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TechnoratiCards From a Worn-Out Deck
Playing the race card against Barack Obama didn't work out quite the way Bill Clinton had hoped. Neither did a reported last-minute personal appeal to keep Ted Kennedy, venerable guardian of the Camelot flame, from joining the Obama crusade. The question now is whether the Clintons understand how the country they seek to lead-and, regrettably, I do mean "they"-has changed.
I wonder how all the Clintonistas who protested that Bill and Hillary would never, ever dream of stooping to racial politics must be feeling now, after Bill was videotaped in the act. On Saturday, as Democrats in South Carolina went to the polls, 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."
Now, the question had nothing to do with Jesse Jackson. So why do you suppose such an expert on American politics as Bill Clinton, with no prompting, would bring up contests that took place decades ago-back when South Carolina picked its convention delegates in caucuses, not primaries? John Edwards' victory four years ago, in a primary, would have been much more relevant; he ran a good campaign, too.
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 really 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. They don't call us a "minority" for nothing.
But a funny thing happened in South Carolina. Clinton didn't lose by 10 or 12 points, as most polls had predicted; it was a 28-point blowout, with Obama more than doubling her vote. Yes, he took 78 percent of the black vote, according to the exit polling, and she beat him among white voters, 36 percent to 24 percent. But if you look more closely, Clinton and Obama were practically tied among white men, 28 percent to 27 percent. Clinton's advantage among whites came from women.
If Obama wanted to take a page from the "identity politics" playbook of the 1990s, he could try to hang the "female candidate" label around Clinton's neck.
He won't, though, because the Obama campaign is well aware that identity politics is a fatal trap. In his victory speech Saturday night, Obama went back to his focus on tearing down barriers rather than reinforcing them. On his way to the rhetorical mountaintop, however, he paused to note that the "status quo is fighting back with everything it's got; with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face."
Oh, and he threw in a line about people who would "say anything and do anything to win an election." No, he didn't mention the Clintons by name.
It pains me to refer to the Clintons in the plural, since Hillary's campaign is indeed a historic milestone. But after South Carolina, it's hard to claim that this candidacy is entirely about her. At the very least, it's about them-and if you listen to Bill's speeches, you get the distinct impression that he thinks it's all about him. Does anyone believe his sense of entitlement will somehow dissipate if the Clintons move back into the White House?
The Clintons are a remarkably successful political partnership, and Hillary Clinton still has to be considered the favorite to win the nomination. Yet they can't have anticipated that Kennedy would defect, or that other Democratic Party grandees would complain so loudly about their tactics-or that Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who called Bill the "first black president," would endorse Obama.
The Clintons are running the kind of campaign they know how to run. But there are signs that the country has changed-that it's less concerned about identity than character, more interested in commonality than difference, hungrier for inspiration than triangulation.
If, as Obama said Saturday night, "this election is about the past versus the future," the Clintons are in for more rude surprises.
--Eugene Robinson
© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
10 Comments so far
Show AllSpeaking of Mr. Clinton:
It is opined that Bill Clinton committed racist hate crimes, and I am not free to say anything further about it.
Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Y. Wang, J.D. Candidate
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
(I can type 90 words per minute, and there are probably thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post. Moreover, there are innumerable copies in very many countries around the world.)
_________________
“If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Off the top of my head—it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.
Obama could say (but won't), in reply to the Clinton lectures, that he still has his law license. Clinton surrendered his Arkansas license for five years and remains a disbarred attorney, banned from practicing before the Supreme Court of the United States because he lied under oath. Obama might say (but won't) that he, like Clinton, enjoys being adored by beautiful women, but he hasn't made a practice of seducing them. Not on the job, and not off the job either. He might say (but won't) that his wife wouldn't tolerate such conduct on his part and would never be so corrupt as to facilitate his infidelities in exchange for a promise of political power. He might point out that history already judges Bill Clinton, Democrat, as less progressive than Richard Nixon, Republican. He might say that Bill Clinton will be distinguished always and forever as an impeached president and is today an embarassment to his party, if not a millstone around the neck of every Democrat. I don't know if it's statesmanship or just good manners that keeps Obama's mouth shut. Either way, it bodes well for us.
Yea, if Obama wins the nomination, we will get polls that say Obama is the next 44th pres, but we all know, its a ruse, and that Mc Cain will win with a plurality. Hillary will lose head to head also. Don't delude yourselves, by hook, crook, or attack on Iran, the die is cast. Occupation will continue until the oil runs out... Democrats can only win the White House only if they promise the corporate occupation of the Middle East...oh well....Maybe Mc Cain will stand up to the Zionist punks like Bush the 1st did, when he stopped Military/Economic aid for awhile...but don't count on it from H. Clinton or B. Obama, since they never met a AIPAC lobbyist they didn't like
rmax__I agree, the Repugs deserve to watch Bill in the White House for at least four years after what they pulled off for the last seven. Bill and Hill might be the best we have anyway for a few years to straighten some of this mess out. It is going to be quite an effort and they do know the situation and how to get things moving. There has been entirely too much bad-mouthing of Clinton`s here as we may need them. After all, Kucinich was idolized, and has he delivered what he promised? Did Bush keep his promises he made to the people? We do not know what any of them might do until they are in office and have the responsibility of it.
The deck is stacked, all jokers.
I would love to have Bill Clinton in the White House again, if only to piss off the regressive right. Every cloud has a silver lining...
Thomas Chacko: well said.
This article should have been titled, "Cliches from Mr Robinson's Neighbourhood." Our noble You-de-Man of the Hour, Mr Obama, can always play the victim as long as he has such starry-eyed acolytes as Eugene Robinson running interference for him. The Obama fans are so giddy, let's hope they don't fall off their idol's "rhetorical mountaintop". (Gee, I wonder where Eugene filched that mountaintop analogy from!) Anyway, fawning hero-worship is no excuse for a thoroughly dishonest evaluation of the political scene. And, Eugene, this "Clintonista" feels just fine, thank you for asking!
Robinson's reporting skills are matched by his expertise in psychology -- and that's not saying much! So Bill Clinton has a sense of entitlement, does he? He thinks that this campaign is all about him? Here's where cliche comes into play in Gene's World: "playing the race card against Obama", "doing anything to win", and "devaluing an Obama victory" in South Carolina.
As the former president rightly said, "Give me a break!"
Bill Clinton stated a fact -- rather than "devaluing" Obama -- when he recalled that, although Jesse Jackson Sr won South Carolina in 1988, that was not the final word on the nomination. The "message" Clinton was sending was, no matter how decisive Obama's victory, Hillary was not about to fold up the tent and slink home. (Even John Edwards is not giving up!) Oh, speaking of "a sense of entitlement", Jackson felt that he alone was entitled to be Michael Dukakis's running mate. When Lloyd Bentsen was selected instead, we heard plenty of racial analogies from the Jackson camp -- such as "slaves", "cotton-pickers in the field", not being invited to "the master's house", and how Dukakis had "dissed" Ol' Jesseh!
I utterly reject the notion that Hillary was "dissing" Martin Luther King when she said, correctly, that it took a like-minded president and a superior legislator -- Lyndon Johnson -- to turn King's activism into law!
(Who is Hillary, you ask, to even mention King's name?) Not to burst Caroline Kennedy's balloon, but her father did not embrace the cause of civil rights immediately upon taking office; nor did he achieve a high legislative score with a Democratic Congress. He was not even a distinguished Senator, something he does indeed have in common with Obama. (It was the fear of losing the conservative, white Southern vote in 1964 that, unfortunately, brought JFK to Dallas on that dreadful day.)
Obama can coat himself with the veneer of martyrdom all he wants, by saying that the pounding from the divisive "status quo" is toughening him up for the fall campaign. But first he has to win the nomination, something he is not automatically "entitled" to. He also has to cope with the very concept of being challenged, something he did not bring along to the Senate. (Hell, even I could beat Alan Keyes!) Should the Clintons be blamed for Obama's petulance and empty rhetoric during the debates? Is his "new" reach-out, come-together style of politics epitomized in the sulky, sour demeanor he displayed toward Hillary at the State of the Union address? If he becomes the nominee, what will he do when the GOP rips into him -- cry on Oprah's shoulder? The Republicans won't give a bloody damn who feels "dissed"! Such is the brutal nature of politics today and, however severe Gene's "pain", the Clintons did not make it that way. Let me remind all of you revisionist historians out there that the Clintons have been the targets, not the cause. They are under no obligation to allow a dishonest mainstream media to define their identities -- the same body responsible for keeping the phony "Clinton scandals" alive throughout Bill's presidency.
For all of the wailing and hand-wringing from the "Democratic Party grandees" (and there are plenty who support her), Hillary Clinton is "entitled" to compete for a job for which we "Clintonistas" feel she is supremely qualified. I doubt whether Quincy Jones, Maya Angelou, Charles Rangel, and David Dinkins, among others, feel that they are pawns in a "race card" game. And someone should remind Ted Kennedy that three of his brother Bobby's children -- Robert Jr, Kathleen, and Kerry -- have seen fit to go with "the old politics" (aka Hillary) he was condemning the other day!
Yes, we're in for a rough campaign. What else is new? Certainly not pre-programmed Barackian cliches such as, "This election is about the past versus the future." They usually are; even Ross Perot used to think so.
Not only did Jesse Jackson win South Carolina decades ago when they had a caucus rather than a primary as Robinson notes, but it was also at a time that South Carolina balloted later in the primary season, and the nominee had already been effectively picked.
Thus, Bill Clinton's comparison and comment - that Jesse ran a good campaign twice before [like Obama just ran a good campaign this time] - is doubly inapt. Jesse Jackson (who once carried my home state of Michigan in a genuinely hard fought, real presidential primary) scarcely campaigned in South Carolina at all previously, because the whole thing was largely symbolic anyway.
Let's all hope that Obama can win big enough on super Tuesday that we don't have to worry about credential fights and the preferences of the "super delegates" who will be voting be at the Democratic National Convention regardless of the grassroots' turnout and the grassroots' expressed preferences.
If the 2004 Convention and the last year's performance of the now Democratic-controlled Congress are any guide, you just can't help but marvel at the ability of the Dems' DC leadership brain trust to alienate its own base and hand every advantage possible back to the GOP.
Bill from Saginaw
ABC--Anyone But Clinton
This is an interesting quote when thought about: "the 'status quo is fighting back with everything it's got; with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face.'" "Divide and distract" is the M$M's job as is its maintaining the "status quo."
Wonderful analysis. I quite agree. I am looking forward to the Obama presidency.