In Contrast to Obama, Hillary Plays the Race Card

January 16, 2008

In Contrast to Obama, Hillary Plays the Race Card
By Dick Morris

On the evening of Jan. 3, it became clear that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was going to be a serious candidate for president with a viable chance of winning. The Clintons decided that he was going, inevitably, to win a virtually unanimous vote from the black community. Their own reputation for support for civil rights would make no difference.

With a black candidate within striking distance of the White House, a coalescing of black voters behind his candidacy became inevitable.

Frustratingly for the Clintons, Obama had achieved this likely solidarity among black voters without, himself, summoning racial emotions. He had gone out of his way to avoid mentioning race -- quite a contrast with Hillary, whose every speech talks about her becoming the first female president. But precisely to distinguish himself from the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of American politics, Obama resisted any racial appeal or even reference. His rhetoric, argumentation, and presentation was indistinguishable from a skilled white candidate's.

So the Clintons faced a problem: With Obama winning the black vote, how were they to win a sufficient proportion of the white electorate to offset his advantage?

Not racists themselves, they decided, nonetheless, to play the race card in order to achieve the polarization of the white vote that they needed to offset that among blacks.

They embarked on a strategy of talking about race -- mentioning Martin Luther King Jr., for example -- and asking their surrogates to do so as well. They have succeeded in making an election that was about gender and age into one that is increasingly about race.

According to the Rasmussen poll of Monday, Jan. 14, Obama leads among blacks by 66-16 while Hillary is ahead among whites by 41-27. The overall head to head is 37-30 in favor of Hillary.

It does not matter which specific reference to race can be traced to whom. Obama's campaign has resisted any temptation to campaign on race and, for an entire year, kept the issue off the front pages. Now, at the very moment that the crucial voting looms, the election is suddenly about race. Obviously, it is the Clintons' doing. Remember the adage: Who benefits?

As Super Tuesday nears, the Clintons will likely take their campaign to a new level, charging that Obama can't win.

They will never cite his skin color in this formulation, but it will be obvious to all voters what they mean: that a black cannot get elected.

The Clintons are far from above using race to win an election. Running for president in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles race riots, Clinton seized on a comment made by rapper Sister Souljah in an interview with her published on May 13, 1992 in The Washington Post. She said, "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?"

Clinton pounced, eager to show moderates that he was not a radical and was willing to defy the political correctness imposed on the Democratic Party by the civil rights leadership. In a speech to the Rainbow Coalition he said, "If you took the words 'white' and 'black' and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech," an allusion to the former Klansman then running for public office in Louisiana.

The Clintons will be very careful about how they go about injecting race into the campaign. Part of their strategy will be to provoke discussion of whether race is becoming a factor in the election. Anything that portrays Obama as black and asks about the role of race in the contest will serve their political interest. And you can bet that there is nothing they won't do ... if they can get away with it.

Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Outrage.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.

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Clintons, Obama pay homage to civil rights March 4, 2007

Clintons, Obama pay homage to civil rights

March 4, 2007
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SELMA, Ala. -- Barack Obama reached across a generation to link arms with the civil rights activists whose hard-fought fight of the 1960s made his presidential bid possible today.
Standing in the way of his success were his chief rival for the nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her husband, former President Clinton, who enjoy widespread affection in the black community. All three took part in a symbolic show of unity Sunday in the churches and streets of Selma -- one that belied the fierce political struggle for the support of a critical Democratic constituency.
''I'm here because somebody marched for our freedom,'' Obama, who would become the first black president, said from the Brown Chapel AME Church where the march began on March 7, 1965. ''I'm here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants.''
The church was where the march began on March 7, 1965, a bloody walk for voting rights as police attacked activists with billyclubs. ''Bloody Sunday'' shocked the nation and helped bring attention to the racist voting practices that kept blacks from the polls.
Sen. Clinton said the Voting Rights Act and the Selma march made possible her presidential campaign, as well as those of Obama and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who would be the first Hispanic to occupy the Oval Office.
''After all the hard work getting rid of literacy tests and poll taxes, we've got to stay awake because we've got a march to continue,'' Clinton said in a speech interrupted numerous times by applause and shouts of approval. ''How can we rest while poverty and inequality continue to rise?''
Not to be outdone in the hunt for black votes, Hillary Clinton spoke in Selma at a church three blocks away and brought a secret weapon -- her husband. Three days before the march anniversary, her campaign announced that the former president who is so popular among blacks would accompany her for his induction into Selma's Voting Rights Hall of Fame.
Clinton and Obama both appeared outside Brown Chapel for a pre-march rally, but came from opposite sides of the podium and did not interact. Despite the intense rivalry between their campaigns, the two praised each other.
''It's excellent that we have a candidate like Barack Obama who embodies what all of you fought for here 42 years ago,'' Clinton said. Obama said Clinton is ''doing an excellent job for this country and we're going to be marching arm-in-arm.''
But they did not join arms when the commemorative march attended by thousands got under way. Instead, Clinton held hands with her husband and Obama was several people down the line. Obama, who shed his coat and tie for the march, approached Hillary Clinton at one point and the two chatted for a few seconds before moving back to opposite sides of the street.
The two candidates sounded similar themes in their speeches. Both said the civil rights movement is not over because inequality still exists in education, health care and the economy. Both criticized the Bush administration for failing to return Hurricane Katrina victims to their homes.
But Obama, who was three years old on Bloody Sunday, delivered a call to action that would be politically unfeasible for Clinton or any of his other white rivals. He said the current generation of blacks does not always honor the civil rights movement and needs to take responsibility for improving their lives by rejecting violence; cleaning up ''40-ounce bottles'' and other trash that litters urban neighborhoods; and voting instead of complaining that the government is not helping them.
''How can it be that our voting rates dropped down to 30, 40, 50 percent when people shed their blood to allow us to vote?'' Obama asked at a unity breakfast with community leaders.
At the breakfast, Obama got a key to the city and another to surrounding Dallas County from a probate judge, Kim Ballard. ''Forty-two years ago he might would have needed it because I understand it would open the jail cells,'' Ballard said. ''But not today.''
Obama said the fight for civil rights reverberated across the globe and inspired his father to aspire to something beyond his job herding goats in Kenya. His father moved to Hawaii to get an education under a program for African students and met Obama's mother, a fellow student from Kansas.
Obama said he was not surprised when it was reported this week that his white ancestors on his mother's side owned slaves. ''That's no surprise in America,'' he said and added that the civil rights struggle made it possible for such a diverse couple to fall in love.
''If it hasn't been for Selma, I wouldn't be here,'' Obama said. ''This is the site of my conception. I am the fruits of your labor. I am the offspring of the movement. When people ask me whether I've been to Selma before, I tell them I'm coming home.''
But the former president stole the show from the two candidates. The audience cheered loudest for him when the three took the stage at the end of the march and the crowd mobbed him as he tried to make it to his limousine, delaying his departure.
Speaking at his induction, Clinton said the 2008 campaign features ''a rainbow coalition running for president.''
''If it hadn't been for the Voting Rights Act, the South would have never recovered and two white southerners -- Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- never could have become president,'' Clinton said.
Other Democratic candidates are not leaving the black vote to Obama and Clinton. John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, was speaking about Selma and civil rights at the University of California, Berkeley.
''The fight for civil rights and equal rights and economic and social justice is more than just going to celebrations, even as wonderful as the one in Selma,'' Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery as he referred to Berkeley janitors' fight for a wage increase. ''The fight is going on right here, right now.''
Associated Press writers Phillip Rawls and Bob Johnson contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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