Or, How the Clinton Campaign Betrayed Bill's Honorific Title of "First Black President"
There is a clear pattern emerging from the Clinton campaign, but it's not the one Hillary Clinton wished to suggest.
Hillary's recent words underline a clear pattern in the way both the Clintons have been using race in this campaign. However poorly phrased, Hillary's recent words suggest the fundamental reason the Clintons have betrayed the honorific title of "first black president" once bestowed on Bill Clinton by the great American writer Toni Morrison:
"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.
The African-American community has clearly recognized and understood the implications of this pattern of racialized discourse, and has almost completly rejected the Clinton campaign tactics as a result. The Indiana and North Carolina primary results this week indicate that over 90% of African-Americans voted against the Clintons.
Since the election of a Democratic President in November depends so heavily on the African-American vote, all superdelegates need to be asking, in spite of Hillary Clinton's claims to the contrary: Who really has "a much broader base to build a winning coalition on"?