In comments, Soullite takes me to task for not writing enough on the Clinton's racialized attacks on Obama. Fair enough. I've been saving string on this for a longer post, but I think there's now enough evidence to glean the outline of the strategy. In just the last month or two, you've had Clinton's New Hampshire co-chair, Bill Shaheen, bring up Obama's drug use (a highly racially charged subject, of course), and you've had BET Founder Bob Johnson allude to the same. You've had Andrew Cuomo accuse Obama of "shucking and jiving," and the mini-furor over Hillary Clinton's controversial claim that she was Lyndon Johnson to Obama's Martin Luther King Jr. (does that make John Edwards Malcolm X?). Most of these comments, of course, came from Clinton campaign surrogates, who could merely be speaking out of turn. The Lyndon Johnson comparison came from Clinton herself. But it's hard to imagine this many sophisticated, liberal political operators making this many mistakes, of this type. Not saying it's impossible, merely hard to imagine. And so it's worth wondering if there's not a coordinated strategy among the Clintons to force a conversation over race. Not a conversation that will be harmful to Obama -- the Clintons have, after all, had to spend a fair amount of time apologizing, and clarifying -- but a conversation that will be harmful to his message. If Obama has to spend a lot of time talking about race, it's hard for him to be the post-racial candidate. If he has to spend a lot of time on divisive topics, it's hard for him to make an appeal for unity. And if he gets thrown off message at this point in the campaign, it will be exceedingly hard for him to blunt Clinton's momentum. And, whether it's a coordinated strategy on the part of the Clintons or not, it's definitely what's happening.
