Political Buzz

All strategies have failed. Time is running out - or expired on her campaign altogether. She barely won one state on Tuesday (out of a much-needed two available) and is now quietly being put away as a viable candidate, with even the likes of party peace-keeper and uncommitted superstar Rahm Emanuel noting today that Obama is the”presumptive nominee” for the Dems.

But, of course, Hillary and the overall Clinton campaign presses on. West Virginia is the new battle cry, and the campaign is gearing up for what they apparently believe is still a dead heat race, something that is still uncertain. Ads are going up, Terry McAuliffe is smiling, and Hillary, Wolfson and Co. are spinning like heck.

But is the true desperation of HRC’s situation bubbling up to the surface? The answer is yes after seeing just an amazingly ham-handed quote from Hillary in an interview with USA TODAY.  It’s been a newsmaker for just about 24 hours now, but the shock is retained.

HRC sees hope for her campaign yet, as she points out some core deficiencies in Obama’s voting base,

…Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

And just like that, the race card has been played again. Chalk up one time for Bill, now one time for Hillary.

This is such a blatantly off-base remark for Hillary that it must be coming from fear - fear that the end really is at hand and that she must resurrect her “kitchen sink” strategy to, well, sink Obama at the last-minute. It’s a style that has never come from Hillary herself, but usually in veiled jabs via the now-disgraced Mark Penn or Howie Wolfson. A pundit’s language used to describe a valid concern, but not something we see from the candidate herself/himself.

That’s right - Hillary’s bizarre rant does contain a valid piece of fact. Obama’s struggles with white working class voters are real and very well-documented. It’s the only reason that the party brass and the vaunted superdelegates haven’t shut down the race already. No Dem wants to see a Kerry-style scenario where moderates flock to the GOP because of so-called “elitist” tendencies and simmering controversies.

Critics might point out that a  potential solution to HRC’s belief in Obama’s white problem is a unified front behind the nominee, closing ranks and rehabilitating Obama’s image. Not taking racially tinged shots when the game is nearly up.

In all seriousness, this type of campaigning from the Clinton camp really could signal the end.  While superdeleagtes and the like are concerned about Obama’s image, they won’t tolerate what could be seen as a “sore loser” mentality from Hillary at a time when the heat from a positively radioactive fight should be settling down.

And black Democrats could be alienated even more in the wake of these comments. James Clyburn jabbed back at Hillary today, noting that Obama’s “white problem” could very well become Hillary’s “black problem” if she were to somehow get the nomination.

Well, I don’t think that carries any more weight than anyone who will argue that the fact that she only got 8 percent of the African-American vote in North Carolina indicates that she cannot get African-American votes in the general election. It’s one thing for us to measure these two Democratic candidates against each other. It is totally something else again for us to measure a Democratic candidate against a Republican candidate. Those are two different things — apples and oranges — and I do believe it is a stretch for us to consider otherwise. If we buy into that, and we buy into the conventional wisdom that no Democrat wins the presidency getting only 8 percent of the African-American vote, then what does that to say for her prospects in the fall?

So I think that we have to be very, very careful with all of this. And I really believe that this is the kind of stuff that I had been talking about with tamping down the enthusiasm of young people, because scores and scores of non-black young people have gotten involved in this campaign this year. They are very excited about Barack Obama, for whatever reason. A lot of it nobody can really fathom, but it’s happened. And I think we would do well as Democrats to welcome the support, welcome the reactivation of African-Americans, welcome the re-involvement of young white Americans, welcome all of these people into our fold and give them some positive messages to carry forward, and not keep talking about what may or may not be the other person’s drawbacks.

She’s hearing the footsteps…

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Filed under: 2008, Democrats, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, The Blog