is NOT that it is a sign of her inherent racism - it is not. I do not for a second believe the Clinton's are 'racist' - though the fact they are happy to exploit potential racism in the electorate is damning enough ...
is NOT that it further alienates voters that fall outside of this demographic, though doubtless for some it does ...
It is a PROBLEM, precisely because it is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO last decade. Last half-decade even!!!
Frank Rich in the New York Times, makes that point brilliantly in his latest Op-Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/opinion/11rich.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin">piece:
This is not 1968, when the country was so divided over race and war that cities and campuses exploded in violence ... This is not 1988, when a Democratic liberal from Massachusetts of modest political skills could be easily clobbered by racist ads and an incumbent vice president running for the Gipper’s third term. This is not the 1998 midterms, when the Teflon Clintons triumphed over impeachment. This is not 2004, when another Democrat from Massachusetts did for windsurfing what the previous model did for tanks.
Indeed it is not, it is 2008, we have a country at war, facing economic crisis, and as Obama so often says in his stump speeches, a planet in peril. Unsurprisingly, this gives us a whole new ballgame in elections, and an electorate hungry, nay
starved for change:
Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars ... The year 2008 is far more complex — and exhilarating — than the old templates would have us believe. Of course we’re in pain. More voters think the country is on the wrong track (81 percent) than at any time in the history of New York Times/CBS News polling on that question. George W. Bush is the most unpopular president that any living American has known.
Rich argues that the demographic wars have altered; unprecedented registration of new voters, particularly new Democrats, has and will have an extraordinary impact come November. He cites, as evidence, astonishing increases in the number of young and African American voters in big states during the primaries. He also rightly points out, that Obama seems to realize, and capitalize, on this:
Mr. Obama hardly created this moment, with its potent brew of Bush loathing and sweeping generational change. He simply had the vision to tap into it. Running in 2008 rather than waiting four more years was the single smartest political decision he’s made (and, yes, he’s made dumb ones too). The second smartest was to understand and emphasize that subterranean, nearly universal anticipation of change rather than settle for the narrower band of partisan, dyspeptic Bush-bashing.
Even the media are so caught up in tales of yesterday, in Rove style 'swift-boating', as
the weaponry certain to sink any Democratic campaign:
Good as this demographic shift is for a Democratic ticket led by Mr. Obama, it’s even better news that so many pundits and Republicans bitterly cling to the delusion that the Karl Rove playbook of Swift-boating and race-baiting can work as it did four and eight years ago. You can’t surf to a right-wing blog or Fox News without someone beating up on Mr. Wright or the other predictable conservative piñata, Michelle Obama.
This may help rally the anti-Obama vote. But that contingent will be more than offset in November by mobilized young voters, blacks and women, among them many Clinton-supporting Democrats (and independents and Republicans) unlikely to entertain a G.O.P. candidate with a perfect record of voting against abortion rights.
Indeed it is a new day, a new year, one that Clinton and her campaign team seem to have under-estimated. That both John and Cindy McCain have made some effort to emphasize how he will
not be similarly negative in his campaigning (undermined of course by his Hamas-swipe) indicates that they are cottoning on to the enormity of the task ahead of them. Judgment, as Obama has said continuously, trumps experience, and for all her experience, Hillary Clinton's fiesty campaign has caused her to underestimate both her opponent and those she hopes to appeal to:
Guess what: there are racists in America and, yes, the occasional rubes (even among Obama voters). Some of them may reside in Indiana, which hasn’t voted for a national Democratic ticket since 1964. But there are many more white working-class voters, both Clinton and Obama supporters, who prefer Democratic policies after seven years of G.O.P. failure. And there is little evidence to suggest that there are enough racists of any class in America, let alone in swing states, to determine the results come fall.
Finally, Mr Rich's prediction?
... as long as the likely Democratic nominee keeps partying like it’s 2008 while everyone else refights the battles of yesteryear, he will continue to be underestimated every step of the way.
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