From Mad to Sad

I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how 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."

Hillary Clinton, on her electability. See Clinton makes case for wide appeal.

I have, on occasion, expressed frustration and annoyance with the manner in which Hillary Clinton has conducted her candidacy during the course of the primary. See, e.g., We're All Losers. However, this latest appeal to White Power is truly beyond the pale. Is the next stop on the Hillary campaign trail a Klan rally? See also, Oliver Willis, Hillary White Power Clinton.

As Mike Barnicle says at the Huffington Post, Race Is All the Clintons Have Left:

Now, faced with a mathematical mountain climb that even Stephen Hawking could not ascend, the Clintons -- and it is indeed both of them -- are just about to paste a bumper sticker on the rear of the collapsing vehicle that carries her campaign. It reads: VOTE WHITE.

Before the North Carolina/Indiana primary, Jon Stewart (see video) asked the question of Hillary, "What happened to you?" as the screen showed her morphing into GWB. The question Stewart posed was on target. The answer was not. These days, I see a much stronger resemblance to the late Stom Thurmond:



At TPM, David Kurz notes, Pretty Black and White:

The political press spent weeks trying to divine whether the Clinton camp was really attempting to cast Obama as the black candidate, a favorite son candidate of the African American community. The Clinton camp vehemently denied it then and even as recently as a few days ago Bill Clinton claimed it was the Obama camp playing the race card against him.

Race has been the subtext of much of Hillary's argument for her own electability. But now she's thrown it right out there in the open: Obama can't win because he's black. Vote for me instead.

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Hers is not an appeal we'd tolerate from a Republican candidate, nor should we from a Democrat, no matter how sterling her progressive credentials might otherwise be.

There's been a lot of talk about the damage Hillary will do to the party by staying in the race this long. Perhaps she should consider the damage she's doing to herself.

How true. Clinton's pitiful pandering and appeal to the basest (racist) instincts in the electorate actually makes me more sad than mad.