The Knives Come Out
The New York Times reports on just how ugly the battle between the Clinton and Obama campaigns is getting. And the situation is getting ugly indeed.
In a tense day of exchanges by the candidates and their supporters, Mrs. Clinton suggested on Sunday that Mr. Obama’s campaign, in an effort to inject race into the contest, distorted remarks she had made about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Obama tartly dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion, adding that “the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign then attacked Mrs. Clinton for failing to repudiate one of her top black supporters for “engaging in the politics of destruction” with an apparent reference to Mr. Obama’s acknowledged drug use in the past. And throughout the day, supporters of Mrs. Clinton and of Mr. Obama each accused the other of injecting race in search of political gain.
The exchanges created apprehension among many of their supporters who viewed this moment — if perhaps inevitable, given the nature of the contest — as divisive for Democrats. At the same time, it offered a portrait of a party struggling through entirely unfamiliar terrain that has been brought into relief by Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton’s in New Hampshire.
Two factors have helped create the atmosphere in which race and gender are coming to play a more prominent role. The first is that Democrats now increasingly view both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton as credible and electable candidates, given their victories.
To me, it certainly looks like the Clinton campaign is the one pushing the buttons here, Obama not so much. (The Times sees that, too. They say it is Clinton who is playing the gender card and it is obviously Clinton's surrogates who are on the attack.) But there is real danger to the Democrats in this type of divisive attack politics being played completely internally. If the Republican candidates are smart, they will steer clear of this kind of nasty infighting. If they do, they stand a chance of differentiating themselves from this kind of political madness. That will offer voters a clear choice in November.
By martian, January 14, 2008 @ 10:08 am
I don’t see Obama as blameless in this mess. It’s obvious to me that he and his campaign staff have been looking for ANYTHING they could pounce on to bring up the race card and make him the victimized racial underdog in this contest. It takes a real stretch to take what Bill Clinton said as racial in any way, and I’m no fan of Slick Willie, but Obama’s supporters managed to find a way. I guarantee he and his staff see it as the best way to pull the black vote away from Hillary. He has pretty much had the younger black vote fron the beginning but he’s using this to go after the votes of the older (over 40) black voters who have still been mostly supporting Hillary.
That said, I’m sure Hillary is (or was) trying to very subtly play the race card with her remarks. It was predictable (and predicted by several different people) that she would do so after Iowa.
This could end up harming both of them – her for cynically playing the race card to win and Obama for being a whiner and playing it up as a victim.
By Mockin'bird, January 14, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
As Dr. King said,”…not by the color of their skin, but, by the content of their character.”
Mrs. Clinton and her surrogates are of bad character.
If I were an older black voter, I would be experienced in seeing the bad character of both the black, and the white, race hustlers.
But I’m a older white voter, and I am experienced in seeing the bad character of both
the black, and the white, race hustlers.