Forget Substance, Sunday Talk Talks About "Race"

Specifically, if John McCain is, or if Barack Obama is simply playing the race card. David Gergen seems to know whats up, but as for the other clowns on the circuit, fugheddabboudit!

Hillary Plays The Race Card Again As Irrelevancy Creep In

As the days of the Democratic primary slowly come to a close with five remaining states and Puerto Rico, Senator Clinton is desperately trying to stay in the news. Unfortunately the media and election-generated news is that she is finished. Her aides say it'll be over in a month but she refuses to stop campaigning against our eventual nominee, Barack Obama. Today she pulled out the race card against him, and in no subtle manner either.

From USA Today:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Clinton's blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions.

So according to Clinton, those that aren't white and have college degrees aren't hard working. Not only that, she tries to minimize the power of the minority and college-educated vote. She manages to smack several groups in the face simultaneously. The only pattern emerging though is that more and more people realize her campaign is finished. Hopefully she will too before she sticks her foot in her mouth again.

On top of what she inferred about the data she cited from the AP, the facts about these voters just isn't true.

Bill Clinton Needs To STFU Now

The South Carolina primary is over and it is time to congratulate Obama on his impressive win in the Palmetto state. Unfortunately the Clinton camp, or should I say Bill Clinton made things go from ugly to F-ugly when he made a comment comparing Barack to Jesse Jackson. This is just unacceptable and needs to be stopped now.

From The Political Note:

Said Bill Clinton today in Columbia, SC: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

This was in response to a question about Obama saying it "took two people to beat him." Jackson had not been mentioned.

Boy, I can't understand why anyone would think the Clintons are running a race-baiting campaign to paint Obama as "the black candidate."

Yeah, thats a tough one to understand, just as hard to contemplate that people with a lust to win like Bill will pull out any gun in the arsenal, including race baiting.

Memo To Hillary, Playing The Race Card Is So Not Cool

I'm not surprised when Karl Rove uses racism when he opines on Presidential politics. He has made his living dividing and conquering people based on race, fear and whatever else it takes to win at any cost. What makes me sad is when Democrats use the same crap on themselves. For the most part Barack Obama has stayed above that, sure he has delivered some low blows, but nothing that would evoke a gender card accusation, even from his harshest critics.

Now Hillary hasn't really used the race card on Obama, but her surrogates sure have. Obama's people haven't pulled the feminine stereotypes out, unfortunately idiots like Chris Matthews and a few others friends of his in the media have done enough damage. Just because the media has attacked Hillary on nonsense, that doesn't give her people the right to attack Barack for being black.

From TPM:

As many of the commentators swooning over Obama on the night of the Iowa caucasus noted, Barack was not running as a "black" candidate. He did not have the militancy and anger (fully understable militancy and anger, in my view) of Jesse Jackson or Sharpton. So he was not scarey to white people. He was running as a post-racial candidate.

I don't think that the Clintons are personally racist. However, their political biographies do show that they will do just about anything to win elections - they are the consummate hardball players (which might stand Hillary well in the general election, but anyway...). When Hillary made comments about LBJ's doing the heavy lifting in the civil rights revolution, and when Andrew Cuomo referred to Obama (implicitly) as "shucking and jiving" I think that they knew exactly what they were doing. Neither Hillary nor Cuomo makes comments like that to the press without thinking them out carefully. Both are experienced politicians from highly political families.

The purpose of the comments was to wave a red cloak in the face of the Obama people, and get them to respond with charges of "racism". Then suddenly Obama would be an angry "black" candidate again in the eyes of at least some white voters.

The psychological dynamics are very similar to those of Bill's 1992 "Sister Souljah" moment, and, I suspect, just as carefully calculated.

Of course Bill and Hillary deny all this, but come on, most people know how dedicated they are to winning this race. Obama might just undo all their hopes and dreams for another four or eight years in the White House. As long as you can distance yourself as much as possible from that dirty, racist campaign technique, then why not, especially with the lust to win.

Hillary is never going to just come out and say it, leave it to the Republicans to do the full monty. They already know that they have no credibility with African-American voters so why not get as many points with the bigots and racists out there.

As for right now, in the midst of the Democratic primary, Hillary will do whatever she thinks it takes. It isn't that hard to imagine her going with this "strategy," however demoralizing it is for racial progress in America.