Hillary's race games

There is an op-ed in today's New Tork Times by Orlando Patterson that is required reading. Not that anyone will read it. I mean, how can anyone get past the lurid Eliot Spitzer story? In passing, let me mention, Spitzer is a Clinton-backing super delegate.

Patterson argues that Hillary's red phone ad is really making the case that your wife and children can't be safe with a black man. This is the age-old concern, dating back to slavery, that black men are a threat to our way of life. Is Patterson right? Was Hillary playing on white fears about black men invading their homes? I don't know. Patterson is willing to admit he can't know what the crafters of the ad intended.

But let's take an opportunity to pause and put several things together in one place. For me, the picture is a Clinton campaign that plays games with race, is insensitive to the ways black voters view the world and respond to messages, and inflames, rather than repairs, racial divisions.

First, Bill Clinton attempted to remind us that Obama, like Jesse Jackson, won South Carolina only because black voters voted for him. This did two things, it marginalized Obama by depicting him as a black candidate, second, intentionally or otherwise, it advanced the argument that black voters can't be trusted to make sensible decisions--they won't vote in ways that are good for them or good for the country, but instead, they are going to vote for the black candidate, whether it is Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Barack Obama. So we should disregard their choices as we try to make sense of trends and outcomes in the electoral process.

Second, Hillary and her campaign staffers have attempted to portray Obama as a Muslim, or at least to equivocate when equivocation is laughably inappropriate. This isn't about suggesting that he will be in league with the terrorists, it's about portraying him as an outsider. He's not like us and it is, by implication, unthinkable to imagine electing him. Strictly speaking, this isn't about race, but viewed through a wider lens it is--we are a white christian nation, and Obama has no business leading us. It would be an exaggeration to claim that Hillary and her campaign are spreading this message. Much of this is originating in the Republican party and being spread by bloggers and others at the paranoid fringes of the conservative spectrum. The Clinton campaign is, however, doing something very similar to what Hillary did when she stood up on the Senate floor to weigh in on the decision to invade Iraq. When she should have attacked the misguided and deceitful claims being put forward by the Bush administration in the lead up to the Iraq war, Hillary instead echoed them. Confronted with lies and innuendos and misstatements about Obama, Hillary is, once again, echoing them rather than attacking them.

Third, Hillary is offering Obama the vice presidency even though he has more votes, more delgates, and has won more states than she has. A portion of the African American electorate and some observers in the blogosphere have called this Hillary's "back of the bus" strategy. Obama shouldn't expect to drive the bus--he's an African American--but he should be content to take a seat in the back and enjoy the ride. I don't think this idea ever occurred to the Clinton campaign. Their calculations were political--they looked at a slice of the democratic party, noticed that they liked Obama but had fears that he was too inexperienced, and thought they could collect their votes by saying: a vote for Hillary/Obama is a vote for Obama, but the more seasoned, ready to lead Obama eight years from now. But this cynical and calculated maneuver, like other things the Clintons have done, is tone-deaf to the response in the African American community.

After Obama wins today in Mississippi, expect the Clinton campaign to dismiss the win as meaningless--a product of black voters voting for a black candidate in a state that the Republicans will carry in November. Here's what I would hope the Clinton campaign would see--the remarkable fact that an African American won a primary in the deep south, in a state that is notoriously linked with segregation and racial violence. This won't be what they see, and for me, this should be a troubling realization for those who still believe that Hillary cares about the right things.