Dan

Calabrese

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January 18, 2008

Obama Lets Race-Mongering Hillary Off the Hook

Apparently Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama understand the concept of mutual assured destruction – at least when it comes to their own political hides. That long-obsolete concept is no longer useful in achieving nuclear deterrence, but it may have just deterred an infantile game of political one-upmanship – an infantile game Obama was winning.

Democrats to the core, Clinton and Obama have agreed to back away (at least for the moment) on the use of race-mongering, and to give each other license to blame their staffs and “over-exuberant supporters.”

Do you think, maybe, Obama is not very smart? A little over a week ago, it looked like Obama had Hillary on the ground with his foot on her throat. (Forgive the metaphoric image of a man beating up a woman. Just think of Hillary as Walter Mondale and everything will be fine.) Now he’s not only let her up, he’s helping her get away with some of her dumbest campaign tactics yet.

The racially charged campaign rhetoric originated entirely with Hillary. Reeling from her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, she was willing to try just about anything – including race-pandering – to get back to her position as Queen Inevitable. She tried crying. She tried sending out Bill to call Obama’s persona a “fairy tale.” And she tried open resentment at the comparisons made between Obama and Martin Luther King Jr., declaring King to be a less-than-transformational figure on the grounds that it took a president – a white dude – to actually pass the reforms King sought.

I don’t think Hillary meant to demean Dr. King, but only because it would be so monumentally stupid to do so. If Hillary thought it would help her to demean him, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Instead, she was trying to imply that activists alone don’t make a difference without ultimately appealing to a president who can take the requested action and change society. And of course, she meant to imply that she would be the get-it-done president.

So do-gooders from across the fruited plains can demonstrate all they want, but without President Hillary in power, all their efforts would be for nothing.

This strategy was so mind-bogglingly idiotic, I don’t think even Rick Lazio, her hapless 2000 U.S. Senate opponent, would have let her get away with it. Think of the actual implication of what she said – that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a man who could get things done for civil rights, but Lyndon Johnson was.

What complete rot. Johnson was a latecomer to the civil rights cause, having been openly hostile to it during most of his long career representing Texas in the House and Senate. He came around only because he saw the political reality changing. Who changed that political reality? Men like Martin Luther King Jr. – indeed, no one more so than him.

Clinton’s comment was a perfect example of a Washington establishment type believing that if a tree falls in the forest and a federal official is not there to hear it, it didn’t make a sound. She handed Obama a perfect opportunity to hammer her mercilessly for a) giving an erstwhile southern white racist credit for the achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and b) implying that the efforts of every activist for every cause are meaningless, because only the actions of the president make a difference.

Instead, Obama not only agreed to a truce on the issue, he let Hillary get away with blaming her staff and supporters for her words, which came out of her mouth.

Why? Here’s a thought:

Race is a toxic issue for the Democratic Party. The last thing they want is to inspire what could become a serious discussion about it. They depend on black voters to back them almost unanimously, and to not ask questions. The policies of the Democrats have certainly not made most black people better off, so if anything is said about race besides “Republicans are racists,” nothing good can happen for Democrats.

Obama wants the black vote, but he doesn’t want his blackness to become a major issue in the campaign. Hillary is happy to cast aspersions on the notion of a black president – anything to help Hillary – but doesn’t seem to know how to do so without making it obvious, and thus coming off as a clumsy, thinly veiled racist herself.

So both campaigns back away. Hillary is saved from herself, and Obama avoids comparisons to MLK that he can’t win, while avoiding what he thinks would be the mistake of reminding all the white bubbas out there what color he is.

Thus, a serious discussion about race – not a historical point of pride for the Democratic Party – will have to wait for another day. And Hillary gets the ball back, if only because Obama got too clever by half and decided to punt on first down.

This is Column # DC144.  Request permission to publish here.