Agreed. The Tubbs Jones stuff is arguably the worst of it all. But, as someone pointed out yesterday, it's also possible that she's just not the brightest light in the chandelier.

I don't understand the last paragraph of this post. Isn't Wilentz defending Clinton, i.e. arguing that he was NOT being astute but, instead, innocently and ingenuously congratulating Obama -- and that it was the Obama people who imputed "subtlety" (=astuteness?) to Clinton? And if you think Wilentz is right about Clinton, then how / why are you disagreeing with him about Obama's characterization of Clinton? Sorry if I'm being dense.

There are now (9:52 p.m. ET) the proud number of 440 responses within 24 hours to Wilentz's piece (running about two-thirds against, at a rough guess).  Is this a TNR record?

"I'm unconvinced. To see why," Because you are an Obama follower.

I don't think it's a record:  The piece on Ron Paul ran close to a thousand, I think.  Then again, articles aren't limited to registered commenters.

In the end, I don't really care who baited whom. What is clear is that Obama made out like a bandit. When the race issue first came up, Obama supporters made the argument that it was out of bounds. I thought what happened was part of politics and only a small taste of what was coming in the general.  I argued that politics is a tough business and that I admired the toughness of the Clinton campaign. In retrospect, one of two things happened. Either, a) the Clintons were indeed tough and the swift response of the Obama campaign brilliantly neutralized it and turned it back in their face, or b) Obama pulled off the Jedi-mind trick of the century. Either way, the Obama campaign was brilliant and clearly outmaneuvered Clinton’s at every step. As a strong Clinton supporter, I argued that one of her great strengths was her ability to campaign. That may be true, but she sure has run into a first class operation here. It is truly remarkable and even more so to someone who was pretty invested in Clinton winning. With apologies for the unintended racial implications, this is the Tiger Woods/Phil Mickelson story all over again. Without Tiger, Phil would rightfully be viewed as one of the great golfers of all time. When Tiger first came onto the scene, you got the distinct impression that Phil did not believe Tiger belonged. There was a bunch of “wait your turn” attitude in everything Phil said about him. Once it was clear that Tiger is as good as he is, Phil transitioned to whining about how Tiger gets all the bounces and has all the advantages. It is really the ultimate case of bad timing. Who would predict running into a once in a lifetime phenom? Not me… Congrats to Barack and all his supporters. Like Tiger Woods, he is a true genius at his craft.

Honestly, I think TNR disgraced itself with that article.

Okay, maybe "disgraced" is too strong a word. "Embarrassed" is more like it.

I find Sean Wilentz latest propaganda to be one of the most despicable pieces of vicious slander and dishonest rewrites of history that it has ever been my misfortune to read, coming from a man who still fails to reveal in these publications that he is a longtime friend of the Clinton family and an open endorser of the Clinton campaign. This "article" is by far the worst, in what has become a series of the most openly biased anti-Obama screeds to be found anywhere on the net.

I condemn Wilentz, and I condemn Marty Peretz and all the other editors at TNR for allowing this trash to be published.

do you guys reject it or denounce it?

OK, I agree that this may be the weakest piece of Wilentz's argument, but how do you then discount everything else - not least being this recent bogus photo scandal?  

And even if Bill was comparing Obama's victory to Jackson's because they're both black, big f*cking deal.  I still can't figure out how exactly that's supposed to have worked as a political strategy.  Who exactly was Clinton supposed to be appealing to by refering to Obama's blackness?  

Also, Clinton's SC comment was one overly-hyped non-incident that, I think, the press pretty much ran with all on thier own.  That happens too, but it doesn't mean that Obama hasn't worked the race thing as best he can.  

Aaron,

Relax. TNR generally is pro-Obama. Wilentz provides, if not balance, then a confrontation with  Obamanian presuppositions. Besides, you can't whine about Wilentz's articles and then remain silent about Sunstein's. Both authors are friends with a candidate.

Jason,

Bill was being an uncagey race-baiter. He's smart enough to have known that the Jesse Jackson comment would result in a great deal of media commentary. It's amazing to me that he believed this commentary--let alone the comment itself--would help Hillary's campaign.

newdex- the Jesse remark was meant to imply that, like Jesse, he might win blacks but not a real, grown-up national election.

The Ron Paul one was impressive, but the amount of looney batshit that the STB articles spawned has to be a record.   Seriously- I'm all for letting the great unwashed smack their brow-furrowing opinions onto a keyboard, but there are good articles on the main board which are impossible to discuss with other TalkBackers because they get jammed and idiotic.  I appreciate you bringing the Wilentz article here, so we can have an actual discussion.  

Obama gets no advantages from playing the race card -- indeed it's potentially destructive for him.  His advantage lies in convincing people that there's no longer any such card in American politics, or shouldn't be.  That's the bottom line and the reason why Wilentz's piece is an astonishing demonstration of what happens when a good, even inspiring, historian and writer gives in to ugly paranoia and myopic resentments.

So Clinton is too smart to have just made a stupid comment without any sinister motives, but he's also too stupid to have realized that the comment could not possibly help Hillary's campaign.  

Politicians always make statements trying to minimize the importance of thier losses.  What Clinton said is no different from what any number of political commentators said: its not really a huge surprise that Obama won SC.  Isn't it just possible that Clinton was simply saying what he thought?

timcrim

Hey pal, if you're not paying attention to the facts and Sean Wilentz history here at TNR, then you've got no business voicing an opinion. Check the articles, Sunstein reveals his affiliation to the candidates, Wilentz does not.  Such an omission is deceptive, since readers are allowed to retain the impression that this is some kind of objective evaluation by Wilentz.  Why TNR allows this I have no idea, I imagine he's friends with someone on the staff, or someone connected with the ownership of TNR, someone who allows this academic a free hand to write whatever the hell he pleases, without regard to the facts.  There's a real question of journalistic ethics, which I believe are being breached, for the sake of generating controversy and hit numbers to this site.

"the Jesse remark was meant to imply that, like Jesse, he might win blacks but not a real, grown-up national election"

Well yea, of course, except the "real, grown-up national election" part is the juicy little embellishment that changes Clinton's mundane and obvious (even if incorrect, we hope)  statement to nasty and "racist."    Like I said, every political campaign tries to spin thier losses as unimportant.  What could be more obvious than the idea that a black presidential candidate has a natural advantage in a largely black electorate?  Has anyone even disputed that idea?  How many political commentators before and after made the same point?  Of course, if it comes from a Clinton, it necessarily has to be part of a viscious underhanded scheme.  Oh, and also when a person has a long history of racial divisiveness and provocations you can't cut them any slack . . .  no, wait, that doesn't apply here.  

I just don't see why only one campaign has to be blamed for the charges of racism that are flying around.  I think the example Jason's pointed out here is a good example of where Wilentz's argument is mind bogglingly weak.  I would say though that amongst his rubbish their are a few good points.  I thought the idea of the "fairy tale" comment being some kind of racist attack was simply ridiculous.  Clinton was making a fair point, albeit frustrated, about Obama's war record and somehow it got spun into some ridiculous attack.  I just think sometimes we need to take a step back from our investment in either camp before we can pass judgment on the course of the campaign itself.

Sean Willentz piece is a winner simply because it injects a dose of "balance" into the whole Obamamania.

I have said this repeatedly: I have no idea what the fascination is with Obama. He has not done anything memorable. He is "articulate" but so are many congressmen and senators! Most are lawyers who can coherently put forth an argument.

So, once more, what is the deal wirh Obama? He can talk the talk, but where is the evidence that he can walk the walk?

My honest view: This is a case of "soft bigotry of low expectations."  Obama exceeded the white person's view of what a black person can accomplish, so that whatever accomplishment he might have achieved has been magnified 10-fold. I look at what the guy has done and I see nothing, and then I turn on the tube and Chris Matthews is gushing about the guy. Am I just a cynic or is Matthews onto something? I know the answer to that. Do you?  

That article read like some sort of bizzarro reinterpretation of events.  It could have been in the Onion.

There is so much nonsense and half-truth in the Wilentz piece that it's hard to know where to begin.  The only choice is to zoom out and look at the big overarching flaws.  The first is that Wilentz relentlessly assimilates into the Obama campaign itself any -- and I mean any -- supporter of Obama.

Take the Billy Shaheen smear.  That was condemned on its first day or two by everyone, but with no racial component.  On black radio, however, some callers -- with no connection at all to the Obama campaign -- noted that Shaheen did not merely reference cocaine use but implied that Obama would come under scrutiny for possibly being a selller of cocaine, i.e., a drug dealer.  These callers noted that many politicians including Al Gore had copped to drug use in college or the army and never had to answer questions about drug dealing.  Neither Obama nor anyone in his campaign called Shaheen a racist, but some rank and filers add a racial component to what, on any account, was a ridiculous comment.  Wilentz glosses over the drug dealer part of the Shaheen slur.

On the issue of the "Bradley effect," WIlentz is at his absolute nadir.  The LAST thing Obama wanted to become part of the media discussion of his NH loss was the idea that even if he ran ahead  in polls, secret racists were amongst the electorate and would vote contrary to what they told pollsters.  Obama was in fact terrified of the possibility that that meme would gain ascendancy.  Why?  Because many voters and lots of superdelegates like the policies of both Obama and Clinton and vote on electability.  If any poll showing Obama up by, say, 5 against McCain really means Obama is down 2, why does that benefit Obama?  It doesn't, and WIlentz is so blinded by his fandom for the Clintons that despite his academic pedigree as a historian he does not even pause to ask the motive question any half-qualified historian would ask.  Why would Obama have an interest in the Bradley effect being the reason for his loss?  Answer -- there is no answer.

I could go on and on, as others I'm sure did on the other thread.

But the big picture is that, prior to the Jesse Jackson comment, Bill Clinton was guilty, not of intentional racism but of such irrational oversimplification of Obama's appeal as to allow his denigration of Obama to be easily mistaken for subtle racism among rank-and-file blacks.  Obama's campaign never went there about Bill.  But go back and read the Bill Clinton Charlie Rose transcript.  He lies about Obama in small ways -- claiming he launched his Presidential candidacy one year, not two years, after being elected to the Senate.  But he also denigrated Obama by comparing him to a charismatic radio show or TV host.  Almost certainly not evidence of race bias (though query whether he would have said that about Mark Warner had Warner run with far fewer years of experience than Obama), but nevertheless so reckless and insulting a charge as to trigger the sensitivies or black voters not connected to the Obama campaign but who come to conclusions on their own.

There is a parallel in the law to what Bill did.  If an employer so mis-evaluates an employee that the poor evaluation is reckless -- e.g., puts in the employee's evaluation that he often is late, when in fact he isn't or fails to meet sales goals when he in fact does, a jury can use that as evidence from which to infer a racial motive for discharging the employee based on the objectively inaccurate evaluation.  It's a thin but permissible inference.  Bill Clinton's unjustifiable harangues on Charlie Rose -- which were later repeated almost verbatim at that NH event where Bill both used the "fairy tale" locution AND went on to trash Obama for being just "a kid" with "no experience" at all -- led ordinary black folks to question Bill Clinton's good faith.  The Jesse Jackson comparison came late in the game and just sealed the deal.  

"in '08, Obama won 24 percent of white South Carolina voters. That's a big difference."

No, actually, it's not.

And in primary states, he has apparently only won 39% of the white *Democrat* vote overall.  Less than that for Hispanics.

But you know, so long as he has 24 percent of the white South Carolinan vote, he'll do just fine.

"in '08, Obama won 24 percent of white South Carolina voters. That's a big difference."

No, actually, it's not.

And in primary states, he has apparently only won 39% of the white *Democrat* vote overall.  Less than that for Hispanics.

But you know, so long as he has 24 percent of the white South Carolinan vote, he'll do just fine.

Agree with your assessment on Bill Clinton's comments in Wilentz's article (Clinton's comments struck me that way right away when I read Wilentz's article shortly after it was posted), Bill Clinton is being a cagey race-baiter in this instance.

"The Obama campaign has yet to reach bottom in its race-baiter accusations...They promise to continue until they win the...

"So, once more, what is the deal wirh Obama? He can talk the talk, but where is the evidence that he can walk the walk?"

How bout the fact that he's scraped your candidate 11 times in a row, leads the country in popular and delegate votes, all in a campaign that was supposedly a forgone conclusion.  He's the best candidate the Democrats have to offer, and that is why he's going to win the nomination, which is as it should be.

Jeez

First of all, pointing out that Obama is black, repeatedly, was a key part of the pi$$ off 40 states strategy. In order to argue that states with large numbers of Black voters, don't count, you have to point out that Obama is Black.

Second, how does the Clinton campaign have this effect on otherwise intelligent people? how does support for CLinton so frequently morph into an up-is-down approach to logic and morality?

The hardest part of this is having to continually listen to the Clinton campaign refuse to take any responsibility for the weaknesses in their campaign and their message. Their strategy of top down donors, the poor planning in field operations, the lack of a plan post February 5th that struck many people as arrogant and entitled. These things have been valid reasons to chose another candidate.

Let's not even talk about Hillary's weaknesses as a speaker. Did she think her latest foray into sarcasm was going to make her more attractive as a female candidate? No one ever said life was fair.

Instead, this campaign has spent valuable energy and time incessently complaining, concocting ever morphing reasons that they are victims, that everyone is bias, I lost count of the various conspiracies, the latest one printed yesterday is just one more - now it's time to blame Obama and black people and whatever I guess, not too many more places to go with the victim thing anymore.  Look, I'm a woman and have caught Hillary's back when I felt that sexism had entered into the equation, but I gradually stopped.  It has became yet another excuse to be a victim rather than bucking up and doing the work of changing a failing campaign and she's running against a black man - not exactly an easy prejudice to overcome either. Enough.  She has undermined her own message of hyper-competence and hard work every day for months.

Instead of retooling the campaign message to be more accessible or interesting after is became clear that it wasn't resonating the way they'd hoped, they attacked millions of voters in their own party as delusioned kooli-aid drinkers who are simply too stupid to recognize the inherent brilliance and superiority of their candidate. Now THERE's a smart strategy for making your case. My husband is an economist who took months to chose his candidate and picked Obama because he admires the U of Chicago economists on Obama's team - whose work he is familiar with.  My father picked Obama because of Obama's 10 years as a constitutional law professor and as a former military man, my Dad wants us to stop defling the constitution he fought to protect.  My boss picked Obama because she is a former community organizer and knows what a powerful, empowering framework that can be for change.  

How dare Hillary and her flying monkeys call these thoughtful people - who listened respectfully to her case and simply chose another candidate on merits and other concrete reasons I haven't listed - names?

When will this campaign grow up and accept responsibility for a poorly run campaign with a message that just didn't make the sale? Not to mention with a candidate who has had 50% disapproval ratings for almost 20 years that haven't budged an inch?  Man up Hillary people!  Look in the mirror and grow up.

Look. Bill Clinton is a smart guy. The reason he came on board was to troubleshoot. His appraisals were right. Obama had the MO. He was trying to do and say anything which might nip this in the bud. He rightly saw South Carolina as a means by which the Obama campaign would gain speed as it emerged from the gravitation slingshot of orbit. First he wanted to minimize. Second he wanted to frame Obama as the black candidate as to play out in the upcoming primaries. He was wanting to leverage the 'distance' between Hispanics and blacks. Thus secured like a tourniquet. Billy boy works in the margins. It wasn't so much the white vote he was concerned with. He knew that was a problem after Iowa. It was California latino that he was wanting to hold in place. He was just trying to kick it down the road and hope that providence might smile. At that point Texas couldn't come soon enough. The rest is history in the making.

Wandreycer1: That was one of your better posts. Not that they aren't all wonderful without exception. This one just kind of hit a sweet spot.

I agree, Wandrey. You're always so good-hearted and openminded and reasonable, and this one is particularly thoughtful and persuasive.

The thing about the Jesse Jackson comparison, no matter how it is parsed and examined and rationalized and justified by the pathological Hillary apologists (and gee, won't it be nice to have a presidential candidate that we don't have to apologize and feel sorry for?....) is that it was completely gratutitous.  Since when is it the custom, on the night of a primary, for the loser to reach back in history and compare the winning campaign to another campaign from long ago?  Did Romney compare John McCain's win in New Hampshire to Pat Buchanan's some years before?  Did Barack compare Hillary's win in New Hampshire to Mike Dukakis's back in '88?  Since when is it customary political etiquite to go back in history and say (as your first response of the evening) that, well, so-and-so ran a good campaign twenty years ago, and what's-his-name ran a good campaign this time.  The only connection between the "good" campaign that Barack ran in 2008 and the "good" campaign that Jesse ran in '88 was the complexion of the candidates.  And coming at the tail end of an entire month of attempting to marginalize Barack as the Civil Rights candidate ( the most conspicuous historical example of which was Jesse Jackson) it served no other purpose (and clearly had no other purpose) than as a last, bitter, parting shot from a failed candidate and a failed strategy.  It was gratuitous, unnecessary and taken in the context of a pattern of  remarks beginning with the "is he a drug dealer" suggestion by Shaheen up in New Hampshire, obvious as hell to anybody who is reallly interested in objective reality.  A group which evidently does not inclued the desperate apologists over at the Clinton propaganda shop.

Wow - mucho gracias Boxo and Ep, it means the world coming from smarty pants talkback hotshots like you guys.

I forgot to add that it has actually made me cry watching Bill Clinton implode this much (maybe I lost you there Boxo).

wandrey, great

Newdex: "Bill is too smart to have just made a stupid comment without any sinister motives, but he's also too stupid to have realized that the comment could not possibly help Hillary's campaign."

Actually, I think that is on the money. I think Bill to some extent does view himself as the first black President, his hubris led him into this. That is one of the biggest problems with the Hillary campaign all along, its hubris. Look at the Obama kindergarten papers fiasco, those people were smart enough to dig up the paper and to show how it contradicted Obamas claim not to have a long term interest in being President, but too stupid to realize how this "gotcha" could be used against them exposing them to ridicule for pettiness. The whole campaign is one long Newdex formula.

Sorry Newdex, but you just might have written the perfect epitaph of the Clinton campaign.  

Wandreycer1

Amen.

And to which I'd only add that many of Clinton's problems appear to have sprung from taking too long to take Obama's chances seriously. They didn't take him seriously, they wrote off the money as a "Dean like thing," they ignored his support online and went out of their way to insult his young organizers. Watching it reminded me of of having seen Alan Dixon (D-IL) say that he thought women would forget his yea vote for Clarence Thomas by the time he was up  for re-election. It was an unwise dare, and Carol Mosely Braun defeated him by wining like 70% of the women's vote.

Clinton appears to have fallen into a similar trap, she dared parts of the democratic party to vote against her rather than asking them to vote for her.

Wandrey--excellent summary of history in the making.

Bill Clinton: "Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88, and he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama's run a good campaign. He's run a good campaign EVERYWHERE, He's a good candidate with a good organization."

It is absolutely absurd to attribute anything remotely like racism to that remark.  If anything, what we see here is the genuine respect, tinged with a touch of envy, of one political wizard to another, and a flash of the competitiveness that Willie always brought to the table. Are people suggesting that the Black vote in South Carolina should be discounted as an objective factor in all three races under discussion? Please. Boxo's got this pegged dead center.

I've been an Obama supporter from nearly Day One, but if Bill Clinton was available, I'd probably be campaigning for him. I'm looking forward to the day when Carville comes over to the Obama effort, which I assume will be about March 5.  On to Pennsylvania Avenue!

blackton

You're right Bill's ego issue is the key issue. That said, I don't think he really considers himself the first black president. I do think he truly believes (or believed) that the label gave him the right to hand pick if you will the first black president .I'm starting to think he flipped out because Obama isn't his guy, (Harold Ford Jr. is) and he feels something  has been stolen from him.  

jmkerr: Hillary walking the walk.  Example?

I think he is partly flipping out because a) he hates to lose and isn't used to it, so this is wierd, and b) because Obama is not just a repudiation of Bush- he is a repudiation of Bush/Clinton divide-and-rule politics.  I think Bill feels if Obama wins and is a good President, we'll talk about the Clinton/Bush years in the same breath.   Policy-wise, that would be unfair to Clinton, of course.   But not politics-wise.   So that is sscary- his legacy is somewhat on the line.  

but as jmkerr repeats in nearly all of his posts...no matter what Clinton or Obama do, Obama has only been able to garner 25-36% of the white Democratic vote in primaries against Clinton. Thus we can prove that the race-baiting card that Obama appears to play at every turn is resulting in Obama not getting the majority of registered white democrats. We must ignore the larger percentages of white votes that Obama has garnered versus Hillary amongst independents and Republicans in open primaries in non-traditional Democratic states. I guess if Obama does win the nomination by not winning enough white democrats in Southern states we can be assured that Clinton will because she's white.

singlespeed: call me senile, but huh?

bone--I agree completely with your a)--in fact, I think it's the whole story here.

On b), I have to disagree. If anything, Obama is going to be even better at this than Willie. Bill Clinton was able to get things done because he recognized that an idea isn't necessarily wrong just because it's believed by a Republican. Coming from Arkansas, he knew there were lots of people who are liberal on race, but still don't like big government solutions to social problems;  who don't want to go around picking fights, but still think we should be able to win them; and who recognize that the free enterprise system is a lot more appealing than class struggle. Obama's firmly on board for all of this.

In my view Obama's principal appeal is his ability to listen to people he disagrees with, give them credit for good faith, recognize points of agreement without selling out his principles in a way that makes opponents feel respected and heard, and focus on getting things done. This strikes me as well within the parameters of Clintonian triangulation. Obama is much more in the tradition of Bill Clinton than Hillary is.

Wandrey, I'll join the chorus of praise for your comment. What I liked especially were the examples you gave if the highly informed, very intelligent, kool aid-averse Obama supporters out there. I'm getting so sick of this superficial Clinton line about the vapidness of "Obamatons." Not so much because it's wrong, but because it's hypocritical. So many of them like Hillary for vague, emotional reasons and repeat campaign slogans without backing them up (obviously this doesn't apply to all of them, but enough so that the charge of scent of hypocrisy becomes all too noxious.)

wandrey...I had a typing breakdown at work while filing that comment. What I meant was that jmkerr posts, pretty much consistently, that Obama can't win the nomination or the GE because he's only getting 25-36% of the white *Democrat* vote against Hillary but discounts the white vote that Obama gets with white Independents and Republicans in open primaries. I was sarcastically implying, albeit not clearly enough, that since Obama was playing the race-card shuffle with Clinton that it was clearly working in his favor of not winning enough of the white, democratic votes in the primaries. The last line should have read "if Obama does win the nomination even without the majority of white Democrat votes, he should gain them in the GE."

Maybe I just post a Never mind instead.

Oh!  Thank you singlespeed, I have to be honest - all of the statistics on white people voting patterns were like instant narcolypsey to me from the beginning, I'm glad SOMEone can grasp what's going on with that stuff.

Once I saw that shot of 10,000 white guys in cowboy hats chewing chaw in Oklahoma clamoring to vote for Obama (I guess there were women in that line, I just could't see any), I pretty much had the information I needed.