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Keith Olbermann Says That In The Midterms, Voters Are Being Treated Like “Three-Fifths Of A Person”

» 26 comments

Olbermann“What exactly do the secret big-money moneybags behind hundreds of millions of dollars of attack ads against Democrats want from the Republicans they’re trying to help?” asked Keith Olbermann—a little inarticulately—at the top of his show last night.

The answer? As a DNC ad Olbermann played shortly afterwords puts it, “The Republicans and their corporate buddies want to be back in charge: Wall Street writing its own rules again. Big Oil and insurance companies calling the shots. More jobs shipped overseas.” And so on. The ad does a good job of fear-mongering, which means it fits right in with our current political climate.

A few minutes later, Olbermann and Rep. Barney Frank discussed the “secret millionaire money,” as well as recent polls that show certain Democrats may perform better than expected in the midterms. Near the end of their discussion, Frank begins to talk about how vast amounts of GOP money will effect the elections. That led to the following exchange:

Frank: “What this Supreme Court has done, what Karl Rove and the Chamber [of Commerce] are trying to take advantage of, is the system whereby the money counts system of the capital system will overwhelm the democratic equality. And I really believe that in this off-year election, our democracy is very much at stake—in the sense that the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ is going to be submerged by a flood of right wing, anonymous, extremist money.”

Olbermann: “Yup. It’s like we’re back with three-fifths of a person. Only we’re all the three-fifths, and the corporations are 100 each.

Eesh. Olbermann, of course, is referring to the Constitution’s notorious Three-Fifths Compromise, which stated that only three-fifths of any state’s slave population would be counted when calculating that state’s total population.

Like most people, Olbermann misunderstands the clause; contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t actually state that each slave was considered to be three-fifths of a person. But either way, his analogy doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Video of the entire segment from Countdown is below. Olbermann mentions the three-fifths thing near the end of the clip.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Andy-Lamb/1085325013 Andy Lamb

    Did Olbermann say this in 2007 – 2008?

    “What exactly do the secret big-money moneybags behind hundreds of millions of dollars of attack ads against Republicans want from candidate Barack Obama they’re trying so hard to help?”

    Probably not……..

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Andy-Lamb/1085325013 Andy Lamb

    This could have been a good Olbermann – Frank exchange back in 2003 –

    Olbermann: “Some slimy Republicans see Fannie and Freddie as a problem, and propose legislation to reform these two GSEs. What do you think, Barney?”

    Frank: [an actual quote from Frank in 2003] ““I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems at all. I don’t think we are facing any kind of a mortgage crisis.”

  • timzank

    It’s got to hurt to come to grips with the fact he himself (Queef) possesses only 3/5ths of a brain.

  • Mr B

    The public, aka the Tea Party, are going to crush the Democrats in November Keith. You helped make it happen; just by being you.

    Thank You.

  • Big Eddie

    If Olbermann , Behar and Goldberg ever vacation together on Guam , Big Eddie suggests that they spread out . See Hank Johnson for details . …This just in : Donny Deutsch looks like a lizard dressed in human clothes .

  • Moderate

    Barney Frank, the poster boy for the nation’s economic meltdown, Is in panic mode as he should be.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ken-Hansen/1696941384 Ken Hansen

    Any chance Olbermann is saying that the three-fifths compromise was a bad idea? Does he imagine America would have been a better place if representation in the Congress was skewed to slave holding states? No, of course not. But by invoking this image, he gets to play off the ignorance of many, many Americans who were never taught (or never learned, same difference) why the 3/5th compromise was an important step towards erasing the stain of slavery off our country.

    Without the compromise, there either would have been no union OR we would have remained a slave-owning country much longer.

    It’s kind of like the old “tag on the mattress” joke – there is a tag that says “do not remove this tag under penalty of law”, and comedians like to mock that tag, but if you ever read the tag you’d see that the tag is not to be removed by anyone except the purchaser, and the point of the tag is to declare that the components of the mattress are new, not reused. At one time re-use of mattress frames, springs, padding was fairly common, common enough to have been a problem that the Gov’t felt the need to address anyways. The joke is only funny if you don’t know what the tag says, and Keith Olbermann’s comment is only effective if you ignore the purpose of 3/5th compromise.

    As a side note, I understand that Barney Frank has felt the need to donate $200K to his re-election campaign… Feeling a little heat, Mr. Frank? Good.

  • Oregon Conservative

    The 3/5 compromise applied to slaves. If slaves were counted as a whole person it would’ve kept the states where it was legal with larger representations in the house and electoral college. Tell me libs, would that have been better?

    With abolition this clause became superfluous, but that’s concept only understood by people with 5/5 of a brain. Sorry Keith.

    What a damn train-wreck this guy is.

  • Seeing November From My Window

    Tim, I think you are being WAY too generous!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Treacher/542957672 Jim Treacher

    “Eat the rich,” cried the millionaire.

  • Kitsune

    Well, considering that Olbermann is currently 5/3 of a person (and getting larger all the time), the politicians can only see 60% of the rest of us.

    You can’t blame them, it’s hard to see anybody behind Jabba the Marxist.

  • lane

    Olbermann can be his idiotic self-centered extremist, but Franks should act more responsibly. I think he’s a bit on-edge, I hear the marine is gaining against him. In a tight race, Belait will be the winner. I didn’t think I’d see both Connecticut and Massachusetts go red.

    It’ll be interesting to see if this turnover in new england will hold for the next election. These are extremely blue state, when they go, you’ve lost everywhere.

  • notsofast

    3/5ths?

    KO, you are 5/5ths asshole!!

  • NORBIT

    George Soros; SEIU; ACORN; NAACP; MSNBC….

  • justanotherconservative

    olbermann always looks like he’s dealing with 3/5ths of a hemmorhoid.

  • NORBIT

    Keith can recognize that through his 3/5 of a brain!

  • writer

    Keith is also a millionaire. But he feels guilty about it.

  • notsofast

    writer said:
    Keith is also a millionaire. But he feels guilty about it.

    He regrets that he is white.

  • writer

    Well, yeah. That too.

  • errxn

    Ironically, only 3/5 of a viewer watched this show last night.

  • Pablo

    This is just Barney’s way of explaining why he’s getting his ass kicked.

  • http://sharethisurlaboutglennbeck.com/ GlennBeckReview

    Poor analogy, but the point is real: CU v. FEC is undermining our democratic republic. The Republican base, expressed above, will cheer all this money being thrown at their candidates, and then they will be the first ones to bitch when these corporations get what they want: your jobs outsourced to India. That is what is behind the funding for right wing candidates by the Chamber of Commerce and their foreign contributors. Thanks to the Chamber of Commerce, we’re becoming a third world country. Watch the reactionaries celebrate this on Nov. 3rd.

  • http://gordonbloyershow.com gordonbloyershow

    GlennBeckReview said:
    Watch the reactionaries celebrate this on Nov. 3rd.

    Why are you still here? I am waiting for your lawsuit.

  • http://sharethisurlaboutglennbeck.com/ GlennBeckReview

    Corporate America is attempting to buy this election, and Glenn Beck is in on this attempted coup.

    http://www.sharethisurlaboutglennbeck.com/2010/10/becks-fake-populism-exposed-he-sides.html

  • CAconservative

    The “Olbermann comedy hour”. Olbermann should apologies for being a twit!

  • http://sharethisurlaboutglennbeck.com/ GlennBeckReview

    CAconservative says:
    “The “Olbermann comedy hour”. Olbermann should apologies for being a twit!”

    How does someone write like a first grader and accuse someone in that sentence of being “a twit?”

    Hypocritically, that’s how. (Pretty much what we expect from conservative from any state.)

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