Crafted By Rove

The tactics of the Clintons in this primary season have some striking resemblances to those used by the other dynasty when challenged from below:

My own sense is that Hillary Clinton’s initial gaffe – implicitly analogising herself to Lyndon Johnson and Obama to Martin Luther King – was an accident. She meant to make the point that she is a doer and he is merely a speaker. But inevitably it came off as condescending – as if black people always need white leaders to gain their own rights.

But once this was out of the bag, the Clintons decided to run with it. Their calculation was that simply by forcing Obama to become the “black candidate” they would neutralise his postracial appeal. They would polarise the base electorate into blacks and whites, make Obama look more like Jesse Jackson, and so pick up enough white and especially Hispanic votes to win.

The Hispanic vote is particularly important to Clinton. The campaign may be decided in California. If she can gain antiblack Latino votes, she wins.

The Chicago columnist Don Rose explained the logic clearly enough: “They’re not really racists, they just want to stress that Obama hasn’t really transcended race and that a person of colour may not be electable. Think about it, folks. Over and over again.”

(Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty.)