Clintonism

Maureen Dowd is not someone I usually cite as an authority.  It is fascinating to see her say so openly what everyone has long known about the Clintons. 

If Bill Clinton has to trash his legacy to protect his legacy, so be it. If he has to put a dagger through the heart of hope to give Hillary hope, so be it.

If he has to preside in this state as the former first black president stopping the would-be first black president,  so be it.

The Clintons — or “the 2-headed monster,” as the The New York Post dubbed the tag team that clawed out wins in New Hampshire and Nevada — always go where they need to go, no matter the collateral damage. Even if the damage is to themselves and their party.

Bill’s transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy.

Wow.  Of course, all this is nothing we have not known the Clintons for a long time.   But coming from arch-Democrat Dowd, wow.   And then there is this analysis by Dick Morris. 

If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama's ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It's one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don't read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.

Obama has done everything he possibly could to keep race out of this election. And the Clintons attracted national scorn when they tried to bring it back in by attempting to minimize the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in the civil rights movement. But here they have a way of appearing to seek the black vote, losing it, and getting their white backlash, all without any fingerprints showing. The more President Clinton begs black voters to back his wife, and the more they spurn her, the more the election becomes about race -- and Obama ultimately loses.

It's hard not to think that Morris is right.  Obama did try, very hard, to minimize race as a factor in the campaign.  And for a while he succeeded.  It was the Clintons who, just at the moment their campaign looked to be in crisis, put it back in.  Are the Clintons cynically, if very cleverly, using race as a wedge issue to split the Democratic party in their favor?   I don't know that for sure.  Would the Clintons do so, if they thought they had to to win?  About that, there can be no doubt.  Just ask Maureen Dowd.