Hillary Clinton Finally Comments on Ferguson, Focuses on Race-Based Enforcement Injustices

Hey, remember when Paul Waldman
in The Washington Post
wondered where the libertarians were on Michael Brown’s killing
in Ferguson, Missouri, and then Sen. Rand Paul wrote a
big op-ed in Time the next day denouncing both the
militarization of the police and the racial injustices of the way
blacks are treated by law enforcement and courts?

Just thought I should remind folks about that happening nearly
two weeks ago.

In completely unrelated news, presumptive Democratic candidate
for president Hillary Clinton finally weighed in on the events in
Ferguson yesterday. The Washington Post has some video
footage of her prepared comments
here. She makes a vague reference to the militarization of
police by saying “Nobody wants our streets to look like a war
zone,” but she focused much more on the racism inherent in how our
current justice system operates:

Imagine what we would feel and what we would do if white drivers
were three times as likely to be searched by police during a
traffic stop as black drivers instead of the other way around. If
white offenders received prison sentences ten percent longer than
black offenders for the same crimes. If a third of all white men –
just look at this room and take one-third – went to prison during
their lifetime. Imagine that. That is the reality in the lives of
so many of our fellow Americans in so many of the communities in
which they live.

Her comments aren’t bad at all (though her vagueness on
militarization suggests to me that she doesn’t see the distribution
of equipment as a problem but rather its use in these
circumstances). But it certainly took her a long time to articulate
simple thoughts about racial injustice that aren’t actually all
that controversial or new and haven’t already been said in response
to Ferguson. Remember, this is the woman who campaigned against
Barack Obama with the famous “3 a.m. phone call” that she would be
more ready to lead at a moment’s notice than any of her Democratic
rivals:

There’s nothing wrong with taking a day or so to get your
thoughts together over the complex issues that drove what happened
in Ferguson. But two weeks after everybody else? It makes her look
like she wanted to evaluate what everybody else was saying first.