politburo diktat 2.0

It’s a principle of Rove-Carville-Atwater politics to take your opponent’s strength and turn it into an attack. That’s what Hillary Clinton, through her deniable surrogates, is trying to do to Obama.

Obama’s key strength is his so-called post-racial appeal. Joe Biden put it as inartfully as possible, “He’s clean and articulate.” Obama’s image is not that of an African-American politician, but rather, a politician who happens to be an African-American. Some commentators compared him to the characters played by Sidney Poitier.

Enter Camp Clinton. How do they knock this appealing narrative down? First, the candidate herself doesn’t wield the hatchet. That is rule number one. That said, the strategy is fairly simple: Keep race at the forefront. Keep tossing in reminders of past drug use.

The message to white America is clear: “It’s all a farce, a movie script, a fairy tale. Obama is not some transformative figure, but just another fast-talking, shucking and jiving bro’ from the ‘hood. He’s not a substantive white person like LBJ.” They do this over and over and over. The words are all there, always cleverly camouflaged or allegedly in some other context. The drug use itself isn’t important; it’s shorthand¹ Obama is an unreliable, “roll of the dice,” smooth-talking nigger, like the Caddy dealer up there in the North End. A guy on the street corner, trying to gull America with an audacious game of three-card monty.

When Obama, or his surrogates, react, the Clintonistas go into “Who me?” mode. And, depending on the circumstances, issue a public wrist-slap or not, but then turn on the aggrieved Clinton victimhood: “Obama is trying to make this about race.”

“A black man who looks good and talks good? Nah, too risky, very unreliable. This is no movie, folks.” Everything the Clintonistas do is aimed at (pardon the pun) ‘blackening’ Obama’s image as a post-racial figure.

There are a lot more white women in the Democratic Party than there are African Americans.

Noam Scheiber at THE NEW REPUBLIC:

On Friday I said that, if you were cynical, you could argue that the Clintons have an interest in polarizing the nomination fight along racial lines–the idea being that, even if it hurts them in the short-term (with African Americans in South Carolina), Obama can’t win if he becomes the “black candidate,” which is what racial polarization accomplishes.

Well, I no longer think you have to be cynical to make that argument. This is just despicable stuff.

I think Riehl World View: Hillary Pulls A Reverse Sister Souljah misses the Clintons’ strategy:

It’s desperation time for Hillary. They found a Black surrogate to play the drug card and hopefully prevent more criticism for its being a racial attack. Still, I don’t think it’ll play, except perhaps on BET. And, honestly, how many BET fans are going to bail on Obama because he may have done a little coke back in the day?

Jack and Jill get it. Oreos And House Negroes: The Clinton Strategy Explained

The idea behind the racialized attacks is not to mobilize black voters against Obama. They know that we get it. The idea is to convince white voters that Obama is the kind of person who will play the race card at the first opportunity, and to demoralize black voters who question whether Obama can win. Once white people start turning on Obama, black people may give up hope and either not vote or vote for their second choice, who is probably Hillary Clinton.

This is 2008. This is the America we are living in.

1. the phrase of the 2008 is ‘dogwhistle’ message. [↩]