Prometheus 6

The New York Times has realized the Clintons screwed up so bad, even white folks are calling them out for race baiting.

The presence of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton should have made talk of race or gender academic. But Mr. Obama seized the mantle of change and upset Mrs. Clinton in Iowa in part by drawing away her support among women. By the time the campaigns got to New Hampshire, the Clinton team was panicking. Mrs. Clinton had to win or risk being out of the primaries entirely.

They're still trying to disappear the most egregious, obvious cases, the ones that convinced white folks the Clintons went Southern Strategy.

It was clearly her side that first stoked the race and gender issue. Mrs. Clinton mentioned in a debate in New Hampshire that a woman president would be a change for America. It was an offhand comment, and obviously true. But the next day, at events we attended, Mrs. Clinton’s surrogates were pushing hard the line that a woman president would be “the real” change.

Mrs. Clinton followed up with her strange references to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson — and no matter how many times she tried to reframe the quote, the feeling hung in the air that she was denigrating America’s most revered black leader.

Then the staff and surrogates got involved. Mr. Obama’s team circulated lists of supposedly racially insensitive quotes from Mrs. Clinton. Her staff and supporters, including the over-the-top former President Bill Clinton, went beyond Mrs. Clinton’s maladroit comments — and started blaming Mr. Obama for the mess.

Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, compared Mr. Obama to Sidney Poitier’s character in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” — a black man trying to insert himself into white society. Representative Charles Rangel of New York said that Mr. Obama had said some “absolutely stupid” things.

See? No mention of Shaheen. No mention of Kerrey. No mention of Penn. No mention of the mysterious campaign chair that forwarded the madrassa myth, nor the other two, apparently lesser entities that also forwarded such crap.

The defense the Clintons and their allies have put forth is "They've been involved wioth black issues for so long, they can't be racist." And they do not wear the pointy hat, this is true. But the 'black issues' they address are the issues the mainstream has with Black folks.