The Obama campaign sent a message to all its surrogates and supporters not to beat up on Hillary Clinton and to allow her time to bow out of the presidential race gracefully and in her own time.  From the top down, the Obama Campaign sent word that it did not want its surrogates to pressure Clinton into a decision before she is ready.  So in repayment for this gesture, Clinton went out on the campaign trail and started the race-baiting once again.  Clinton said in an interview with USA Today:

“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…….”These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that.”

So now Hillary Clinton is openly and unabashedly playing the race card in her last desperate attempt to exploit instead of heal the racial divisiveness that has plagued our country for generations.  Why?  For political gain.    So much for her speech in Indiana emphasizing party unity.  This writer really believed that Clinton had turned a corner on Tuesday night when she for the first time in at least 13 Obama wins, actually acknowledged and congratulated the Illinois Senator for his win in North Carolina.  I guess that was just a weak moment on her part.  Instead Clinton seems to have initiated a new strategy which appears to be to shift the narrative to Obama can’t win “white” voters.  Well just to point out the obvious, democrats usually lose the white vote in the general election.  And, it is actually the black vote that enabled Bill Clinton to become President in 1992 and 1996.  As to this new strategy, it didn’t work when Sen. Clinton referred to such voters as “working class voters” or “blue-collar workers” and it will not work when she just comes outright and says ”white voters.”  At this point, Clinton is only damaging herself with this last ditch effort to polarize the electorate with such racially based undertones.  Working class voters do not want to be branded  as a group that will not vote for the black guy.  Just like men do not want to be branded as men who will not vote for the woman.  We all have higher aspirations of unification and healing.  Just like Rev. Wright is stuck in the 1960′s, Sen. Clinton may be stuck there also if she really believes that such tactics will help her gain votes.  

Clinton seems to be touting the idea that racial divisiveness makes her more electable than Obama in a contest with John McCain.  One problem with her theory, if Clinton were to miraculously win the nomination, she will not have an African-American as her opponent in the general election.  Hence, no racial divide.  It will be a white woman against a white man.  More importantly, it will be Hillary Clinton, with all the Bill baggage, against “maverick” John McCain.  Hmmm, I wonder which way those working class voters will go.  That is the problem when your winning strategy is heavily dependent upon voters voting against the opposing candidate instead of voting for you.  Such voters tend to be disloyal and transient when the object of their distaste is removed from the equation.  The other important point to be made is that Clinton’s statement is not true.  In fact, Clinton has slandered “working class Americans.”  The real truth of the matter is that Obama has increased his support among working class Americans from Ohio through to Indiana.  For voters earning less than 50k annually, Obama increased his support from 42% in Ohio to 50% in Indiana.  For voters with no college education, Obama increased his support from 40% in Ohio to 46% in Indiana.  The percentage of white Americans in Ohio and Indiana is 82.9% and 83.9% respectively.  So one might conclude that Indiana is whiter than Ohio.  Yet, Obama’s support among such voters increased to 50%.  So the “pattern” that Clinton speaks of is a steady increase of Obama support among “working class voters” as this primary winds up.   All that said,  it looks as if Obama’s hope that Clinton would exit gracefully is a different scenario than she has in mind.  Just goes to show you, no good deeds go unpunished.