Bill Clinton and the "racism card"

I don't think anyone during the primary accused Bill Clinton of being a "racist"--as in "I don't think black people are equal to whites." He was accused of race-baiting. Some of it was, from my perspective, dubious. Deriding Obama's identity as a guy who consistently opposed the Iraq War as a "fairy tale" is not only fair, but actually kind of true. But I thought the infamous South Carolina/Jesse Jackson comparison was race-bating--either that or it was just foolishly dismissive.

Nevertheless, it amazes me that Clinton is actually still pissed-off about this idea that he's a racist. Of course it's telling that he's turned the very specific charge of race-baiting, into a much larger, much easier to attack charge of racism. I have no doubt that Obama's surrogates worked behind the scenes to push the Clinton race-baiting angle, while Obama angelically smiled and claimed to take no offense. But that's what people do when they're running for office. The whole Clinton appeal was based on this idea that they would fight dirty, that they could counter the Republican attack machine, that politics was basically dirty, and to win you had to be willing to fight that way. How then can you be mad that you lost to someone who fought dirty? Wouldn't you have done the same thing?