The Democratic Race

Senator Clinton tried to make a point about "experience" vs. "hope" recently by emphasizing that Lyndon Johnson's political savvy was necessary to realize the civil rights reforms that Martin Luther King dreamed of. She claimed on Meet the Press this morning that she was deliberately misinterpreted by Senator Obama's faction, who allegedly tried to accuse her of some form of racist condescension. The problem with this narrative is that Obama's people now claim that they never made any such assertion. So by accusing Obama of playing the race card, was Clinton trying to do so herself?

She'd be on more secure ground defending her husband. He apparently caught some grief from his comment in New Hampshire about Obama's "fairy tale." If I remember correctly what I heard, Bill Clinton specifically accused the Illinois Senator of telling a fairy tale about his record on the Iraq invasion. The former President was on shaky ground here. He challenged Obama's claim to have opposed the war all along on the evidence of a 2004 interview in which Obama said that he didn't know how he'd have voted on the war if he knew only what the public knew about Iraq in 2002. He also said, as cited by Mr. Clinton, that he did feel that the government hadn't really made the case for an invasion. So to say the least, albeit in retrospect, Obama was leaning against the invasion. But any expression of ambiguity, according to the master of ambiguity, disqualifies Obama's claim of consistent absolute opposition. However dubious Bill's argument was, however, he appeared to limit his critique to the specific issue of the war. He's had to do damage control since then because some took his remarks to disparage the entire concept of the Obama campaign as a fairy tale, which could be described as racist condescension.

This all goes to show again how bitter politicians can get when they perceive someone to be stealing their moment. That attitude explains the viciousness of many Republican attacks on Mike Huckabee, and you see it in the Clintonites' reaction to Obama's audacious attempt to usurp Mrs. Clinton's long-planned-for moment of destiny. You'll notice that not all politicians, even among presidential candidates, act this way. Consider how Mr.Edwards has not attacked Obama with the same fury as the Clintonites, and how Senator McCain, for instance, does not join in the attacks on Huckabee. Ambition doesn't automatically come with a sense of entitlement, though Hillary Clinton clearly brings the latter to her campaign, as do Mr. Romney and the supporters (at least) of Mr. Thompson. The jury's still out on whether that sense of entitlement makes a positive or negative difference. Edwards is floundering, but McCain is still gaining strength, but the latter has a foil in the form of Romney against whom he can show the sort of "passion" that primary voters may need to see.

But going back to Clinton vs. Obama, what does race have to do with it? It's been pointed out that the "Bradley Factor" didn't really apply to New Hampshire, because Obama got the percentage of votes that most polls predicted. The fault of the pollsters was their failure to predict how many more people would come out to vote for Clinton. Her late support seemed to be strongest among women, the relatively poor, and the less-educated. Remember, too, that Obama nearly won another state with a small black population. His advantage has been that he isn't perceived as stereotypically black -- he's no Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. There'd be no benefit to his playing a race card, but there might well be loose cannons in his camp that haven't lost old habits. It'd be to Clinton's short-term benefit if she can find a way to make white voters fear Obama the same way they might fear a Sharpton or any preacher of reparations, but she'll need black votes in the general election, so playing a race card during the primaries might not be worth the risk to her. Accusing Obama's people of playing the race card is probably her best option if she really wants to go that way, but it seems that she still thinks "experience" is her trump card. On the other hand, what does it tell us if she thinks out loud that other people think the experience argument is subtly racist? A guilty conscience, perhaps?