Clyburn To Bill Clinton: "Chill" On Obama

CNN:

The bitter back-and-forth between former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama has led a prominent black lawmaker to tell the former president Monday to "chill a little bit."

The two Democratic front-runners, Illinois Sen. Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, are locked in a battle for the key South Carolina primary this Saturday.

Read the whole story: CNN

Comments

[anghiari]

08:30 PM on 01/22/2008

BILL'S OBAMA STRATEGY
It takes an attack dog to know an attack dog...Bill Clinton's ex-buddy Dick Morris' take on Bill's Obama Strategy below...point by point

"WHY is Bill Clinton courting such intense publicity, in evitably much of it negative?
Is he crazy? Crazy like a fox.


He has two goals and is achieving them both spectacularly.
First, he wants to be the same kind of lightning rod for Hillary that she was for him during his run for the presidency.

Now, she rarely gets hit anymore. They're hitting Bill instead.

The other method behind his madness is that Bill wants to suck up all the oxygen in the room and dominate the coverage of the Democratic contest. By doing so, he cuts Obama out of the news, pushes him off the front page, and usurps the headlines.

His tactics now are reminiscent of those he used to black out John Kerry during the lead-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention.


Ultimately, the Clintons are playing a game of jujitsu with Obama, using his own strength against him.

By challenging Obama for the black vote - by promising to go door to door in South Carolina in minority neighborhoods, for example - Bill is highlighting the question: Will Obama carry the black vote? Of course, he will. He leads, 4 to 1, among African-Americans now.

But by making that the central question, Obama's South Carolina victory will be hailed as proof that he won the African-American vote. Such block voting will trigger the white backlash Sen. Clinton needs to win.

Once whites see blacks voting en masse for a black man, they will figure that it is a racial game and line up for Hillary. Already, she carries white voters by 2 to 1.