In an interview shown a few minutes ago on MSNBC and conducted earlier today, Bill Clinton was asked about the fairness of the "two against one" nature of he and Hillary both campaigning against Obama. There were plenty of ways for him to provide a reasonable answer to that question. He could have pointed out that Michelle Obama is a very effective campaigner for Barack, that he's just doing the same thing for Hillary, and that it wasn't his fault he was better known than Michelle Obama or Elizabeth Edwards.
He COULD HAVE done that, but he didn't. Instead, following in the footsteps of the worst race-baiting politicians of the old South, he explicitly played the race card. He didn't even answer the question, ignoring it to make his REAL point -- that Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice. They didn't show the other part of the interview (which may not even have been the same interview), but they also quoted him as saying that Hillary "couldn't win" in South Carolina because of her race and her sex.
MSNBC officially called it for Obama immediately after the polls closed, and it looks like he's going to have an overwhelming victory. The best thing is that Obama not only won the black vote, he won overwhelmingly among white South Carolinians under age 30. And he also apparently won among white college-educated South Carolinians, if I understood what they were saying about the exit polls. The verdict is clear: The Southerners who grew up in the segregated South are unwilling to elect a black man, but the people who hold the future of the South in their hands, white and black alike, are anxious to put the past behind them. And thank God for that!
I'll add that I don't think either of the Clintons are personally racist, but I do think they're more than willing to use the racism of others, or anything else that's handy, in their insatiable appetite for winning at any cost. And I desperately hope that they'll be sent out of this race in well-deserved disgrace over the shameless way in which they've conducted this campaign.