Barack Obama the Great Uniter, the Prime Minister of Hope is finding himself trapped in a race that has become ALL about race. It is frustrating seeing this outstanding young politician boxed into the one corner he can't fight out of but my empathy is tempered by the fact that this is a snare of his own design.
Obama was on top of the world less than a month ago: he had taken Iowa from the annointed candidate Clinton. He pulled this off by energizing thousands of younger dems, younger women and independents. He did it with white voters...he had no choice in one of the whitest states in the Union.
Then he went to New Hampshire, palms thrown at his feet. But for the first time in his life...he lost an election...and he lost his cool.
Since HRCs improbable win in NH, BO's prime challenge has been to consolidate his African-American base. Coming out of NH Hillary was still breaking even among AA voters in South Carolina and that had to be frustrating. Yes, Bill Clinton was called "America's First Black President" but Obama only had to look into a mirror to know that was a crock of shiite.
The Culinary Union endorsement in Nevada was expected to pave the way for his come-back win...but thanks to non-stop canvassing from one end of the strip to the other by Hillary's headliner William Jefferson Clinton she handed him his very first election defeat.
Shaken up by this detour his consistant strategy has been to put out daily examples of the Clintonian War On The Dream - I don't need to go into details - to solidify the AA vote, BUT he thought HRC would either:
A.) Do a Kerry and just stay silent while BO framed her as a MLK denegrater.
B.) She would apologize for her poor choice of words and cede the point to BO.
She didn't and this play by Obama to jell the AA vote behind him (with great success) has had the unexpected result of jelling the white vote behind Clinton.
Time will tell if HRC or WJC made a deliberate call to use Obamas rhetoric to spin a race-battle but clearly they elected to leverage his tactics against him. Political Jiu-Jiutsu being a Clinton specialty some will speculate that it was planned from day one.
Taking a look at some recent S.C. polls to see how screwed up the electorate is in the Palmetto State ?Pollster.com had this to say:
...look at the results of eight different polls released in the last few days. As Ciccina noticed, the biggest differences are in the "undecided" percentage, which varies from 1% to 36%
If New Hampshire is a useful gauge, one has to assume that if voters go into the day of the election with reservations on a candidate that they will go with the "incumbant" who is clearly HRC in this race. This leads me to believe Hillary will outperform her polling numbers, although I can't imagine her winning the state primary.
If recent, drilled-down, polling numbers are close Obama will get the 60-75% AA vote that he sought when he climbed down Andrew Cuomo's throat for using the term "shuckin' and jivin'" in reference to ALL the candidates need to work the dinner circuit in Iowa.
The same polling tells us that Hillary will end up with a solid 2 or 3 to 1 majority of the white vote, with women accentuating the divide.
Jumping into a probably Florida romp with this white tide should push Hillary Rodham Clinton to a decisive February 5th rout with only IL and GA as probably Obama picks. I'm not proud of that "white tide" comment...it just is what it is and it is Barack Obamas gift to this election.
Some great Uniter isn't he