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From the very beginning, the premise and the promise of Barack Obama’s campaign was that it would transcend race. And last autumn the Obama team also knew this was the only way it could win. The Clinton brand among black voters was so strong, so unbreakable, so resilient a force that even the first credible black candidate for the presidency remained stuck 20-30% behind Hillary Clinton among African-American voters. She was, after all, the wife of the “first black president”, as the author Toni Morrison called Bill. She had almost all the black political establishment behind her. Her husband, from...

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully. Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd. “There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton. There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to...

Two very bad things have happened to Barack Obama. One is that he has been Jesse Jackson-ized. The other is that he has been Michael Dukakis-ized and John Kerry-ized. Only one bad thing has happened to Hillary Clinton. It was that her husband continued to run his mouth and wag his finger without attention to plain truth. If she'd file for divorce right now, she'd likely gain six points in the polls. The biggest political news last week was not that Hillary beat Obama by 10 points in Pennsylvania. It was two other things. One was that she beat him...

Hillary Clinton is pinning her hopes on the party’s superdelegates to gift her the nomination. But America’s most senior black congressman warns she is playing with fire and could force a split in the DemocratsSarah Baxter in Fayetteville, North Carolina The most senior black congressman in America had a tough warning for Hillary Clinton this weekend as she fought to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from Barack Obama. “We’ll be playing with fire if we interfere with the voters’ choice,” James Clyburn, the party’s chief whip in the House of Representatives, told The Sunday Times. “African-Americans will feel cheated.” Clinton...

The third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives and one of the country’s most influential African-American leaders sharply criticized former President Bill Clinton this afternoon for what he called Mr. Clinton’s “bizarre” conduct during the Democratic primary campaign. Representative James E. Clyburn, an undeclared superdelegate from South Carolina who is the Democratic whip in the House, said that “black people are incensed over all of this,” referring to statements that Mr. Clinton had made in the course of the heated race between his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Senator Barack Obama. Mr. Clinton was widely criticized by black leaders...

<p>CLINTON INTERNALS SHOW 11-POINT LEAD IN PA Mon Apr 21 2008 11:10:14 ET **Exclusive** Controlled excitement is building inside of Clinton's inner circle as closely guarded internal polling shows the former first lady with an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania! Clinton is polling near to nearly 2 to 1 over Obama in many regions of the granite state, a top insider explained to the DRUDGE REPORT. A strong coalition of middle-class and religious voters has all but secured a Clinton victory Tuesday, with headline-making margins, the campaign believes. "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of how much," a senior campaign source said Monday morning. When pressed if the dramatic internal polling numbers could somehow be flawed in a state as demographically complex as Pennsylvania, and with new voter registration surging to unseen levels, the campaign insider held firm. "Senator Obama would be wise not to unpack his bags quite yet." MORE With less than 24 hours to go until the beginning of the end of primary season voting, Obama has handedly captured Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but has failed to dominate suburban sprawl, the campaign's polling reveals. An 11-point victory in Pennsylvania for Clinton would expand on margins scored in Ohio. Clinton will quickly move to feverishly focus on Indiana starting Tuesday night, hoping to somehow convince superdelegates that she not only has superior stamina but has crucial swing state appeal. Without superdelegate intervention, Clinton still faces impossible math to nomination. Developing...</p>

As the candidates' dueling sound bites ring out with increasing sting, Democrats are growing ever more anxious about how long it's taking to nail down their party's presidential nominee. And among Bay Area Democrats, there is deep concern that the Clinton vs. Obama rhetorical mud wrestling shows no sign of abating. "Obviously, you don't like the personal attacks. I think it will be hot and heavy all the way," to the August convention, predicted San Jose Assemblyman Jim Beall, a Clinton backer attending Friday night's annual Santa Clara County Democratic Party dinner. The exchanges between the candidates grew even sharper...

PITTSBURGH - The Lawrenceville neighborhood, with its car-repair shops and convenience markets giving way to coffee houses and yoga salons, represents both sides of the upscale/downscale electoral coalition that Democrats hope will carry them to the White House in November. But Lawrenceville, like many Democratic precincts, is increasingly divided in its politics along class lines. Last week, while 27-year-old Bronwyn Loughren, co-owner of an art gallery called La Vie, was expressing disgust over Hillary Clinton's hardball political tactics, beautician Jenny Skrinjar, 53, of the Style North Hair Salon was fuming about Barack Obama. "He looks down on people," she said....

Black Democrats are voting largely along racial lines. With few policy differences between the candidates, Obama won 92 percent of the black vote in Mississippi, 91 percent in Wisconsin, 87 percent in Ohio, 84 percent in Maryland, and 84 percent in Texas. White Democrats are voting significantly less along racial lines, but there are still divisions. There seems to be no chance Clinton can win more black votes against Obama, so her only hope is to encourage more whites to vote along racial lines. No one in the campaign would ever say such a thing — they certainly haven't to...

In an interview with me this morning, senior Hillary adviser Harold Ickes confirmed that Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a key topic in discussions with uncommitted super-delegates over whether Obama is electable in a general election. The comments from Ickes, who is Hillary's chief delegate hunter, are to my knowledge the first on-the-record confirmation from a Hillary adviser that the Wright controversy is a subject in conversations between the Hillary campaign and the super-delegates her advisers are trying to win over to Hillary's side. In the wide-ranging interview, Ickes also: * Said that it was possible that Hillary forces on the...

In further evidence that the Democratic primary is straining the party, liberal activist organization MoveOn.org is circulating a petition that attacks a group of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) donors, who had “threatened” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for her stance on superdelegates. “This is pretty outrageous: a group of Clinton-supporting big Democratic donors are threatening to stop supporting Democrats in Congress because Nancy Pelosi said that the people, not the superdelegates, should decide the presidential nomination,” said MoveOn, which is backing Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), in an e-mail to supporters. A group of deep-pocketed donors had, in a letter...

It was extremely unlikely that Hillary Clinton was going to overcome Barack Obama's lead in delegates, states and total votes and take the Democratic nomination, but Obama's speech this morning -- graceful, thoughtful, nuanced, sweeping, challenging, unprecedented -- pretty much wiped out any chance at all. It was a speech Hillary could never have given -- really, few U.S. politicians ever could have given. I write this not just because I think this will dampen the Rev. Wright controversy. I write this because Obama did an extraordinary job of presenting himself as the candidate of "the better angels of our...

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WASHINGTON — Despite the celebration of Barack Obama's electoral successes as evidence that the nation has moved beyond racial divisions, signs are emerging of a small but unmistakable race-based resistance to his historic White House bid. Beneath Obama's easy win in Mississippi on Tuesday, exit polls show a state polarized along racial lines, with white Democrats there rejecting his candidacy 70 percent to 26 percent, while 9 of 10 blacks voted for him. It's a dramatic reflection of a recurrent pattern most pronounced in the South. Geraldine Ferraro, in 1984 the first woman nominated by a major party for vice...

ON first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent “It’s 3 a.m.” advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude. I am not referring to the fact that the ad is unoriginal; as several others have noted, it mimics a similar ad made for Walter Mondale...

Read all about it at the link, details to follow....

JANESVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A day after lecturing her presidential rival for not rejecting a controversial minister's support, Hillary Rodham Clinton declined Wednesday to reject one of her Texas backers who commented on Barack Obama's race. During a series of satellite television interviews, Clinton was questioned by Dallas station KTVT about comments by Adelfa Callejo, a local activist who supports Clinton candidacy. The interviewer quoted Callejo as saying "Obama's problem is he happens to be black" and asked Clinton to respond. "Well obviously I want all of us judged on our merits," Clinton said. "I believe strongly that the fact...

A message posted January 20, 2008 on the Islamist forum Al-Hesbah (hosted by NOC4Hosts Inc. in Florida, USA), by a member calling himself Al-Jawfi, suggests stirring up racial tension between African-Americans and whites in the U.S. by spreading inflammatory materials on the Internet. In the discussion thread, other members proposed posting racist materials against African-Americans (such as insulting jokes and pictures) on sites frequented by African-Americans, in order to arouse anger and bitterness in their community. Another suggestion was to post, on white supremacist sites, materials that present African-Americans as a threat to American society. The following are excerpts from...

NEW ORLEANS -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged Saturday night that her husband may have offended some African Americans with his comments last month about Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy, but she said that Bill Clinton's record on race relations and "his heart" attest to his good intentions. Clinton was asked about her husband's comments by broadcaster Tavis Smiley at the annual "State of the Black Union" conference, which drew thousands to the Morial Convention Center. "If anyone was offended by anything that was said, whether it was meant or not, whether it was misinterpreted or not, then obviously I regret...

NEW ORLEANS - Hillary Rodham Clinton strongly defended her husband's record on civil rights Saturday at a forum in which she acknowledged "painful moments" in a presidential contest pitting the first woman candidate against a pioneering black contender. At the annual State of the Black Union conference hosted by PBS's Tavis Smiley, Clinton pushed back hard on the notion that Bill Clinton had inflamed racial tensions while campaigning for her in the run-up to South Carolina's primary last month. The former president — once so popular among black voters he was dubbed the first black president by novelist Toni Morrison...

White Americans are both genetically weaker and less diverse than their black compatriots, a Cornell University-led study finds. Researchers analyzed the genetic makeup of 20 Americans of European ancestry and 15 African-Americans. The Europeans showed much less variation among 10,000 tested genes than did the Africans, which was expected, but also that Europeans had many more possibly harmful mutations than did African, which was not.

Tavis Smiley, the bestselling author of the "Covenant With Black America," is in a world turned upside down. He said he's being "hammered," "barbecued," and is "catching hell" from black Americans for suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made a major mistake by declining to speak at the State of the Black Union event that Smiley plans to host next week in New Orleans. "There's all this talk of hater, sellout and traitor," Smiley said to me in a telephone interview. Smiley even mentioned getting death threats, but wouldn't elaborate. He said his office has been flooded with angry e-mails....

Confusion erupted Thursday night amid reports that a prominent African American supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's had changed his mind. Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who is also a Democratic superdelegate, was reported by the New York Times as having decided to switch his superdelegate vote from Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama after Lewis's district, around Atlanta, went for the Illinois senator.

MILWAUKEE — Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.” Mr. Lewis, who carries great influence among...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Gov. Ed Rendell, one of Hillary Rodham Clinton's most visible supporters, said some white Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against her rival Barack Obama because he is black.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Ed Rendell, one of Hillary Rodham Clinton's most visible supporters, said some white Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against her rival Barack Obama because he is black. "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," Rendell told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in remarks that appeared in Tuesday's paper. To buttress his point, Rendell cited his 2006 re-election campaign, in which he defeated Republican challenger Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steelers star, by a margin of more than...

Via TPM Election Central, I see that Governor Ed Rendell is back to embarrassing a presidential candidate he ostensibly supports. Here's an account of how Rendell, a Hillary supporter, recently sized up Obama's chances in Pennsylviania: Gov. Ed "Don't Call Me 'Fast Eddie' " Rendell met with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week to talk about his latest budget. But before turning the meeting over to his number-crunchers, our voluble governor weighed in on the primary fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and what the Illinois senator could expect from the good people of Pennsylvania...

**EXCERPT** RICHMOND, Va. - Barack Obama holds a 16 percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton in Virginia heading into Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary, according to a statewide poll. A survey by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of likely Democratic primary voters showed 53 percent supported Obama to 37 percent for Hillary Clinton. Among likely voters in the Republican primary, John McCain was the choice of 55 percent with Mike Huckabee backed by 27 percent.

the Hallmark Channel. ...offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come. The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner. This decision was a cold, political cost-benefit calculus. Bill Clinton and the campaign’s other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user, “the black candidate” . The result? Black America...

6,173 2% Biden, "Joe" - 136,927 36% Clinton, Hillary - 1,925 1% Dodd, Christopher J. - 13,028 3% Edwards, John - 1,405 0% Kucinich, Dennis J. - 220,501 57% Obama, Barack - 4,253 1% Richardson, William "Bill" Very bad.

Come join us for the fun, as the Democratic Party implodes from within!!

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Barack Obama routed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially-charged South Carolina primary Saturday night, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National Convention delegates. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was running third, a sharp setback in the state where he was born and scored a primary victory in his first presidential campaign four years ago. The Associated Press made its call based on surveys of voters as they left the polls. About half the voters were black, according to polling place interviews, and four out...

When Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign first began, there was reason to think she would be hard to beat in a primary. Despite her Iraq vulnerability and assorted baggage, she seemed to have an impenetrable bulwark in the black vote. "Bill Clinton's popularity with blacks has been presumed to carry over to her and help her win the important South Carolina primary ... and other similar Southern primaries," explained Newsweek in November 2006. Newsweek wisely noted that the candidacy of Barack Obama could change that presumption. But, even after Obama joined the race, some Clinton advisers didn't fret. Last January, one...

WASHINGTON (AP) - South Carolina is where two presidential candidates lectured the media for focusing on race, but behind the scenes worked furiously to use the state's diversity to their advantage. Race is an uncomfortable thing to discuss, especially in a national political campaign where you are trying to win the support of a majority white electorate. Nevertheless, both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton had a strategy in South Carolina focused on race.

Earlier this morning, I noted that some Democrats have discovered that the Clintonian Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy meme may actually have been drizzly pap. In the Los Angeles Times today, Jonathan Chait reluctantly comes to that conclusion. He writes that the conservatives who have long railed against the lies and dirty tactics of the Clintons have been somewhat vindicated by the primary campaign tactics of Bill and Hillary: Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not...

SPARTANBURG, S.C.– Bill Clinton just staged a passionate defense of his wife here, after a voter asked how Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton could unite this country when it is so split, politically and racially, and when she is such a polarizing figure. The question unleashed an attack against the Republicans and an unusual assertion that Mr. Clinton had somehow escaped those attacks (has he forgotten so quickly?); he said he understood the right-wing bullies because he grew up with them. And he said that when they “didn’t have me to kick around anymore,” they went after his wife. The question...

Hillary Clinton has hit rock bottom in her appeal to black voters in South Carolina.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Presidential candidate Barack Obama accused former President Bill Clinton of distorting his words as the Democratic race in South Carolina heated up on Monday. Meanwhile, Republican presidential hopefuls kept their focus on economics as they began campaigning for the Jan. 29 primary in Florida. Obama, who was edged out by the ex-president's wife Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Saturday caucuses in Nevada, had harsh words for Bill Clinton, who is beloved in many Democratic circles — including among many blacks, who could be key to a win in South Carolina's weekend primary. The former president "has taken...

The American Debate: Bailing on Clinton? By Dick Polman There once was a time when the Clintons were demigods in the black community. I can recall, back when I was canvassing folks in South Carolina a few years ago, how the mere mention of the family name made them swoon. Pastor Joe Darby raved about Bill's "wonnnnn-derful touch." Anthony Dicks, an embalmer in a funeral home, smiled rapturously and said, "He gave me a warm feeling all over." Bill and Hillary had probably assumed that the love for him could be seamlessly transferred to her... We'll soon learn whether blacks...

<p>Basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson has a message for Barack Obama: Take it easy rookie.</p> <p>In a new Hillary Clinton radio ad released today in South Carolina, Johnson tells voters about his tough first year as a Los Angeles Lakers point guard.</p>

"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ... It took a president to get it done." —Hillary Clinton, Jan. 7So she said. And then a fight broke out. That remarkable eruption of racial sensitivities and racial charges lacked coherence, however, because the public argument was about history rather than what was truly offensive — the implied analogy to today. The principal objection was that Clinton appeared to be disrespecting Martin Luther King Jr., relegating him to mere enabler for Lyndon Johnson. But it is certainly true that Johnson was...

(CNN) — Hillary Clinton faced a grim statistic in Michigan tonight, despite her primary "win" there: results revealed that she may have reason to worry about her grasp on the African-American vote. Roughly 70 percent of Michigan’s African-American voters — a group that makes up a quarter of Michigan’s Democratic electorate — did not cast their votes for Clinton, choosing the “uncommitted” option instead. Yet these voters weren’t uncommitted at all: in fact, according to CNN exit polls, they overwhelmingly favored Barack Obama, whose name did not appear on the ballot. CNN exit polls show that he would have won...

Guys, it’s going to be a long, long campaign. Hillary Clinton says she has “has found” her voice - and it sounds a lot like Oprah Winfrey. Imagine the presidential race as one long Lifetime Network TV movie, and you’ve pretty much got the picture. All girl talk, all the time. There was a time when the rationale for a Hillary presidency was her toughness. Supporters touted the fact that, even though she’s a woman, she was the candidate with the biggest set of, er well, she’s really, really tough. That and several million dollars got her creamed by Barack...

Just issued by her campaign: “Over this past week, there has been a lot of discussion and back and forth - much of which I know does not reflect what is in our hearts. “And at this moment, I believe we must seek common ground. “Our party and our nation is bigger than this. Our party has been on the front line of every civil rights movement, women's rights movement, workers' rights movement, and other movements for justice in America. “We differ on a lot of things. And it is critical to have the right kind of discussion on where...

Clinton Receives Tepid Reception at MLK Event Hillary Rodham Clinton was welcomed by Hazel Dukes, president of the New York State Conference of NAACP branches. Speaking to black and Hispanic New Yorkers this afternoon, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to quell the controversy over race and the Democratic presidential nomination fight by crediting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King for his “march for freedom and justice” that had benefited both herself and her rival, Senator Barack Obama.

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Dogged by continuing racial tensions around her presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton drew a smattering of boos on Monday when she spoke at a religiously tinged Martin Luther King Jr. rally put together by a union organizing predominantly black security workers. The catcalls came when Clinton was introduced and her speech drew only tepid applause compared to the boisterous ovations drawn by many of the pastors and reverends — not to mention a hip-hop artist and slam poet — who took the podium before her. Her participation in the event drew nary a mention during nearly...

(CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign came out swinging Monday against the latest complaints from her rival, with former President Clinton announcing he has "a list of 80 attacks on Hillary" by Senator Barack Obama's campaign. In a nationally syndicated radio interview on WVON, Bill Clinton said Hillary Clinton's way of handling attacks showed a clear difference from Obama. "She didn't complain about it," he said, citing one in particular that he considered "appalling." "She just said 'I disagree,' and went on." .....

Barack Obama’s campaign has dismissed as not believable a prominent Hillary Rodham Clinton backer’s “tortured explanation” for seeming to inject Obama’s youthful drug use into the 2008 presidential campaign, and called it “troubling” that Clinton has not done more to distance herself from the remark. Former President Bill Clinton was drawn into the controversy on Monday in appearances on black radio talk shows. He told one host, Roland Martin, that impolitic remarks by supporters sometimes “just happen” in politics and said, “I think it's important not to overreact to them.” Obama has admitted in his memoir to using drugs as...

Whenever longtime Democrats gather to note how the chemistry and calculus of the 2008 campaign seem to favor their party this year, one or another will always add some version of the following: "Yeah, but we could screw this up before it's over." After the past few days, the pertinent question to ask is, is the crack-up happening already? Far-fetched as it would have seemed a month ago, the seeds of self-destruction are being planted in the war of coded words about race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The bickering has exploded in the space of a week into...

Democrat John Edwards on Sunday waded into a dispute between his rivals, criticizing comments by Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband that some have considered disparaging to Barack Obama and black people generally. "I must say I was troubled recently to see a suggestion that real change that came not through the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King but through a Washington politician. I fundamentally disagree with that," Edwards told more than 200 people gathered at a predominantly black Baptist church.