I was reading Ryan Lizza's new piece in The New Yorker, Minority Reports - After New Hampshire, a hint of racial politics, and all the pieces fell into place: today's incendiary comments from BET founder Bob Johnson, Andrew Cuomo's "shucking and jiving," Bob Kerrey's repeated "madrassa/Muslim" statements, Bill Shaheen's race/drug dealing references... They all made sense.
Lizza's piece makes the case (more than once) that having race become a central issue in the campaign harms Obama (thereby, helping Clinton):
(read on)
The best hope for an Obama victory was to kill the race issue in the crib of Iowa and New Hampshire, both of which have overwhelmingly white electorates. Racial politics have been refreshingly absent from this campaign, partly because of the lack of diversity in the first two states and partly because Obama has never made his race central to his campaign. That’s about to change, as Nevada, with its large Hispanic population, and South Carolina, with its large black population, prepare to vote. Obama has an interest in downplaying his race in both states. There are lingering tensions between the Hispanic and black communities which he doesn’t want to inflame, and some residual skepticism among black voters concerning Obama’s electability among whites. Interestingly, in the final days of the New Hampshire campaign, when defeat looked certain for Clinton, it was Hillary’s aides who started talking privately about racial politics. They argued that on February 5th, when twenty-two states vote, Hillary’s fire wall would be Hispanic voters in the largest states, such as California and New York.
Yes, it was in the Clinton campaign's interest to make race a central issue due to longstanding tensions between Hispanics and blacks.
Lizza goes on:
On the morning after Clinton’s victory, I talked to Sergio Bendixen, one of her pollsters, who specializes in the Hispanic vote. "In all honesty, the Hispanic vote is extremely important to the Clinton campaign, and the polls have shown—and today is not a great day to cite polls—that even though she was slipping with women in Iowa and blacks in South Carolina, she was not slipping with Hispanics," he said. "The fire wall doesn’t apply now, because she is in good shape, but before last night the Hispanic vote was going to be the most important part of her fire wall on February 5th." The implications of that strategy are not necessarily uplifting.
When I asked Bendixen about the source of Clinton’s strength in the Hispanic community, he mentioned her support for health care, and Hispanic voters’ affinity for the Clinton era. "It’s one group where going back to the past really works," he said. "All you need to say in focus groups is ‘Let’s go back to the nineties.’ " But he was also frank about the fact that the Clintons, long beloved in the black community, are now dependent on a less edifying political dynamic: "The Hispanic voter—and I want to say this very carefully—has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."
The question of who stands to benefit from making the campaign about race has only one answer: Hillary Clinton.
As Josh Marshall notes this evening:
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.
Bob Johnson's claim that he wasn't referring to Obama's admitted youthful drug use is too silly to even repeat. Indeed, the logic of his remarks make no sense if he was referring to Obama's time as a community organizer.
But, once again, the Clinton campaign pulls a "We-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about" excuse from its bag of tricks. And as Marshall points out, it's not even remotely believable.
Earlier today, Hiraga posted this diary which highlights precisely why the Clinton camp would want to make the issue about race. (Note that Hiraga also forwarded this post to Josh Marshall who quoted it extensively at TPM):
As many of the commentators swooning over Obama on the night of the Iowa caucasus noted, Barack was not running as a "black" candidate. He did not have the militancy and anger (fully understable militancy and anger, in my view) of Jesse Jackson or Sharpton. So he was not scarey to white people. He was running as a post-racial candidate.
I don't think that the Clintons are personally racist. However, their political biographies do show that they will do just about anything to win elections - they are the consummate hardball players (which might stand Hillary well in the general election, but anyway...). When Hillary made comments about LBJ's doing the heavy lifting in the civil rights revolution, and when Andrew Cuomo referred to Obama (implicitly) as "shucking and jiving" I think that they knew exactly what they were doing. Neither Hillary nor Cuomo makes comments like that to the press without thinking them out carefully. Both are experienced politicians from highly political families.
The purpose of the comments was to wave a red cloak in the face of the Obama people, and get them to respond with charges of "racism". Then suddenly Obama would be an angry "black" candidate again in the eyes of at least some white voters.
The psychological dynamics are very similar to those of Bill's 1992 "Sister Souljah" moment, and, I suspect, just as carefully calculated.
Hiraga notes that the Obama campaign fell into the trap, trotting out Jesse Jackson, Jr. to make his ill-considered remarks. Not ony that, but the Clintonites pulled a page from the Rove handbook and turned their own glaring misdeeds against their opponent, claiming that Obama and his team were "playing the race card."
All of this Machiavellian maneuvering seemed illogical in light of a South Carolina primary where African-Americans typically make up 50% of Democratic voters. But the truth is, Clinton trails badly in South Carolina and she and her campaign may be willing to give up the state in order to set up their strategy for the much more critical February 5 multi-state primaries.
As Lizza's piece points out, the more Clinton's team can puncture Obama's desire to rise above his race as a central tenet of his candidacy, the better it is for Clinton to separate Obama from Hispanic voters in large February 5 states, particularly, California. And the more the Obama campaign reacts to these Clinton provocations on race, the more successful the Clinton strategy becomes.
Now, there is a certain irony in Lizza's noting of Camp Clinton's Hispanic strategy at the same time that Clinton surrogates are seeking to disenfranchise the culinary union members in Nevada, many of whom are Hispanic. (One would hope the Obama campaign would be quick to point out this hypocrisy.)
But the pattern from the Clinton camp is quite clear: they want to make the campaign about race. They want to make Obama into the second coming of Jesse Jackson, 1984 & 1988.
It's politics that comes from a very dark place; one we expect from Republicans, but not from fellow Democrats.
As Hiraga notes at the end of his/her diary:
I'm an Obama supporter who thinks that his camp has misplayed this one. I am also disgusted by the Clintons' refusal to accept any limits in the political game. If we want any kind of Democratic unity, these people have got to be sidelined.
I agree. Obama's many endorsers need to call out these tactics, for the sake of decency and for the good of the Democratic Party.