Josh Marshall sees two possible explanations that might explain the Clinton campaign's recent race-based behavior:
We seem to be at the point where there are now two credible possibilities. One is that the Clinton campaign is intentionally pursuing a strategy of using surrogates to hit Obama with racially-charged language or with charges that while not directly tied to race nonetheless play to stereotypes about black men. The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.
I don't dispute that these are in fact the only two legitimate possibilities here, but it seems to me that given everything we know about the way the Clintons run their campaigns, only one of these is actually believable. Machines just don't make these kinds of "mistakes" with this consistency. To do so, in fact, is antithetical to the idea of a political machine itself.
Until Saturday I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But then an anonymous Clinton advisor gave the following quote to The Guardian, and I began to change my mind:
"If you have a social need, you're with Hillary," the aide said. "If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."
As bad as that was, however, its nothing compared to what BET founder (and Clinton supporter) Robert Johnson said on Sunday. Take a look:
And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book – when they have been involved.
That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me, for a guy who says, ‘I want to be a reasonable, likable, Sidney Poitier ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ And I’m thinking, I’m thinking to myself, this ain’t a movie, Sidney. This is real life.
This is wrong on so many different levels I don't even know where to start. Johnson has since claimed that the comments in the first paragraph were related to Obama's days as a community organizer, and weren't intended to make anyone think of Obama's admitted past drug use, but as Josh points out, thats so nonsensical that its laughable. And as bad as this is, I think its actually the second part of the quote that's most revealing. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, for those who don't know, was a groundbreaking Academy award winning movie from 1967 about interracial marriage. The point, the whole and only point, in fact, of the movie was to examine the issue of race in American in the late-1960s. For Johnson to suggest that Obama's campaign is somehow the equivalent to Poitier's role in the movie is to explicitly suggest that the campaign is based entirely around race.
Combined with everything else that has come out of the Clinton camp in the previous week, it seems clear to me that this must be a deliberate strategy. I can't for the life of me understand why it is one that they think will win them votes, but that's really a separate question, isn't it?
And lest there be any doubt about this... not only were Johnson's statements made at an appearance with Clinton herself, the initial response from the Clinton camp to criticism of his remarks was to defend them.
Obama, for obvious reasons, isn't letting this one go:
In a statement released by Obama's campaign Sunday afternoon, former South Carolina State Rep. "I.S." Leevy Johnson, an Obama supporter, said he was offended Clinton did not condemn Johnson's comments."It’s offensive that Senator Clinton literally stood by and said nothing as another one of her campaign’s top supporters launched a personal, divisive attack on Barack Obama,” he said. “For someone who decries the politics of personal destruction, she should’ve immediately denounced these attacks on the spot.”
Clinton's campaign says Johnson was not referring to Obama's past drug use, but rather his career as an organizer and state legislator. Meanwhile, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, another African-American supporter of Clinton, said of the comments, "Sometimes people say things that aren't sanctioned … I can't speak for Bob."
As I was saying, I can't for the life of me understand why they want to pursue this strategy. I fully expect politics to be an ugly business, but this really is ridiculous. And combined with her recent attacks on Obama for his position on Iraq (I agree fully with Matt's analysis here), it is beginning to seem as if her entire campaign strategy is based around tearing down her opponent. If I didn't know better, I'd think she'd hired Karl Rove as an advisor.
As I began to explain yesterday, I think this presents a huge opportunity for Obama. His narrative has always been about changing the tone of our political debate, and although that's a critique with obvious general election appeal, applying it to the primary campaign was always going to be a bit more problematic. No longer. It's time, I think, to turn that narrative directly against Clinton herself.
This should be a very interesting week.
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