Having written about the current Identity-Politics-A-Palooza in the Democratic campaign more than once in the past few days, Josh Marshall sums up the state of play after BET founder and prominent Sen. Hillary Clinton supporter Bob Johnson’s apparent reference to Sen. Barack Obama’s admitted drug use as a young man:
We seem to be at the point where there are now two credible possibilities. One is that the Clinton campaign is intentionally pursuing a strategy of using surrogates to hit Obama with racially-charged language or with charges that while not directly tied to race nonetheless play to stereotypes about black men. The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.
In truth, we were at that juncture before Johnson’s remark. The point we are at now is the point at which Clinton has to navigate between further alienating Obama’s supporters or alienating one of her own prominent black supporters. The odds of a Veep offer to Obama if Clinton wins just went up.
Update: Michelle Malkin catches another of Bob Johnson’s racial remarks — one missed by most of the media.
I agree that Hillary will have NO CHOICE but to offer VP to Obama but, what does he really bring? Prior to this Dem candidates have always owned the black vote anyway. Will Obama energize the youth vote for Hillary? Richardson or Biden would have brought her some moderates and Blue Dogs but Obama may be worthless unless he can bring unprecedented black voter turnout for Hillary.
Absolution.
After all this race-baiting by her campaign, she’ll still get 90% of the black vote — but how many votes will she get 90% of?
She’s gonna need some serious absolution, and only Obama will be able to give it to her.
“The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.”
(“You don’t mind if I use the term ‘denigrating’, do you?”)