In the January 15 Washington Post article entitled ”A hand the Clintons are’nt showing” Eugene Robinson writes, ”Still it’s possible that the Clinton campaign has been so aggressive in keeping the race issue alive”. Robinson goes further to state, “Is it possible that accusing Obama and his campaign of playing the race card might create doubt in the minds of the moderate, independent white voters who now seem so enamoured of the young black senator. Might that be the idea.” In light of the foregoing, then, in light of the foregoing, clearly Robinson is on to something here. But to understand the dynamics of the Clinton-Obama racial conflict, it is critical that we understand its anatomy.
Going into the primaries, the Clintons believed that an unstoppable cake-walk to the coronation was a foregone conclusion given the presumptions prompted by her assumed aura of inevitability which ofcourse was proven unsustainble by subsequent developments as very little did they realize that, lurked unexpected, was the ensuing Obama challenge that grew increasingly potent by the day and caught the Clinton campaign off guard, throwing them into a tailspin, and leaving the once seemingly impregnable Clinton fortress as vulnerable as ever.
While the Clintons may not necessarily have engineered this race issue, nor anticipated the media frenzy feeding thereon, it became obvious to them that this was a do-or-die moment for their campaign. Hence for them the fundamental question seems to have boiled down to the prudence and wisdom of seizing this moment and adapting to the practicality of the utility of race for political advantage. Thus since that realization, then, they have not looked back. Their demagogic drumbit preying on the racial fears of the white electorate will continue unabated—albeit surrepiously day in and day out. Although they purport to exercise some restraint toward the demonization of Obama lately, there is ample evidence that they underhandedly will continue to ratchet up race issues until they are convined that they have effectively disabled the Obama campaign by driving a wedge between him and the white electorate, using black surrogates to neutralize his effectiveness, thereby rendering his challenge fatally impotent.
Tags: black surrogates, Hillary, Obama, race card, white voters
