Did white http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2893 in New Hampshire reject a black candidate, thereby confirming the idea of a white curtain in the Democratic Party? Will South Carolina become a battle for the favor of black women, who are pulled, from the standpoint of identity politics, in two different directions?
Race and gender have always been subtexts of the Democratic presidential race, and for the first time, really, since this whole thing began, they’ve become fully fledged texts. One reporter even claims that racial politics is “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2916" the Democratic race.
Today, former President Clinton appeared on prominent black radio talk show programs to tamp down a wave of concerns that his calling Barack Obama’s candidacy a “fairy tale” was racially insensitive. One by one, to hosts Steve Harvey, Michael Basin and Al Sharpton, Clinton professed his admiration for Obama and insisted that he was only referring to Obama’s lack of executive experience.
In turn, the Clinton campaign has accused the Obama campaign of artificially ginning up the controversy. Clinton aides seized on reports that an Obama press aide, in response to a research query from a prominent activist, included remarks by the Clintons in a compilation of racially insensitive remarks. Hillary Clinton said the accusations about her comments were “baseless and divisive,” ABC News reported tonight.The compilation produced by the press aide starts with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s linking Obama’s style at press conferences to “Shuck and Jive.” The next heading in capital letters reads: “MARTIN LUTHER KING / LYNDON JOHNSON http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2913." The story excerpt includes Hillary Clinton’s remark that Pres. Lyndon Johnson was instrumental to the passage of civil rights laws. Then the document features Bill Clinton’s assertion that Hillary Clinton is “stronger than Nelson Mandela,” former Clinton adviser Billy Shaheen’s plea to the press to focus on Obama’s youthful drug use, Mark Penn’s invocation of the word “cocaine” when trying to defend Shaheen.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/obama_clinton_and_racial_polit.php