Discussing the newest depth to which the Clinton campaign has stooped has become so irritatingly repetitive, at some point I will have to just stop mentioning them. And there are real news stories of major importance this week, such as the implosion of Zimbabwe and the inexplicable posture that the president of South Africa has taken toward it. But surely yesterday's Clinton ugliness surely deserves comment nevertheless.
In the final lead-up to the vote in Pennsylvania, the Clinton campaign filled that state's air waves with a new TV ad which managed to mention Osama bin Laden, the stock market crash of 1929, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Hurricane Katrina. Apparently the Clinton camp was so pleased with the results of her "3am phone call" ad in Texas that a decision was made to end Pennsylvania just going whole hog on the fear mongering.
At the same time, Bill Clinton told radio station WHYY in Philadelphia that Barack Obama had "played the race card on me." Clinton told the interviewer that "you have to really go some to play the race card on me," adding that he has an "office in Harlem, and Harlem voted for Hillary, by the way," and "I have 1.4 Million people around the world, mostly people of color... on the world's least expensive AIDS drugs...." At the very end of the interview, thinking his mic was no longer live, he added, "I don't think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?"
If Billary manages to stay in the race, the campaign will be hard pressed to come up with an ad that would top the one they recently ran. But just in case they are listening, I have a suggestion: to the list of America's "big fear" moments when the country desperately needed wise political leadership, add the moment when an ex-President and his wife went off the deep end and became the ugliest force in American politics.