The latest hand in the Democrats’ tournament of identity politics is being played out today.
While Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has prepared a detailed memo listing various instances in which it perceived Sen. Hillary Clinton’s camp to have played the race card in the Democratic presidential race, Bill Clinton went on WVON-AM in Chicago with his own accusations:
“I’ve got before me a list of 80 attacks on Hillary that are quite personal by Sen. Obama and his campaign going back six months that I’ve had pulled.”
The NY Sun continues:
Mr. Clinton then lit into the Obama campaign for its “overtly racist” opposition research piece labeling Mrs. Clinton as a senator from India “(D-Punjab).”
Which takes a certain degree of chutzpah when doing damage control for his wife — the candidate who once joked that Mahatma Gandhi “ran a gas station down in St. Louis.” Then again, Bill Clinton has never lacked for chutzpah.
The early indications are that it is not working. Even accounting for Chicago being Obama’s home turf, it is notable that it took more than an hour to hear a caller defend the Clintons. Hillary got a lukewarm response before a largely balck crowd in NYC today. Hillary Clinton flatly accuses the Obama campaign of “deliberately distorting” the Clintons’ remarks to drive a wedge between her and black voters — a charge dutifully echoed by surrogates like former Dem VP nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Yet such attacks may only further alienate black voters in states like South Carolina, as the Clintons sound ever more like Bob Dole in 1988, snarling that his opponent should stop lying about his record.
If the Clintons’ lingering resentment of the press was bubbling to the surface last week, one can only imagine the volcanic episodes erupting behind closed doors now. After all the Clintons undoubtedly believed that they had beaten the media into submission:
Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record–“They’re too smart,” one furtively confides. “They’ll figure out who I am”–privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary’s aides don’t hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters’ jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. “They’re frightening!” says one reporter who has covered Clinton. “They don’t see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game.”
Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. “It’s one of the few times I’ve seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them,” says a veteran Democratic media operative.
The Clinton camp even found ways to make nice with Matt Drudge.
Yet the media and the blogosphere has been abuzz for some time with a story that not only threatens Clinton’s campaign for the nomination, but threatens to leave her a wounded candidate even if she gains it.
The old standards from the Clinton playbook may have lost their magic. The 1992 Clinton campaign strategy of winning Super Tuesday states on the strength of the black vote and locking up the nomination in Hillary’s home state of Illinois was completely derailed by Obama’s candidacy. Indeed, it is now Obama who is seen as the charismatic Man From Hope in the Democratic race. And today he is pitching a middle-class tax cut of the sort familiar to anyone who recalls Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign.
The Clintons survived the Nineties in part by running through an entire deck of victim cards. They were the victims of venal Arkansas State Troopers, Bimbos and the tabloid press. They were the victims of GOP persecution over Whitewater, Travelgate, the death of Vince Foster, and so on. They were the victims of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy engaged in the politics of personal destruction. The Clintons survived the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment by — among other things — practicing the politics of personal destruction against Independent Counsel Ken Starr and promoting the notion first floated by Toni Morrison that Bill was “the first black president.”
Now Obama has a shot to be the the actual first black president and his supporters, like former South Carolina state Rep. “I.S.” Leevy Johnson say:
“It’s offensive that Sen. Clinton literally stood by and said nothing as another one of her campaign’s top supporters launched a personal, divisive attack on Barack Obama. For someone who decries the politics of personal destruction, she should’ve immediately denounced these attacks on the spot.”
Hillary Clinton survived New Hampshire in part by playing the gender card and getting out the vote of older women who responded to her identity politics. It is a card that may not trump the identity politcs of race in states with significant black votes, like South Carolina. But it remains a much better card than the one of personal victimhood the Clintons are now trying to play.
Update: From the Caucus at the NYT: “What’s most confounding about this latest turn into ugliness, though, is the Clintons’ remarkable capacity to cast themselves as the victims in every fight.” Do tell!
Obama is doing his share of standing by and pretending Hillary and Bill are big racists though. She is in no ways tard and Obama should know that. She has been very kind to his people over the years, and it’s a little shocking that he’s not more grateful.
$1000 to working families…
Ok..when does he define what constitutes a “working family”.
Sounds very much like vote buying … akin to Silk Pony’s “subsidized bank accounts” proposed scam.
FWIW, Hitch has a fist full of cards, too. Too bad he’s not playing at Hillary Milhouse Clinton’s table.
http://www.slate.com/id/2182065/fr/rss/
Highly recommended.
It seems that it’s in Mr. Obama interests to invoke the race argument at the moment, because of the South Carolina primaries. So he (or his supporters) do just that by misinterpriting Ms. Clinton’s relatively innocent comments.
“Ms. Clinton’s relatively innocent comments.”
Prolepsis is the word I’m looking for here.
Anyway, even if Hill’s comments could be described as “innocent,” her various proxies are a little less…artful.
Re: #4
Check out Brendan Loy on Obama’s stance via Instapundit.
Let’s forget the He said & She said and of course the COLOR issue. There are many, many Democrats interested in the pressing issues of today and how this change that every candidate talks about is going to be accomplished.
– Clintons camp is obviously scared by Obama’s “rock-star status, and went forth with what they believed was the playing of the “experience” card, (it takes a Pastor to leaad a movement, but it takes a President to show leadership and get a bill passed in congress), but Obama’s people saw a golden opportunity just handed to them to morph the intended message into a racial comment. Obama 24 – Hillwry 0.
– The Clintonesta’s need to be very careful before they leap. They’re playing agisnt their own division right now, and its not going to be an advantage with an uneven playing field like it always is when they’re wrestling with the Repubs.
– In the mean time, its very gratifying watching the Dems slapping each other with their own race card trouts. They need to know how such totally false gratuitous aqusations feel when their political opponents are the targets. I’m loving it.
“Ms. Clinton’s relatively innocent comments.â€Â
They are innocent relative to what I’m about to unleash if these ignorant shitheels, I mean loyal Democrats, don’t start getting the fuck in line.
Suddenly 2008 feels like a great year to be a Republican.
God, I hope nobody wins. We’d be better off with no President at all than any of the current candidates.
[…] Obama, having let a racial stew fester on a slow boil for a couple of days to demonstrate the impotency of the Clintons’ aspirations to alpha victimhood in the Democratic presidential campaign, […]
This increasingly seems simultaneously impossible and inevitable.
So according to Loy, Obama refusing to dismiss Clinton’s race-baiting as not really race-baiting makes Obama the race-baiter? It really is impossible to underestimate the intelligence of a Clinton True Believer.
Blowjob Bill claimed to have a detailed list of 80 instances of bad behavior by the Obama camp while he was on the Chicago radio show. Has anyone seen said list or is this another one of the former liae-in-chief’s fairy tales?
Shrillary has headed one of the sleaziest campaigns since Pat Robertson ran. Nobody dares mention that, except (unfortunately) Hannity and Limbaugh, neither of whom the Dems will take seriously, because they’re “R3thugl1can$”. I mean, she’s running a campaign that had the candidate had an “R” behind his name, would have him castigated as “T3h Rasc1s1.” Libs. Oy.
B Moe,
IIRC, Loy was with Clinton then jumped ship to Obama and is now undecided, thinking about McCain.
– And all the while the Right wing media is arguing with the Left wing media,blaming each other, and Russert for good measure, for fomenting this entire kerfluffle.
– RoboBitch has sold her soul for this opportunity, staying with a National disgrace of a husband all these years, so now she’ll stop at nothing to win the chance to take her rightful place as the Queen. Obama knows the Clinton policy of throwing enyone under the bus if they don’t sign a pledge to vote fo4r them. Hes not going to go quietly.
– Its only going to get dirtier and raunchier, and provide great comic relief, or terrible political stage, depending if you love to see pols claw each others eyes out or not.
It’s been filed alongside the list of members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the FBI files of Clinton political opponents, and the documents Sandy Berger stole from the National Archives.
Rumors that it’s next to the list of Soviet agents waved around by McCarthy are simply untrue.
I love everything about this site!!