Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) has been firing back at Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who named her as an example of how the Democratic Party has created what he called a “21-century plantation” over black voters, with appointed African-American leaders to act as “overseers” — the men who committed the day-to-day atrocities of ruling over slaves in the antebellum South.
“I think it’s so odd,” said Waters, in one such appearance on Hardball, shaking her head. “No, I think that’s odd, and it doesn’t make good sense. And I don’t think that it even deserves a response.
Waters then dished out a response: “Did I tell you his brother was here today?”
She explained to Matthews that West, who is originally from Atlanta, has a brother who went to the Congressional Black Caucus’s jobs fair and town hall event in that city.
“He has a brother that’s out of work. Well, his brother came up to me, introduced himself, and told me that he had lost his job — he had been laid off.
“And I ask him if he’d called his brother? He said he had. And I said, ‘What did he say?’ He said, ‘He told me to come to the job fair, he told me to come and see you.’ So we’re hopeful that we can help his brother.”
“So he sent him to the ‘plantation,’ as he put it?” Matthews asked wryly.
“Uh, well, you know, that’s a reasonable conclusion,” said Waters.
TPM could not immediately confirm the story with West’s office.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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