It might have been OK if Hillary kept campaigning without tearing down our nominee. But I guess she just couldn't help herself. USA Today said she made "blunt" comments about race, and that is an act of criminal understatement. She's not even trying to hide it anymore.
From USA Today (h/t Chotiner):
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
There is indeed a pattern here. She is getting less and less subtle about it. Notice how "hard-working Americans" and "white Americans" have become synonymous in Hillaryland.
Apparently she was called on this, and she defended herself:
Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."
If they didn't know it before, they know it now. Please allow me to translate:
Sure, in a Democratic primary loaded up with wealthy educated voters Obama can do just fine. But in the general election, the real Americans -- working-class white people -- will never vote for a black man. So if you want to beat McCain, vote for me -- the Democratic Party's Great White Hope.
I think the restraint we all hoped Hillary would show on the campaign trail from now until the end is not going to happen. If these are her words, I can only imagine what she will send Bill out to say tomorrow.
If you are represented by an undeclared superdelegate, please make a call tomorrow and push him or her off the frakkin' fence. We can't take another month of this.
Update [2008-5-8 0:12:28 by alvernon90]: Thanks for putting this on the rec list. I think we all hoped that we could relax and let this primary end naturally in two weeks, but Hillary is playing too ugly for that. Call your undecided supers right away!
UPDATE II: I'm glad to see this is getting the attention it deserves. Courtesy of EMorgan, here is the audio of Hillary Clinton making the "hard-working white Americans" statement.
While the situation is understandably upsetting, I don't know that some of the, er, more aggressive commentary is on-point. Speaking for myself, I don't think Hillary is a Nazi, or a slave trader, and certainly not Pat Buchanan. The real problem is the less-noticed part of the quote:
"There's a pattern emerging here."
Contrary to what some of her defenders say, this is not merely an asute and objective evaluation of the electoral trends. This is a calculated strategy to shift the narrative over to why Obama can't attract white voters -- not those sissy college-boy whites who only have one testicle, but the hard-working whites, the real Americans. Watch and see how West Virginia and Kentucky add to this narrative.
Whether this is true or not is beside the point. Whether political correctness permits us to discuss these things out loud is beside the point. Whether it is a permissible strategy to warn superdelegates about the terrible dangers of nominating a black man is beside the point -- maybe it would have been OK if she said this in February. Many people seemed to think it was OK when Bill Clinton made the same point after South Carolina.
But this is not February, and that is the point. This nomination fight is over, and it is unacceptable for Democrats to attack their nominee this way in the national media. Hillary Clinton proved that she won't go gracefully or promote party unity. She is hammering a wedge into our coalition that the RNC will soon fill with dynamite. She must be stopped.
Call your uncommitted superdelegates and push them. End this poisonous desperation ploy. And accept my apologies for this lengthy update.