The Campaign in Black and White

[IndianaGreen]

The Campaign in Black and White

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

He's a smart fellow and so Barack Obama surely knew what was in store for him if he ever looked like taking the Democratic nomination away from Hillary Clinton. The Clintons' relationship with African-Americans has always been starkly instrumental. When he was in trouble with white voters in New Hampshire in 1992 Governor Bill sprinted back to Little Rock to preside over the execution of a mentally retarded black man. To ensure her husband's victory in his reelection race in 1996 Hillary insisted Bill chop poor mothers--a good slice of them black--off the welfare rolls. Nonetheless many blacks rooted for Bill, absurdly dubbed by Toni Morrison "the first black president" and in the impeachment crisis over Monica Lewinsky they were his most steadfast friends, as Bill recognized when he summoned the Rev Jesse Jackson into the White House to help him pray for forgiveness and redemption.

Other well known landmarks in the Clintons' relations with blacks include Bill Clinton's set-up of Sister Souljah and his disgusting treatment of Lani Guinier and Jocelyn Elders. The Clintons reach out when they have no alternative and stab you in the back when it seems marginally to their advantage. They are without doubt among the most unprincipled duos ever to have operated in the upper tiers of American political life.

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Clinton campaign money has been liberally distributed to the all-important black churches whose preachers will be rallying the vote. The Clintons' instinct is to trash Obama, betting that whatever offense they cause to blacks will abate by the time Hillary has to face a Republican in the fall. Obama has the same problem in reverse. Any angry black talk may help him in the short term in South Carolina but would get him trashed by the Clintons and in the press as "divisive" and explode the vital message that he is safely "above" the racial divide. As the Nevada deadline neared he even invoked Ronald Reagan as a benign and creative force, drawing yelps of reproof from Hillary Clinton on account of Reagan's antilabor record. As if Clintonism wasn't the quintessence of antilaborism, as articulated by the Democratic Leadership Council.

It won't be long before the Clinton campaign circulates some of Rev Wright's sermons linking Zionism with racism, and brandishes the photo of Mr and Mrs Barack Obama having lunch with the late Edward Said, America's best known Palestinian. Already they're trying to link Wright's church to Louis Farrakhan. Jackson can predict accurately to Obama what will happen next and those speeches praising Senator Joseph Lieberman won't help. No, a Clinton-Obama ticket is not likely. The Clntons take their fights bitterly and while it may be true that America is ready for a woman president, the notion that it would be similarly receptive to a black president is truly open to challenge.

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