Roberto Lovato over at Alternet has a theory that the divisive playing on racial tensions by the Clinton campaign is not accident. In fact it is only one manifestation of a wider strategy becoming more visible in the behaviors of many officials affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC).
More than any other political machine in this very tense political moment, politicians affiliated with the DLC have developed policies and made statements that reconfigure racial politics beyond the Southern Strategy -- appeals to white voter fear and anxieties with anti-black policy proposals that successfully transformed the once Democratic-leaning South into a Republican stronghold -- that still defines much of the Republican racial realpolitik. DLC affiliates have more or less formed a beeline to make racial comments appealing to white voters as an unprecedented racial reality has come upon America: white minority status.
Below the fold he goes on to give many recent examples:
Among the most recent comments and policy proposals by DLC affiliates reflecting the Sunbelt strategy are: the Geraldine Ferraro statement; the strong support for the anti-immigrant policies of the very punitive, anti-immigrant STRIVE Act by Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville, an enforcement-heavy immigration reform proposal which many Congressional Hispanic Caucus members have said will increase racial profiling; the anti-immigrant ads used by DLC Chair Harold Ford during his Senatorial bid in Tennessee; DLC stalwart Bob Kerrey's claim that Obama attended a "secular madrassa"; the numerous racially-charged comments made by former DLC leader Bill Clinton, and, of course, Hillary Clinton in the course of her own campaign.
This may help to explain why someone like Bill Clinton, prematurely named the "first black President" by Toni Morrison, can mouth sound bites that sound suspiciously like race-baiting to those not blinded by the Clinton light. In their desire to regain political power by mirroring their opposition, they are coming of with their own "Southern Strategy" lite. Too bad they are too blind to see how poorly it is working for the Publicans these days, compared to how things used to be.