Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Winning by Losing in South Carolina

Never afraid to reveal the ugly side of politics, Dick Morris offers a strangely compelling reason why Hillary Clinton's almost inescapable (oops, here we go again with inevitabilities) loss in South Carolina portends her likely party nomination. Here's a snip:
[I]f blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.

Obama has done everything he possibly could to keep race out of this election. And the Clintons attracted national scorn when they tried to bring it back in by attempting to minimize the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in the civil rights movement. But here they have a way of appearing to seek the black vote, losing it, and getting their white backlash, all without any fingerprints showing. The more President Clinton begs black voters to back his wife, and the more they spurn her, the more the election becomes about race -- and Obama ultimately loses.
There's a cold calculation at work in Morris' analysis, one resting upon a barely concealed contempt for the electorate (at least part of the electorate) that disgusts me. But the unnerving ways in which race and gender have altered the 2008 calculus are apt to bring up some disturbing conclusions.

Read the entire article: How Clinton Will Win the Nomination by Losing S.C.

1 comment:

Zaki said...

I think what Morris fails to discuss is the issue of gender. I wonder if the hypothetical "white backlash" is more powerful than gender bias, which would lead many to cast a vote for a black mail before they'd vote for a white woman. I wonder which of those two opposing forces is stronger.