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that casts Clinton in the worst light possible. In a way that is worse than twisting words, since you assert a speculative premise that by definition can't be disproved since it is based on your own subjective read.
One of Clinton's prime arguments all year has been that Obama won't match up well against McCain on experience, that he doesn't know world leaders, that he hasn't been involved first hand in national security matters. Many people here reject her argument, but it is the basis of her 3:00 AM phone call ad. She thinks Obama won't match up against McCain on national security, and that Republicans always win based on national security. That is an electability argument and it has nothing to do with race.
Clinton has also made a campaign issue out of her being tough enough to take on the National Republican Party attack machine and win. She makes a case that Obama has never faced a national Republican Party determined to take him down before, and raises doubts that he can handle that type of attack. That is an electability argument and it has nothing to do with race.
Clinton also has claimed that Obama has never really been vetted before, that we don't know what issues may be in his closet and how well he can handle them when they are trotted out. Chicago is Democratic machine politics and so far only his Rezko connection is being looked at, and only half way into this campaign did the media start paying attention. The controversy over Rev. Wright almost didn't come up during the nomination campaign either. Clinton claims that it is risky to run someone for President who has not been politically vetted. That is an electability argumement and it has nothing to do with race.
Not all Democrats buy those electability arguments regarding Obama, some do and some don't. But to reduce it all to Clinton thinks Obama can't win because he is a Black man is simply not fair, and it actually racializes the contest to claim that any concern about Obama's electability begins and ends with race. Hillary Clinton has been pushing the three arguments I listed above however, that is how she campaigns against Obama's electability.
Until we all got caught up in partisan passions around our specific candidates, let's say two years ago, no one at DU would have argued that racism is completely dead in America, or that it wasn't a factor in determining some political races. We debated that about Harold Ford Jr and his Senate run for example. We also wondered whether anti-semitism would beat Russ Feingold if he ran for President. Nowadays we talk about whether Hillary Clinton will lose the Democratic hold on the African American vote if we nominate her instead of Obama, and whether or not we will lose to McCain because of it. Somehow it is fine to talk about whether we will bleed black votes to McCain (or more likely have them stay home) but it is taboo to ponder whether Obama could lose some white votes to McCain?
I guarentee you that Obama's own campaign tacticians have very frank and sober conversations about how many white votes he is likely to lose due to racism, how to minimize that, and how to offset those losses by bringing in new younger white voters and increase minority turnout for him. His team searchs for a winning formular, and they are doing a fine job at it, but they have their eyes open to reality. The vast majority of Clinton's supporters are not racial bigots, but it is safe to say that the vast majority of racial bigots won't be supporting Obama.
I started writing about this over a year ago. I dubbed the interplay between experience and race as "the Bill Cosby" factor. There are millions of white Americans who do not yet have the same base line comfort level with African Americans as they do with fellow whites. They start out giving a white politician the benefit of the doubt more than they would a black politician, but it doesn't only hold to politics. A white stranger is less threatening to this type of person than a black stranger is, but they are not hard core racists. If they get to know the Black first, and experience him or her as a solid person, than they are fine with that individual; hence "the Bill Cosby effect", color ceases to be an issue once trust has been gained.
That threshold of trust among white Americans that enables a black American to be elected President in current America is one that at one point Colin Powell seemed to safely cross over, and Obama may now. But Colin Powell was a high profile player for a long time in American politics going back to the Gulf War. He had a long and distinguished career and few questioned his qualifications. An interesting factoid I remember from apartheid South Africa is that the Bill Cosby show was the top rated TV show in South Africa toward the end of apartheid. Bill Crosby passed the "Bill Crosby test" in racist South Africa.
One of my concerns regarding Obama's electability has always been the interplay of race and experience. I have feared that some essentially decent white Democrats who are not yet as comfortable with Black leaders as they are with White ones in general, will defect to McCain and claim that it is McCain's experience that won their vote, not closet racism on their part against Obama. In other words I think there are some white voters who would get behind a Democratic version of Colin Powell, someone like Andrew Young perhaps if he were a little bit younger, who may hesitate to elect a relatively new to the scene African American as President, because he hasn't "proved himself" enough over time to them.
That is a form of racism but not hard core racism. It is more of a double standard, a higher bar for a Black to clear than a White, but not an absolute rejection of all Blacks as a potential president. That is the "Bill Cosby factor" and it isn't the type of thing that can easily be talked about in public. Given what was not said by Halperin in that interview, it upsets me that you seem to be boiling down Hillary Clinton's concerns over OBama's electability into her using racism as an argument to nominate herself instead. Had Clinton wanted to play a hard race card in this contest, you can bet your bottom dollor that those Wright tapes would have found their way to the media before Texas and Ohio voted, it was all or nothing for Hillary at that point - she was at the point of elimination.
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