The Clintons

What in the world are they thinking in their passion to regain the White House? The prelude to the South Carolina primary was ugly. Two analogies come to mind on the part of a Clinton campaign facing a probable defeat in South Carolina: first that it was time to repeat Bill’s Sister Souljah moment when he repudiated an explosive statement by a black activist during the 1992 campaign thereby demonstrating to centrists that he wasn’t tied to special interest groups. The problem of course was that Sister Souljah was suggesting that blacks ought to kill whites to make up for all the black deaths that occur and was an easy target to repudiate. Obviously Obama doesn’t fit this comparison so the only conclusion left is that the Clintons are playing the race card to motivate white’s still harboring racial prejudice. Following the primary, Bill Clinton compared Obama’s overwhelming victory to Jesse Jackson. All of this followed their campaign’s attempts to smear Obama with his admission that he had tried marijuana when young. The approach is to have a surrogate make the statement and then have Hilary supposedly back off it.

Secondly, they continue making negative charges against Obama that have been proven false. The most egregious being their claim that he does not support abortion as evidenced by his “present” vote in the Illinois Legislature rather than a vote in favor of abortion legislation. This charge continued repeatedly even after the pro-abortion organization in Illinois explained it was their strategy to vote that way as the best counter to abortion opponents. This approach is right out of the George Bush playbook. Keep making false statements despite all the evidence to the contrary under the assumption that most people will only hear the claim and not the repudiation.

(A current Bush example: in his State of the Union address this week he again stated that if his tax cuts are not made permanent, the average taxpayer will be subject to an annual $1,800 dollar tax increase. Of course that average of all taxpayers is computed by adding in the no more than $500 that most taxpayers receive along with the $85,000 that taxpayers making over $500,000 get. A study by Citizens for Tax Justice noted that the top 0.6 percent of tax filers, those with more than $500,000 in income, received nearly three-quarters of the benefits of the capital gains and dividend tax cuts in 2005.)

Along with a lot of people, I felt that I would have no problem supporting any of the Democratic candidates in the 2008 election. I would probably vote for Dennis Kucinich because I believe that the Republican performance during the two Bush administrations is so bad that there is no rational argument for returning them to power.

But the Clintons are making it difficult. Right now they have alienated the African-American community (having squandered the previous high regard that they were held in) and given ammunition to all the Clinton haters. She may win the Democratic nomination but if McCain is the Republican nominee, I think she will have a difficult time overcoming Clinton antipathy and will lose the independents and the moderate Republicans who would be attracted to Obama but would prefer McCain to Clinton.

Bill Clinton’s role is disturbing. He appears to be uncontrollable by the Clinton campaign, which raises questions about her leadership abilities. The only chance is that she will galvanize the women’s vote.