April 24, 2008--And The Winner Is . . . Bill Clinton!

At the time it seemed like a slip of the tongue. Or more profoundly that he was slipping. That he had lost his legendary deft political touch--Bill Clinton was sounding like a racist.

It began during the South Carolina primary. Bill Clinton’s effort to turn Barack Obama into the black candidate. And it worked!

From then on, as Obama ran up an impressive series of post-Super Tuesday primary victories, he did so more and more as a black candidate, gaining, with each state, an increasing percentage of the African-American vote. We were fooled by the results in Wisconsin, as we were after the Potomac primaries, because he also remained a favorite of well-educated, affluent whites.

But in other parts of the country, where the economy as particularly distressed, a mini-backlash was building.

By the time they got to Texas and especially Ohio, Obama topped out in the percentage of white votes he was attracting and that number then began to decline until yesterday in Pennsylvania where he won just 38 percent of the white vote. We can attribute some of this to self-generated problems, notably his complex relationship with Reverend Jeremiah White and his now infamous “bitter” comments, which surely turned off many working-class white voters. Or gave them socially-acceptable cover to vote against him for these reasons and not because of his race. Though his race, for them, remained his primary deficit. (See NY Times article linked below.)

But no matter what Senator Obama did to harm himself during the past month, this piece of political jujitsu really began in South Carolina when the former president and aspiring First Man dealt the first of the lurid race cards.

Though he got caught in an out-and-out lie the other day when he claimed that the Obama people “played the race card on me” and then within 24 hour denied he said it, in fact Bill Clinton’s comparing Barack Obama to Jessie Jackson, his own former minister during the Monica Lewinsky affair, began to mobilize the very cross patterns of racial resentment that Obama spoke so eloquently about in his More Perfect Union speech. Which though full of difficult truths and inspiring language, ironically reminded many that he was in fact black. In case they hadn’t already noticed!

Before then, polling showed that Hillary Clinton was favored by upwards of 80 percent of black voters, a residue of being the wife of our “first black president,” so why would her husband begin the process of causing the leeching of those voters in Obama’s direction? At the time, if it was a conscious strategy, it seemed like a losing one. As the results on Super Tuesday and thereafter showed. Obama did better and better, piling up leads in the number of states won, elected delegates, and the popular vote.

It may, though, turn out to be a winning strategy. Conceived by Bill Clinton in at least two stages—during the current 2008 election season or, if that fails, for 2012. Here’s how I see it to be working:

Bill Clinton knew that after Obama’s surprise victory in Iowa and in spite of Hillary’s comeback in New Hampshire, he knew that this gave Obama’s candidacy credibility and, whatever he and Hillary did, the vast majority of black voters would migrate to Obama. Thus there was no political risk in alienating them further.

Hillary’s lot had to be cast with older women voters. White ones.

No matter how this may have made them feel, for the sake of winning at all costs, they had to forget about black folks. Even if this got them labeled racist. If Hillary was to have a future she had to become the Great White Hope. So enter her White Knight. And thus began a series of subtle, coded, and not so subtle race-based moves.

The first were the Jessie Jackson comments. At their essence Bill Clinton did more than just mention Obama and Jackson in the same sentence. Cleverer, and more untrue, in effect he said that of course, as a black man, like my good friend Jessie, in a state like South Carolina, Obama will win (wink, wink—blacks will vote for “one of their own”); but further, like Jackson, he will fail to win the nomination because Jackson, even though he won in SC, lost the nomination. (wink again—because he’s black). If this had not been an intended racist comment, Bill Clinton, good political historian that he is, would have noted that this was also true for Pat Buchanan and John Edwards—both of whom won in SC but did not go on to receive the nomination.

This was followed by what surely looked like an orchestrated series of race cards played by Bill himself, gallantly sacrificing his own reputation among his former African-American constituency, as well as by surrogates such as Mark Penn (who more than implied that Obama was a drug dealer during his university days) and Robert Johnson, CEO of Black Entertainment Television, who did some winking of his own about what Barack was really up to back in the ‘hood.

Of course Reverend Wright didn’t help, nor did Michelle Obama’s “proud-to-be-an-American” comments. These when coupled with the insinuations endlessly repeated by the media—which did not want to see the race ended and their ratings plummet—and egged on by the continued smears of the Clintons, from these bits and pieces, voters were putting together a mosaic portrait of Barack Obama: in spite of his brilliance and charisma and eloquence and biraciality and ability to mobilize young and well-educated voters of all races, the picture that came into focus for them was that of a 2008 version of Willie Horton (recall the Clinton campaign in one of its TV commercials darkened Obama’s skin color to make him look blacker and more sinister).

In classic Lee Atwater-Karl Rove fashion, Bill Clinton took the lead in defining Barack Obama as a contemporary version of a black militant. Which successfully scared the hell out of a vast majority of white people in Ohio six weeks ago and on Tuesday in the Friendship State.

But, the pundits are saying, Hillary is still way behind in delegates and popular votes; and it is nearly impossible with the primaries that remain, at least half of which Obama will win, for her to secure the nomination unless the Super Delegates “steal” it from Obama.

Well she wins in three ways—

First, there’s a miracle: in two weeks she wins in Indiana (watch out for white voters there) and pulls off an upset in North Carolina. This convinces enough Super Delegates that Obama has lost his appeal and momentum and can’t win in November. They thus start to flow toward Clinton.

Second and more likely, Obama manages to hang on and wins the nomination; and then largely because the Bill Clinton race strategy has been so effective, he loses to McCain in November.

So third, after a failed McCain presidency, coupled with his advanced age, in 2012 McCain loses his reelection bid to his Democratic opponent—Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Bottom line—

The projected winner is . . . Bill Clinton!