But there is one sense in which her campaign, at least, bears some responsibility for her current straits. Clinton operatives behind the scenes have been smearing Obama as a Muslim, and it was they who dug up that photo of him in Kenyan clothes. Clinton even said Obama was not a Muslim "as far as I know." The malice demonstrated in those actions laid the groundwork for people to believe that Clinton was capable of such hostility toward Obama.
The incident, it seems to me, does tell us two other things.
The first is that the strategy of the Clinton camp, of continuing to campaign even after victory at the polls became numerically impossible--in hopes that Obama might stumble and alienate sufficient numbers of superdelegates--was not crazy. I don't approve of it, but that it could work or could have worked seems clear. It could easily have been Obama who stumbled yesterday. Ironically, it was Clinton.
The second thing the incident tells us is how traumatized the nation still is by those horrible killings 40 years ago, and how much unfinished business of healing those wounds there is. Hillary didn't mean to pick at the scab. But she did. And we bled a little, all over again.
Via Juan Cole.
1 comment:
I wonder if anyone bothered to point out to Hilary that June was in the early/middle of the 68 primary rather than the end like today.
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