The 2016 Democratic primary has turned into the Bizarro 2008 Democratic primary.
Back then, the Clintons went full racist dogwhistle as they desperately tried to poll enough white working-class voters to overcome the departure of African-American voters to Obama.
Now, the Clintons are going full jiu-jitsu race-baiting as they desperately try to poll enough African-American voters to overcome the departure of white working-class voters to Sanders (and the GOP).
The irony is perverse. They are engaging in a conscious, cynical, orchestrated effort to convince voters that 2016 Bernie Sanders is the nasty race-baiter the 2008 Clinton campaign actually was.
It’s pretty likely they will succeed. And the cultural and political wounds they inflict on the Democratic Party will be severe:
(1) Hillary’s primary campaign only targets black voters and over-45 wealthier whites/Latinos.
All other constituencies have been discarded as these are the only reliable Clinton voters left. The campaign has accepted it is likely to bleed voters in all other demographics throughout the primaries. But it figures it can win by fund-raising among 1%-ers very interested in retaining Clinton as the Democratic nominee — and then using those funds to rally African-American support. Votes of wealthy Democrats are assumed, there’s no need to spend money courting them.
So the campaign has cut low-income non-AA Dems loose for the primaries. Forget small donors. No need to muck about releasing Goldman Sachs transcripts. Her base either attended those speeches themselves or is willing to look the other way. That suits the Clintons fine, as they are never more comfortable than when giving the middle finger to the left, Rahm Emanuel-style.
Trouble is, there’s a Grand Canyon-sized fissure between all black voters and rich white voters.
So how do the Clintons bridge it?
(2) Awkward race-baiting that reflects the gaping fault lines in Clinton coalition
Got to spend all those rich folks’ millions in donations somehow, after all!
Stage 1: Swift-boat Bernie’s glowing civil rights movement activism since the Clintons have none.
Stage 2: Dismiss popular Sanders plans (health, college) using rich-friendly “free stuff” GOP slams.
Stage 3: Deploy “iconic” African-American surrogates to publicly push Stages 1 and 2.
Stage 4: Cry “racism” at any critique of African-American surrogates swift-boating and “free stuff”ing.
You want to know what’s racist?
A campaign that shows such towering disrespect for civil rights icons that it repeatedly cashes in on their status by having them push the campaign’s own center-leaning, rich-friendly themes.
If the campaign truly respected pillars of civil rights activism, it would push its swift-boating and policies on its own account. It would stop tarnishing the legacy of important figures by asking them to act as its political spokesmen. Allowing them a measure of critical distance from its own crass politicking would show real respect. The campaign doesn’t show any.
(3) BLM kicked out of plantation-style donor party: “OK back to the issues”
So Hillary snubbed a BLM protestor, condescending to her, sneering, and tossing her from a $500 a head fundraising shindig at a Charleston 1%-er’s mansion? Expect many repeats of this confrontation, in many different forms, as long as Clinton wields power. The putative 2016 Clinton alliance of wealthy white folk with all black folks will be tested. Claiming an identity of interests between the two communities is farcical. The differences are extreme, and the window dressing of unity of purpose the Clinton campaign has frantically crafted will get torn down again and again as the pretty sad and silly spectacle it is.
They can certainly win the primary and, if catastrophe is avoided, the general.
But the fault lines of the unwieldy coalition will remain.
So too will the after-effects of the Clintons’ repeated race-baiting attacks on Democrats. Race-baiting is bad enough, but funding it with rampant Wall Street donations gone mad is worse. The longer it goes on, the more it weakens the entire Democratic Party. Tied ever closer to Wall Street, unmoored from any deeper purpose save the personal destruction of all non-Clinton contestants for power, the Party will struggle to compel voters to support it at all outside Presidential elections.
The Clinton Machine now owns the Democratic Party. And both are in turn fully owned subsidiaries of international finance. The Democratic Party won’t emerge from the shadow of the Clinton influence-peddling empire, and the reprehensible politics that uphold it, until we take it back.