If there was any doubt that the Village wants to see a McCain-Clinton contest, it was put to rest this weekend. They’ve already called it, the next nine and a half months or so are just to let the inevitable happen, and besides, dumping on Clinton is a fun pastime for the Village.
But they’re having lots of fun tearing down Obama and Edwards too. Before the SC primary for the Democrats, the Village was having a grand time of it, and even with Obama’s substantial win in SC, they’re having even more fun painting him as Jesse Jackson, a nice enough man, but you know what? He’s just the black candidate.
The crucial number in Barack Obama’s expected victory in the South Carolina primary today will be the percentage of white voters who cast ballots for the Illinois Senator.
Obama’s performance among whites – he appears likely to win 60 percent or more of African-American votes – will provide a rough gauge of the willingness of white Democratic southerners to support a black presidential candidate.
Seems like they are dumping on Obama pretty hard, but remember the plan is to tie everything into the Clintons…and then tie everything around their necks.
With Obama heading towards victory in South Carolina, Bill Clinton has sought to draw attention to Obama’s dependence there on black voters.
Clinton put his not-very-subtle strategy on display in Charleston on Thursday when he told an audience: “As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender,” he said. “They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender — that’s why people tell me Hillary doesn’t have a chance of winning here.”
Obama, in turn, has sought to make the case to South Carolinians that he can and should be the candidate of all Democrats, regardless of race:
“If I came to you and I had polka dots but you were convinced that I was going to put more money in your pockets and help you pay for college and keep America safe, you’d say, ‘OK, I wish he didn’t have polka dots, but I’m still voting for him..'”
Asked to assess Clinton’s remarks, Obama said, “I’ll let the Clintons speak to what their strategy is going to be.”
Those nasty Clintons are playing the race card, you see. But you know what? That’s what the Village wants.
“There is a substantial residual of race-related fear, and President Clinton’s frequent invocation of race/gender differences is tapping into it. Iowa and New Hampshire did not have the demographics to tempt Obama’s opponents to play to racial identity, but from here on the demographics for this style of campaigning are very seductive. I look for continued hints, then denials and high road talk, then hints, etc.”
The Obama campaign is struggling to find a way to choke off both Clinton rhetoric on race and the recently growing inclination of the media to define the contest in terms of race.
Their problem, one knowledgeable source in Obama’s campaign noted, is that to confront the issue, and specifically to confront Bill or Hillary Clinton, would only serve to “expand” a discussion that Obama supporters view as likely to undermine the colorblind premise of his campaign.
Keep in mind the Village has decreed that Hillary has no choice but to play the race card, Obama has no choice but to defend on the race card, and both candidates are opening the door for the Republicans to do the same.
It makes good press, after all, because the Democrats’ campaign season has been so long, drawn out, and dirty.
What ought to trouble Democrats is that their two leading candidates have reached this point at a time when a great many signs suggest their competition could continue long after the 22-state showdown on February 5 — probably until Texas and Ohio vote on March 4. That means that unless the candidates can climb back off this emotional ledge, they will have plenty of time to damage each other — and the party’s prospects next fall. Nasty, brutish, and long is an ominous combination for Democrats.
Remember, the Village wants this Obama guy out of the way as soon as possible so they can get right down to the main event: the Clenis. They’re getting pretty annoyed that this primary season is lasting more than a couple months…how long and brutal that is. They figured Clinton would have won by now and are pissed off that she hasn’t. They have the depths of the Clenis to plumb and a saint to crown on the other side. Obama is just gumming up the works, especially by winning SC.
So it’s time to pull the plug on Obamamania.
Members of the African-American community here are all set for a black president. But they fear the white establishment in Washington isn’t.
Interviews with more than 30 Columbia-area African-American college students and professionals show overwhelming support for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as Saturday’s South Carolina primary approaches.
But many of those interviewed, while thrilled with the prospect of an Obama presidency, worry that the white-dominated government in Washington would work to circumvent the agenda of a black president — an underlying concern that could tarnish Obama’s historic appeal in this state and elsewhere.
Portia Young, a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, said, “The people working under him would still have to support him.” The Washington system wouldn’t be changed overnight, she added, and the historical gains of having the first black president in office could be canceled out if Obama isn’t allowed to govern because of his race.
Alice Boutte, a 56-year-old retiree who sells used cars and Mary Kay cosmetics, wants to see Obama in the White House.
“However, I’m so afraid for him. I just wonder how long will he last and will he have the support of the Senate? It’ll be tougher, not having the full support of his office in the White House, then he can only do but so much.”
This fear has cost Obama at least one vote already. Edwin Green, a 36-year-old director at an insurance company, said concerns about Obama’s race hampering his effectiveness are a key reason he does not back the candidate.
“I think it’s a matter of getting things done,” explained Green. “He’s going to run into so many obstacles being a black man. Every bill he tries to pass, he’s going to get shut down.
“`Are we really and truly ready for a black president?'” Green says he asked himself, before deciding on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Thinking about his own experiences in corporate America and being forced to bring it “10 times more than the next man,” the answer Green came up with was “no.”
He can’t win in the general election, you know. You’re wasting your time voting for him. South Carolina doesn’t really matter anyway. It’s all about Super Tuesday and how Obama’s past is going to screw him.
There was some buzz about it, but it wasn’t really a gotcha photo, and it really doesn’t help Barack Obama, that photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton sandwiching indicted political fixer Tony Rezko at some forgotten fundraiser.
Billary were like two icy slices of white political bread, and Rezko stood between them like meat. All the Clintons probably knew of Rezko was what they could feel coming through his palms pressed against their backs: some ambitious somebody ready to make some moves.
That won’t hurt Hillary. And she’s probably got some other images in mind — either real photos or word pictures — about Rezko and Obama that she’ll probably drop on the way to Super Tuesday.
One image will surely involve the dream house that Rezko helped the Obamas buy. And another involves Rezko himself, about to stand federal trial in a huge political corruption case involving not only Democrats, but old bull Republicans in Illinois, with Rezko passing through the metal detectors in the federal courthouse.
Those are the images Obama must concern himself with. The Rezko-Clinton photograph wasn’t much.
“I’ve probably taken hundreds of thousands of pictures,” Hillary Clinton told “Today” show host Matt Lauer. “I don’t know the man. I wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door. I don’t have a 17-year relationship with him.”
Perhaps some of the Obama folks hoped that photo would help them — a play on the old Clinton strategy of pulling everyone down into the mud. But Rezko won’t stick to her. She scraped him off her shoe with ease.
“I try not to attack first, but I have to defend myself — I do have to counterpunch,” said Sen. Clinton, playing the unwilling combatant, the victim forced to protect herself.
As she spoke, you could hear the razors clacking against the back of her teeth. Sen. Obama must have heard them, too.
He’s the one with the long relationship with Rezko. He’ll pay for that friendship. If he wants to survive the Clintons and their ambition, Obama will have to fight back, hard. He’s been much too timid, much too gentle with them. He’s too nice, and he’s in a street fight.
Obama can’t win because he’s not black enough. Wait, he’s too black. Wait, he’s too mean to Hillary and turning off the woman vote. Wait, he’s too nice and turning off the manly man vote.
What’s a voter to do? Why, vote McCain, of course.
Other conservative politicians–or former politicians–have taken their anti-McCain arguments to absurd lengths. Take Tom DeLay, for instance, whose K Street pandering led to numerous indictments and contributed greatly to the Republican losses in 2006. The former House majority leader said, without a trace of irony in his voice, that John McCain “has done more to hurt the Republican party than any elected official I know of.”
Mark Levin, a longtime confidant of both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who now hosts his own increasingly popular talk show, took the anti-McCain argument a step further on his show last Wednesday. “At this point, anybody who supports John McCain and claims to be a conservative, let me be blunt: You’re not a conservative.”
Which came as a surprise to Jack Kemp, the ardent supply-sider who was the conservative alternative to George H.W. Bush in 1988. “That’s just so preposterous,” said Kemp. “I don’t agree with McCain on several things. He’s gotten right on the economy. He’s right on foreign policy. And he’s right on the war on terror.”
And no doubt a surprise also to Phil Gramm (lifetime ACU rating of 95), whose presidential campaign was endorsed by
National Review in 1996. And to Sam Brownback, a stalwart conservative and one of the most outspoken pro-life politicians in America today. And to Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, arguably the most conservative member of the Senate.“John McCain and I have stood side by side on many issues,” Coburn said in endorsing McCain last week. The most important, he added, are “fiscal responsibility” and the “sanctity of human life.”
See, the real victim here is Saint McCain. While those nasty Democrats are attacking each other, poor John is getting beat on by Rush and Rick Santorum. Somebody has to save him, and that somebody is the Village. He’s the only one who can win. He’s the only one who has an inkling of a hope to beat the Democrats in 2008 (with quite a bit of help from us.) Because the unthinkable alternative…well…
It’s too horrible to contemplate!
IN the wake of George W. Bush, even a miracle might not be enough for the Republicans to hold on to the White House in 2008. But what about two miracles? The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton and John McCain, should they not evaporate, at last give the G.O.P. a highly plausible route to victory.
Amazingly, neither party seems to fully recognize the contours of the road map. In the Democrats’ case, the full-throttle emergence of Billary, the joint Clinton candidacy, is measured mainly within the narrow confines of the short-term horse race: Do Bill Clinton’s red-faced eruptions and fact-challenged rants enhance or diminish his wife as a woman and a candidate?
Absent from this debate is any sober recognition that a Hillary Clinton nomination, if it happens, will send the Democrats into the general election with a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender and who said what about Ronald Reagan.
What has gone unspoken is this: Up until this moment, Hillary has successfully deflected rough questions about Bill by saying, “I’m running on my own” or, as she snapped at Barack Obama in the last debate, “Well, I’m here; he’s not.” This sleight of hand became officially inoperative once her husband became a co-candidate, even to the point of taking over entirely when she vacated South Carolina last week. With “two for the price of one” back as the unabashed modus operandi, both Clintons are in play.
Again, don’t misunderstand the context here. This isn’t a warning against voting Hillary. Frank Rich and the rest are positively salivating at the prospect of McCain versus Billary. They can launch Village Idiocy like anime robot missile swarms upon the public and marvel at their own super-incredible wisdom on a daily basis. Reverse psychology is very clever, you see.
By pleading not to have this contest, Rich is signaling that the Village is going to in fact do everything in its power to make it happen.
You see, McCain gives the Republicans fits of apoplexy, just as Hillary does. The same actually goes for the other side, the Democrats can’t stand either one (by Village reckoning, and you’d better believe that’s the message they’ll send.) The prospect of having to choose between the two is so much fun to the rumor royalty that they can’t stand it. It’ll be great fun, and in the end the Village can look like the big brother to the country and remind people how much they need the Village to tell them what to do in their lives.
Only the Village can decide the Presidential race, not the voters. And that’s the real race in 2008.
