Doug Henwood wrote:
> [from The Note]
>
> "Left behind in South Carolina, Bill Clinton became the attack dog of
> his wife's campaign," Lee Bandy writes in his column in The State.
> "His critiques of Obama brought a new level of divisiveness and
> rancor to the campaign, shocking South Carolinians who had never seen
> Clinton close up."
>
> If you needed proof that he's been consistently and intentionally
> making the race about race, his protestations to the contrary
> notwithstanding -- the former president's oh-so-casual mention of the
> fact that Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina (in caucuses, not
> primaries) should settle the matter.
>
> "The Clintons paid a steep price for trying to marginalize Obama as a
> minority candidate. Their effort may still work; Obama won just a
> quarter of the white vote in South Carolina, and white voters
> dominate most of the states yet to hold elections," AP's Ron Fournier
> writes. "But, for one night at least, racial politics got marginalized."
>
> Unless -- as is often the case with the former president -- Bill
> Clinton was operating at a level mere political mortals cannot hope
> to understand, playing chess while we've been watching checkers.
> Obama's is a diminished campaign because of South Carolina, if only
> slightly -- more defensive, more responsive, and just a bit worried
> about being turned into something his candidacy is all about NOT
> becoming: the "black candidate."
>
> "In the longer term . . . the Bill Clinton effect could prove more
> effective for the campaign of the senator from New York," Michael
> Tackett writes in the Chicago Tribune. "The degree to which Obama is
> seen as a black candidate rather than a candidate who happens to be
> black is likely to play a larger role in the upcoming states, none of
> which have such sizable percentages of black voters as South
> Carolina. . . . Bill Clinton is often thought in the moment to be
> doing the wrong thing, when it turns out to be the right thing
> politically."
>
> Newsweek's Evan Thomas and Suzanne Smalley grab the former president
> in all of his rope-line candor: "Let me just say that I went through
> a year and all I did was compliment Senator Obama and I continued to
> compliment him when he said in Iowa that my wife was a dishonest
> person. An untruthful person.. . . A person without character."
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