For all the ballyhoo about the big Billary bounceback, after the Wyoming caucuses, the Mississippi primary, and the final tally showing that, delegate-wise, Texas was actually just a draw, the knife fight and stomping contest otherwise known as the race for the Democratic presidential nomination stands roughly where it did on March 4. By my admittedly shaky calculation, if the Billarys capture 55 percent of the remaining pledged delegates, they would then still need to shanghai two-thirds of the 343 uncommitted superdelegates in order to claim the nomination. I’m not smart enough to see how they can pull all of this off, but I am too smart to say they can’t.
If sheer audacity counts for anything, they probably will. Despite her disadvantageous position, both the Billarys indicated last week that she might be willing to take on that promising though inexperienced young opponent of hers as a running mate. This offer to be "number two" to someone currently running "number two" to him probably smelled like "number two" to Obama, especially after Ms. Clinton knowingly gave the Republicans first-class, sound-byte fodder for the fall by suggesting that he was less qualified for the presidency than either she or Senator McCain. Presumably in a Clinton-Obama administration, she’d always be available to answer the red phone at 3 a.m. He’d be relegated to sharpening the pencils, under appropriate supervision, of course.
Touting her foreign policy bona fides, Ms. C also took credit for helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland in 1995, a claim that struck the former first minister of Northern Ireland described as “a wee bit silly,” given that her role was mainly that of “cheerleader” at the proceedings. (Well, Ol’ Bill always had a thing for cheerleaders, didn’t he?) Likewise, Senator Clinton is fond of patting herself on the back for that other time in 1995 when she boldly “spoke truth to power” at that Women’s Conference in Beijing by cataloguing a list of abuses to women around the world. She portrays herself as really angering the misogynist Chinese establishment on this occasion, but since she didn’t even mention China in her speech, it’s hard to know whether “power” was even listening when “truth” was spoken. In any event, here we have it: the two crowning achievements of her foreign policy experience, both equal parts fabrication and exaggeration.
Now comes Geraldine Ferraro, big-time Billaryite and Fritz Mondale’s running mate on the crash-and-burn 1984 Democratic ticket, insisting that Barrack Obama is where he is only because of what he is—a black man. No woman, white or black, would be so “lucky” sez Ms. Ferraro. (Note to Gerry: I don’t know that I’d ride that pony too hard. You weren’t exactly on the ticket in ’84 because of your brains or your popularity, Girlfriend!) When pressed to separate herself from Ferraro and her remarks, Ms. Clinton would only say that it was “unfortunate” that supporters of both camps had become a little overzealous at times. Although Ferraro ultimately resigned from Clinton’s finance committee, in doing so she was combative rather than apologetic, firing back at critics that she was tired of seeing anyone who criticized a black man being labeled a racist and charging that she was being attacked simply because she was white. Commentators suggested that Ferraro was clearly venting the anger and frustration of Ms. Clinton’s hard-core middle-aged white women supporters, but her sentiments are also likely to resonate with the blue-collar white voters of Pennsylvania in general, a number of whom don’t particularly cotton to the idea of black people moving into their jobs or their neighborhoods. James Carville wasn’t telling the Republicans anything they didn’t already know back in 1991 when he famously described Pennsylvania as Pittsburg in the West, Philadelphia in the East, and Alabama in between. In no small measure, the three Republican presidential victories of the 1980s were a register of how well the old racially coded “southern strategy” worked as a national strategy as well.
The liberal punditry has expressed puzzlement at Senator Clinton’s rather dismissive reaction to Ferraro’s outburst, but among hardened political cynics, for whom the Billarys are poster Boy-Girl, it’s not all that difficult to understand. Hillary got about 10-12 percent of the black vote in Mississippi and roughly the same in Ohio. No matter how polarizing, anything that can tap into white anger and frustration stands to help her more than it hurts. That she is cutting into the party’s chances in the fall with every such action is of no apparent concern to her. In the past the Republicans have benefited enormously from playing the race card against the Democrats. Now they stand to benefit from the Democrats playing it against each other. It’s no wonder that 24 percent of the Billarys’ votes in the Mississippi Democratic Primary came from members of the other party. The Democrat they most love to hate is the best thing they've got going for them right now.
