BillCosby

Playing the race card against Barack Obama didn't work quite the way Bill Clinton had hoped. Neither did a reported last-minute personal appeal to keep Ted Kennedy from joining the Obama crusade. The question is whether the Clintons understand how the country has changed.

On Saturday, a reporter asked Bill about Obama's boast that it took two Clintons to try to beat him. Bill replied: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

The only possible reason for invoking Jackson's name was to telegraph the following message: Barack Obama is black, so if a lot of black people decide to vote for him -- doubtless out of racial solidarity -- it doesn't mean squat.

And the reasons to send that message would be to devalue an Obama victory in South Carolina; to inoculate the Clinton campaign against potential losses in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee -- Southern states with large African-American populations -- next Tuesday; and, most important, to pigeonhole Obama as "a black candidate" as opposed to "a candidate who, among other characteristics, is black."


That would help Hillary Clinton in other states, because the more prominent race becomes in this campaign, the more likely it is that she will win the nomination.

But it was a 28-point blowout for Obama. Yes, he took 78 percent of the black vote, according to the exit polling. Clinton and Obama were practically tied among white men, 28 percent to 27 percent. Clinton's advantage among whites came from women.

There are signs that the country is less concerned about identity than character, more interested in commonality than difference, hungrier for inspiration than triangulation.

Eugene Robinson writes for the Washington Post.

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror

EvilMonkey

That was down right embarrassing, what other possible reason would he bring that up. He deserves every ounce of negative feedback he gets for that statement. What you can't grasp from this article was the belittling and condescending tone in his voice when he said it, he had sort of a "don't shoot the messenger" attitude. He's turned into a smug asswhipe.

itsmeeeeeee

it was shocking, as you say, especially the tone.

...it "felt" just like how watching bush feels, to me.
extremely unpresidential. and so blatantly flippant.

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cheapseats

The race card not only worked, it's STILL working. The Clintons would CLEARLY rather run against Obama than Edwards. Likewise...neh, moreso...it's a big win for Republicans.

I wouldn't put ANYTHING past the Clintons...I expect they were READY-READ-THAT-PREPARED to play the race card if push came to shove. But push HADN'T come to shove, and it REALLY isn't in the Clinton playbook to purposefully alienate blacks. That would be nuts. Nuts, they're not.

It seems more than possible to me, it seems reasonable, that the Clintons only played the race after it was dealt by someone else.

Look to Karl Rove.

Look back to the original Pack 'O Democrats against whom Republicans might be obliged to run. Biden, out. Dodd, out. Edwards, out.

Whew, exhales Big Money.

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jdanton

I'm still waiting for someone to give me someone injecting race into this campaign prior to the media using it to explain their flawed poll results.

My recollection of this is the media itself injected race, then took Bill Clinton's words out of context so they could blame him for injecting race.

The first injection of race I can think of was by the media when the NH polls were closed.

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BillCosby

Perhaps you can start a thread in the conspiracy theory forum.... Since we don't have a joke forum........

I agree w/ those that have posted before you in the thread.......

There is no place to low for bill & hilary to stoop if they believe it will advance her ambitions...........

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HarperLee

Why Teddy Kennedy decided to support Obama, from the Washington Post, The Sleuth, Maryh Ann Akers, January 30, 2008:

Clinton's LBJ Comments Infuriated Ted Kennedy

There's more to Sen. Edward Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama than meets the eye. Apparently, part of the reason why the liberal lion from Massachusetts embraced Obama was because of a perceived slight at the Kennedy family's civil rights legacy by the other Democratic presidential primary frontrunner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Sources say Kennedy was privately furious at Clinton for her praise of President Lyndon Baines Johnson for getting the 1964 Civil Rights Act accomplished. Jealously guarding the legacy of the Kennedy family dynasty, Senator Kennedy felt Clinton's LBJ comments were an implicit slight of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, who first proposed the landmark civil rights initiative in a famous televised civil rights address in June 1963.

One anonymous source described Kennedy as having a "meltdown" in reaction to Clinton's comments. Another source close to the Kennedy family says Senator Kennedy was upset about two instances that occurred on a single day of campaigning in New Hampshire on Jan. 7, a day before the state's primary.

The first was at an event in Dover, N.H., at which Clinton supporter Francine Torge introduced the former first lady saying, "Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually" signed the civil rights bill into law.

The Kennedy insider says Senator Kennedy was deeply offended that Clinton remained silent and "sat passively by" rather than correcting the record on his slain brother's civil rights record.
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BillCosby

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror