From LBJ to Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.: Hillary Clinton's Racial Politics

In my last JackBlog post, I argued that the media was fanning the flames of racial controversy in the 2008 Election. I still believe that's true. But in light of the recent furor over Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., I also believe--as do many others the media, even the ones who weren't licking for a fight-- that Hillary Clinton has deliberately exploited racial tension in order to revive her campaign. Clinton's recent hounding of Obama on Wright, and her husband's bizarre comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson, make her MLK-LBJ analogy, then a major "racial controversy," seem like such a walk in the park. A series of recent articles have explored a startling uniformity in the Democratic primaries, and Clinton's success in manipulating racial conflict to win key states.

Recently, Matt Bai of the New York Times wrote about the counterintuitive success of Barack Obama in states that have either nearly entirely white populations or larger-than-average black populations. Bai writes: "What this suggests, perhaps, is that living in close proximity to other races [...] actually makes Americans less sanguine about racial harmony rather than more so." David Sirota, of In These Times, recently labeled this phenomenon "the race chasm" (looked at conversely, Hillary Clinton's success in states that have black populations of between 6 and 17 percent). Sirota takes this theory one step further, arguing that Clinton has deliberately capitalized upon racial tension (which, in the form of the Wright scandal, has surfaced since Obama's key victories in the largely white states of Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho and Vermont). Sirota cites Clinton's eagerness to discuss the controversy over Obama's pastor, while signaling to superdelegates and actual people that the controversy will plague Obama if he is the nominee (via the ubiquitous "electablility" argument).

Meanwhile, in this Sunday's New York Times, John Harwood bemoans the exploitation of racial tension within the Democratic party, which has long suffered attacks at the voting booth from Republicans who have successfully stirred up racial fears (beginning, as Lyndon B. Johnson predicted, with a Republican-fueled backlash to his groundbreaking civil rights legislation). Harwood writes:

Mr. Obama's dominance among black voters, once believed loyal to the Clintons, heightened the focus on race. Mr. Clinton, whose own campaigns were marked by racial bridge-building, helped that process along by likening Mr. Obama's victory in South Carolina, where African-Americans made up 55 percent of the vote, to Jesse Jackson's past success there.

Both Harwood and Sirota discuss the Democratic Party's history, over the past half-century, of black-white coalition, and the threat posed by recent race-based controversies-- possibly exploited by the Clintons--in reversing this legacy. Sirota writes:

As ugly as it is, the Clinton firewall strategy is stunning in its ruthlessness. It has been half a century since the major triumphs of the civil rights and party reform movements, yet a major Democratic candidate is attempting to secure a presidential nomination by exploiting racial divides and negotiating backroom superdelegate deals.

Harwood, meanwhile, makes the argument that--considering their political interests, and the political history of their party-- Clinton and Obama would have been better suited as political allies, rather than enemies:

As this historic Democratic primary season enters its next grueling phase, the party has become embroiled in a conflict between antagonists who would seem better cast as allies. Senator Barack Obama is a black candidate who has built his career on de-emphasizing race, while Senator Hillary Clinton is a white liberal who has been sensitive to minorities, and the issues facing them, during her long years of political activism.

And yet, in contest after contest, particularly in large states with diverse ethnic populations, support for the two candidates has reflected the sort of splits that normally divide Democrats from Republicans.

Somewhere, L.B.J. is rolling in his grave, and Republicans everywhere are smiling.