Why Hillary's Men Troubles Explain Her Race to the Bottom

There's only one thing that makes sense of the Clinton campaign's clumsy and classless injection of race into her primary battle with Barack Obama. And that is that her victory in New Hampshire -- impressive though it was -- threatened to transform her into a special-interest candidate.

Hillary would not have won that battle without exaggerated support from women. Despite having campaigned vigorously as a candidate who just-so-happened to be a woman, her lifeline came from affinity voters.

How then to compete against Obama, who has -- as Al Sharpton recently complained -- run a race-neutral campaign? A man standing as a general-interest candidate despite his historic racial qualifications.

The answer, it seems, has been to inject race into the campaign by any means necessary. The effort has run the gamut from old-school racism -- Andrew Cuomo's execrable "shuck-and-jive" comment -- to tired racial paradigms -- a Clinton pollster's assertion that Hispanics don't vote for black people -- to anti-racism-as-racism -- the bizarre suggestion by a Clinton surrogate that Obama had been adopted by white America as its "imaginary hip black friend."

As distasteful as this campaign has been, it has worked. The media have segued neatly from Clinton's tears and her outpouring of support among women in the granite state to Obama's standing as a "black candidate" -- now awkwardly forced to defend the legacy of Dr. King from slights by the Clinton machine.

So much for the post-racial transcendence to which he has aspired; Obama has now even been yoked -- however tenuously -- to the discredited politics of Louis Farrakahn, thanks to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen's smear job this morning.

[A note to anyone covering that piece: Since when is it reasonable to hold a political candidate responsible for everything that's ever been published in his church's fucking newsletter?!? What horseshit.]

And so, while Obama is being forced to clarify that he is not, indeed, a Nation-of-Islam sympathizing closet anti-Semite, no one is looking much at Clinton's very real troubles winning over the hearts and minds of male voters.

From Rollingstone.com/politics

Comments

[Dailyfare]

"Hillary would not have won that battle without exaggerated support from women. Despite having campaigned vigorously as a candidate who just-so-happened to be a woman, her lifeline came from affinity voters."

Yes!

[liberalrebuttal]

Great Post !

I think the Clinton's finally confirmed that they are what everyone has been saying. Divisive and polarizing dirty politicians. Last week, they managed to totally divide the Democratic Party pitting Gen X and Millenial Blacks against Baby Boomer Blacks .

They have pit Men against women. They have pit the old voters against the young voters , Latino against Whites and Blacks , Unions against Unions , Liberals against Progressives and tarnished the only unity candidate in this presidential race. Barack Obama.

The Clinton's have been revealed for the slime they are and they will never get my vote I don't care what happens to the Democratic Party as a result. I am not going to sell out my soul to the Clinton's out of party loyalty. I'm done with them.

[nellie]

I thought it was the media that injected race into both campaigns, the Clintons went for the bait, Obama didn't, but both eventually had to address it.

I think the media played us all. Got to watch that meda reeeeeeeeally carefully.

[Jazz42]

Great post Mr. Dickinson.
Thank you Sir.

[Democrab]

Last time I looked, she was leading nationally 42 to 37 to 11.

Unless you're talking about some other kind of bottom, your premise is weak.

I'm not voting for Obama but I think he is a strong candidate and would make a good president.

But I don't look at him as a "black" candidate and I'm a pre boomer man and have absolutely no problem with Hillary's womanhood.

I guess I don't fall into the "cookie making mom" lover's category.

I think there are lots of women with her demeanor that aren't cut out for the kitchen, but make great leaders.

Harriet Tubman was too busy dodging bullets and sheriffs to bake any cookies, but she cut herself a path in history. That's my point.

[seawolf77]

Men do have a problem with Hillary, with her competence. Remember when government worked. It can again. To say Bush/Cheney has been a disaster is a disgrace to disaster. Think how New Orleans would look today under a Clinton administration. Think how much money has been spent on war, and yet do we have cheap oil. No. Only these guys could pull off that hat trick. The Clinton recession. Remember that's what they called the economy Bill Clinton left them. The Bush depression is what awaits whoever wins in Novemeber.

[Kane]

If anyone actually believes that the Clinton campaign plans to "play nice" from now on, I offer this from Jonathan Alter:

"But as John Edwards says (and Obama also knows, from his community-­organizing days), the old order never relinquishes power without a fight. "Iowa Nice" is over. The sweet culture of the cornfields that made Hillary's weeklong attacks on Obama in late November one of the dumbest political strategies of recent years is giving way to states with a more bare-knuckle tradition. The question is how rough the Clintons and their wide circle of political operatives will get. A frantic scramble is underway to feed reporters as much negative information about Obama as possible, but it's slim pickings. I've been leaked stories-if you can call them stories-ranging from his failure to leave more of a mark while he was in college (he made up for it in law school) to his failure to hold more hearings as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs. Not being Eurocentric enough for the foreign-policy establishment is hardly going to sink him."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/84540

[nads2985]

You end your diatribe by writing that "[A note to anyone covering that piece: Since when is it reasonable to hold a political candidate responsible for everything that's ever been published in his church's fucking newsletter?!? What horseshit.­]"

If you are (correctly) opposed to guilt-by-a­ssociation­, why do you attack Sen. Clinton by deriding the comments of a pollster, Andrew Cuomo, and an unnamed "adviser"? None of those are Sen. Clinton. You're engaging in the exact same kind of attack you accuse the Clinton campaign of.

Additionally, Obama has brought race into the campaign. Look at his speech after Iowa: from the start he invokes Civil Rights-associated rhetoric: "they said this day would never come," and constantly uses it thereafter (ignoring that the day that a black candidate won a primary in fact came decades ago, thanks to Jesse Jackson...­).

Lastly, Clinton didn't demean Dr. King's legacy, nor was her comment racist. As Charlie Rangel noted on NY1 last night, “How race got into this thing is because Obama said ‘race,’ but there is nothing that Hillary Clinton has said that baffles me. I would challenge anybody to belittle the contribution that Dr. King has made to the world, to our country, to civil rights, and the Voting Rights Act. But for [Obama] to suggest that Dr. King could have signed that act is absolutely stupid. It’s absolutely dumb to infer that Doctor King, alone, passed the legislation and signed it into law.” Sen. Clinton's point was that it was necessary to have a president who knew DC and could work the Hill in order to pass the landmark legislation. That has nothing to do with race - it is a historical fact.

[DietrichMoody]

1)9/11, 2)invading Iraq, 3)the growing war, 4)growing presence of the American military on Arab lands for the first time ever, 5) and the growing problems in the Middle East. requires a "post-racial transcendence" men know this. and what's in the minds of the Clinton camp and the Dick Morris' of the world??? Boring 1960's, pre-9/11, 1990's political strategies, appealing to the LOWEST common denominator voters. These people don't get it. men know this and will forever be behind "Clinton's very real troubles winning over the hearts and minds of male voters."

[khereva]

Why, haven't you heard, sir? She's inevitable. And anything that threatens that inevitability must be crushed, inevitably.

[aisling]

Thank you sooo much for your assessment of the Clintons;usual shenanigans, supported by the press. Who do think they are kidding? They will Carl Rove it if they think it's necessary. I've watched Hillary over the last few months, never really trusting her. She's in bed with the wrong people for starters and her ditsy husband's implications that Barak Obama is not a viable and very able candidate is tacky. He has the smarts to smell a rat,even when it;s dressed up in a subtle word cloth that Hillary will continue to weave at any cost to her integrity. I congratulate Obama for handling the Clinton remarks tactfully but accurately as inappropriate on every level, when invoking race. It is absurd to imply Obama is aligned with Farrakan.P­LEASE!

[PPatt]

Huh? I'm not voting for her but that doesn't compel me to indulge in fantasy. What "race to the bottom?"

I will give you this though. I have never been more disgusted than with Hilary's calling out Edwards for putting a human face on the healthcare crisis by claiming he was using the family of Natalie Sarkasian (sp?), the young girl denied benefits by Cigna which led to her death.

So what is she going to do if not exactly that. Isn't the human face what healthcare reform is all about?

Her being a democrat supposedly for health care reform made this all the more disgusting.

For a while I though she and Obama were "stealth progressives" and would unload at some point during the campaign like a populist Willie Stark from "All the Kings Men." Instead all we get from them are things like these and Obama's tepid claims that "I am the true populist."

We really lap this stuff up, don't we?

[whichchange]

vitriol:

[A note to anyone covering that piece: Since when is it reasonable to hold a political candidate responsible for everything that's ever been published in his church's fucking newsletter?!? What horseshit.­]

This is exactly the same standard your piece uses against Hillary. Everything any obscure Hillary supporter says is according to you Hillary's doing. Yet you neglect the simple facts that it is Obama's supporters, NOT the Clintons, who first mentioned the race issue.