Exit Polls in South Carolina Point to Importance of Economy, Dirty Politics

Obama was giving his victory speach in SC. I was shocked to see mainly white folks sitting behind him. Why would he set the stage in such a way? Did only whites attend the event? No! He is playing the RACE CARD! I have been to dozens of events such as this. Staff workers hand out posters and direct attendies where to sit and when to applaud. This makes my stomach turn. Wake up and smell propaganda.

Looks like the Clintons got whomped...too bad.^_^ I like Obama, but I don't care who gets the nomination; I just want the Democrats to win the White House. Is that too much to ask?

rkj, the question isn't "how stupid does someone need to be not to be able to remember that Obama is black?"
The question is: "How stupid does someone need to be in order to buy into the Clinton camp's hysterical branding attempts and vote against Obama out of some sense of white solidarity when he's gone out of his way to avoid addressing specifically black concerns and issues?"

HRC supporters had better hope that enough Feb. 5th voters fall under that stupidity threshold. There are plenty of them who believe in her for perfectly good reasons, but this campaign is all about undecided voters, and Obama has the momentum now. The only way she's going to win is by knocking it out of him, and she's chosen to do this by attempting to make him "the black candidate" and using this to convince undecided whites to go to her rather than Obama. Once you start using this tactic, it's sort of difficult to stop. Which is a shame, really...the Clintons used to have pretty good relationship with the black community, Bill's rushing back to Arkansas to execute a retarded black man and his racially coded condemnation of Sister Souljah notwithstanding. But unfortunately this tactic seems to be backfiring on them: South Carolina whites, not historically the most tolerant and understanding of groups, had no problem voting for Obama, and the negative press Bill's attacks are gathering is eclipsing Hilary the candidate. Even Toni Morrison has soured on them now, which is quite a sign of how low they've stooped (see: Jesse Jackson comparisons, Mark Penn's laughably thinly veiled accusations of drug dealing, HRC campaign staffers alleging he is a Muslim, the Bob Johnson/BET fiasco...the list goes on.)

However, looking at comment threads here, on TNR, WaPo, Salon, NYT, Politico, HuffPo, etc, I am not so sure that this backlash will be enough to prevent her tactics from working. There seem to be many HRC supporters--and a lot of people who claim to be Edwards supporters but spend all their time bashing Obama--who obviously have no problem with Billary playing on racial solidarity to win, as many of them are eager to play the race card themselves--ironically enough, usually by accusing Obama of playing the race card. Are you sick of the phrase "race card" yet? 'Cause I sure am!

Either way it goes, we'll get a president who's at least mildly progressive, even if she does feel a need to make up for her lack of a Y chromosome by rattling sabres, a proclivity Hilary has already shown with her kowtowing to the Bush administration and voting to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a state apparatus, a terrorist organization. This particularly egregious and ridiculous example of belligerence is made even more embarrassing by our own checkered history in Iran: if the Revolutionary Guards are terrorists because of what they've done to America, isn't the CIA a terrorist organization because of its role in the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh? As much as Hilary feels the need to placate misogynists by acting like a Republican now and again, the Democratic base has made it clear that she is not to do it again on pain of severe consequences, and a HRC administration would no doubt be considerably more peaceful than a Bush administration. The fact is that both candidates are better by far than any of the Republicans, and it's a sign of how strong the field is/was and how identical Obama and HRC's positions are that so much sniping and fighting is taking place over the seemingly less significant issues of "character" "judgement" and "experience" and most of all "race" rather than specific positions.

Oh, and "muddy"--you must have been watching the Clinton supporter fantasy version of the Obama SC victory speech. The one where he wore a gold chain and breakdanced while Nation of Islam bodyguards looked on and Louis Farrakhan talked about hating Jews in the background. The one everyone else saw (the real one, that is) had a racially mixed crowd--just like the crowd that trounced Clinton in SC.