone involved in this conflict is why the situation remains bleak.

It’s clear to me at least that what Walsh, as well as Boot, Stephens, and Will, really want is for Biden to personalize his attack, as Clinton did. However, Clinton wasn’t even as harsh in the moment as certain people seem to remember so fondly. He’s not Donald Trump, after all.

Let’s watch what then Gov. Clinton actually said to the Rainbow Coalition. (Yes, people in the 1990s thought it was a good idea for ties to contain every color everywhere all at once.)

Most clips of Clinton’s speech focus on the “Sister Souljah” moment, but he nestled that poison pill inside comments that the Rainbow Coalition audience would otherwise appreciate.

“I’m tired of people on trust funds telling people on food stamps how to live,” he said, knocking both President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle as “elites.” He also praised “the real story of Los Angeles — [that] most people who live in that city did not burn, loot or riot.” If Fox News had existed, this probably would’ve gotten more attention than the Sister Souljah “moment,” as it would’ve run counter to their narrative, just as it did during the summer of 2020, when they claim every U.S. city was on fire.

Biden’s measured remarks, which Walsh found so offensive, were pretty similar to Clinton’s. “We have an obligation, all of us, to call attention to prejudice wherever we see it,” he said, but he also apologized for playing golf at an all-white country club. The comparison is more than a little insulting because of the power differential and the racist history of such clubs, but he at least publicly acknowledged his mistake. He didn’t spend the whole speech using Sister Souljah as a rhetorical piñata, although that’s probably how it plays in Walsh’s mind.

Clinton said in an interview after his speech that “what [Sister Souljah] said really bothered me, not only because she said it but because she is somebody who is obviously bright and has a lot of influence over young people. And I think we’ve got to take issue with it.”

I don’t care for how Clinton used Sister Souljah, but he at least attempted to acknowledge her humanity. I doubt Walsh or even many prominent liberals would want Clinton’s racial paternalism applied to pro-Palestinian protesters, no matter how misguided. They want a complete denunciation. It’s highly unlikely that Sen. John Fetterman would link protesters’ prejudice to any racial incidents in his own past. That is the empathy that Clinton and Biden possess and most “Sister Souljah moment” proponents lack.

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