Obama, Clinton, South Carolina and Beyond
As expected, with 80% of the black vote going his way, Obama won the Democratic Primary in South Carolina. What wasn’t so expected is that he did much better with white voters than anticipated. Against an overt, vitriolic race-baiting strategy employed by the Clintons’ two weeks before the primary to attempt to paint Obama as the “black” candidate, clearly many white voters didn’t take the bait and issued a stinging rebuke to the politics of personal destruction, of which the Clintons are its most astute practitioners.
What happens after South Carolina?
A great many things…
First and foremost, the democratic party has been irreparably damaged thanks to the ruthlessness employed by the Clintons’. Particularly odious was the naked attempt to marginalize Obama as the “black” candidate running for the democratic nomination, not as a democrat running for the presidency who happened to be black. These tactics came on the heels of a whispering campaign in which Clinton proxies tried to paint Obama as a drug dealer and a candidate who would never be able to garner the white vote. This from the party of civil rights?
For the Clintons it’s all about power and their sense of entitlement. How dare the impudent Obama stand in the way of Hillary’s coronation! Doesn’t he know that it’s her turn? After all, Bill owes her quite a debt for her role as the long-suffering wife while impeachment loomed. Obama could be the standard bearer for a new generation of African Americans, those who think it is finally time to get off the liberal plantation. Those aspirations/politcal realities can be summarized with the proposition: why vote for the wife of the country’s first black president when you can vote for the real thing?
Should Hillary ultimately win the party’s nomination it will not have been cost free. Based on the inexcusable manner in which the Clintons’ treated Obama, there exists the very real possibility that many African Americans may stay at home for the general election. If they do so, that could be catastrophic for the Democrats as they have almost always needed 100% of the black vote (along with high turnout) in order to win any presidential contest against the Republicans.
The big question for Obama is whether or not he can capture a sufficient number of white voters to counter Hillary in the Super Tuesday states where African-American voters as not as plentiful as in South Carolina.
Secondly, South Carolina proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the Clintons’ are very much a team package. As one article deftly phrased the new inescapable political reality: Hillary may be on the ticket, but it is Bill that is running. Or to use Frank Rich’s terminology, Bill is now officially a co-candidate. Her utter reliance on his role as former president and party elder makes her his dependent. In light of this inescapable reality, her assertion that she is running her own campaign and is to be viewed as the “feminist” candidate is simply laughable.
If Team Clinton wins the presidency (again) based on the out-front campaigning Bill dutifully performed for Hillary, does anyone doubt that he will overshadow her in the White House? His sleazy and scorched earth performance this week in South Carolina also serves to remind voters that there was something they knew they didn’t like about the Clintons’. Will the country be quick to return this prevaricating and breathtakingly corrupt couple back to once again soil the people’s house and the institution of the presidency?
Although the sentiments will never be expressed publicly, after South Carolina, the issue for many undecided Democrats is this: Dare they entrust Hillary with the awesome powers of the presidency to preserve her legacy in concert with one who did so much to cheapen, degrade and debase that sacred office? Obama can only hope that, increasingly the answer will be no.
Beacon Street Journal
Monday, January 28, 2008
By Johnny K
