Race Should Not Be The Storyline

Argues Alan Stewart Carl, a moderate blogger, about the Democratic presidential race: "Dick Morris has a nasty take on the Democratic primaries. He opines: If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama's ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight…[I]f blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton. Wow. I don’t know what upsets me more: that Morris would so brazenly declare that white Democrats are racist or that he might be right. If Hillary wins the nomination, we’ll likely never know exactly how much race played into the voters’ decision. There are plenty of reasons to support Clinton over Obama without race ever entering the debate. But if Clinton should win, there will be those like Morris who declare it a result of racism. Those same people will likely use that claim to try to drive a wedge into the Democrats or at least make the Clintons look more ruthless and conniving than they already appear. This all sits very poorly with me. Intellectually, I know race relations and race politics are still a major part of the American political system just as racism is still very much with us. But in my heart I hope the vast majority of voters can judge a man, as Dr. King dreamed, not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. I hope Morris’ nasty little analysis does not become a dominant storyline. I foresee nothing but ugliness in that."

My response: Ugliness, but political truth in this case. Dick Morris is a former Clinton adviser, so he knows how they operate. Let's not forget that before the New Hampshire primary - when Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign rollout of the race card, using racially coded language, was really ratcheted up - Sen. Barack Obama was beating Sen. Hillary Clinton among white men. Sen. Clinton has since consolidated her white support, along with her Hispanic firewall support in other key states.