This is one of the most under reported or NOT reported stories by Media. Obama campaign shamelessly played the race card and cunningly blamed it on Clintons.
If Clintons are really good at campaigns (which I always doubted) and had an alert and good campaign team (one of the worst), they could have come up with an effective strategy to counter a stealth Obama's race card tactics.
Here is how it all started and ended:
It all started in New Hampshire. Remember the comments about MLK/LBJ comments with FOX News interview. Hillary was making a point that you need a active and strong president to make the dream a reality. Before that Obama was setting the trap by comparing him to MLK with his hope message and they calculated that Clintons would respond in some fashion. Hillary did respond and fell right into the trap.
Obama campaign saw that Hillary fell into the trap and used her MLK/LBJ comments to start an effective and stealth campaign with media's help to say that 'She was minimizing MLK' and they combined that with Bill Clintons 'Fairy Tale' comment (the comment was about Obama's before/after position on Iraq); they made it a potent weapon against Clintons. In few weeks the game changed and blacks abandoned Clintons. The media shamelessly played along with Obama's campaign tactics and pushed the story to make Clintons guilty of race baiting. That's when the game really changed and Clintons were never able to recover from that. It's sad to see a life time of fighting for and helping African Americans was white washed in few days by Obama's stealth and shameless race card tactics aided in a big way by media.
The story gets even better. Having acheived their objective i.e. locking up the black vote; Obama's campaign conveniently distanced their candidate and made him look as if he is above the fray with broad appeal. This is straight out of Republican playbook. They do the same thing. They inject some thing into the campaign and once the objective is acheived, they show their candidate as broadminded and above the fray. What did the inept and clueless Clintons and their campaign did; they watched silently (assuming that blacks will never abandon them) and did nothing only to see their reputations destroyed and abandoned by African Americans.
I don't blame Obama's campaign team at a tactical level even though it is shameless. Bill Clinton said politics is a contact sport but guess who actually practiced it and hade a huge success; Obama and his campaign. If Obama becomes the nominee (which he already is); this gives me the confidence that he can match to the republican campaign tactics and their playbook.
Republicans are much smarter than Clintons as the only thing they know is how to win elections. I have written a diariy on how they will run their campaign against Obama. Here is the link:
Obama Vs McCain - Hope not enough & here is why
Atlast Finally some body in media is paying attention to this unreported story about Obama's race card and how clintons got blamed for it.
Here is the link and the reason for my diary headline:
Race Man - How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton