Race takes center stage in the Clinton-Obama contest

AP Photo

The gloves are coming off in the nomination battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

Featured Topic | Posted 44 weeks 5 days ago

Race takes center stage in the Clinton-Obama contest

Maybe it was inevitable. A Democratic primary race that features major contenders who would be, respectively, the first African-American and first woman president of the United States now seems to hinge on questions of gender and race.

The campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- along with their surrogates -- went to war over racial issues over the weekend. Clinton defended her remarks that seemed to downplay Martin Luther King's contributions to civil rights, while the Obama campaign attacked a Clinton supporter who seemed to allude to his youthful drug use.

Why is race taking center stage in this debate? And who benefits from it?

Ben likes: Hillary and race

Victor Davis Hanson/National Review Online

It may or may not be Hillary's intent to deprecate in stereotype fashion the role of black rhetoric in galvanizing change by pointing out that LBJ, not Martin Luther King Jr., is to be given the greater credit for enacting civil-rights legislation. But it is a losing argument for her against Obama, and she makes things much worse every time she or Bill dredge it up for at least several reasons.

Joel likes: Not bean bag

Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo

We seem to be at the point where there are now two credible possibilities. One is that the Clinton campaign is intentionally pursuing a strategy of using surrogates to hit Obama with racially-charged language or with charges that while not directly tied to race nonetheless play to stereotypes about black men. The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.