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The Fairy Tale Revisited

By Big Tent Democrat

Barack Obama is having a press conference this morning and it is being dominated by questions about the 'race card.' That makes it a good press conference for McCain. The big hook for McCain is the fact that Obama supporters disgracefully smeared Bill and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. The McCain riposte to pushback from Obama supporters is "that's what you said about Bill and Hillary Clinton." Take Bob Herbert for instance. Today he writes:

John McCain didn’t appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn’t stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign’s operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck. . . . Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades. He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition.

Here's the problem -- Bob Herbert spent the entire Democratic primary accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of having no class, being persons without scruples and of playing the race card. He is now disqualified from pushing back against John McCain's race baiting and disgraceful campaign. Indeed, McCain welcomes a blast from Bob Herbert. Why? Because he can quote what Herbert wrote and said about Bill and Hillary Clinton. More . . .

A few examples. This one:

The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. . . . [I]t’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.

It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another. What kind of people are the Clintons? . . .

Or this one:

Class is not a Clinton forte. But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.

The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.

These are just a couple of examples and this was seen all over Obama World, from Bob Herbert, Eugene Robinson, to Jim Clyburn to bloggers like Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, etc.

The fairy tale has come home to roost. All the dirty work these folks did during the primaries to slime Bill and Hillary Clinton is now fodder for John McCain. Of course he was going to going dirty, ugly, negative and would race bait. The wonder is none of these folks realized that when they said and did anything about Bill and Hillary Clinton to favor Obama that all of it would come back to haunt Obama in the general election.

Of course their behavior was disgraceful, but more than that, it harms Barack Obama now.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

(Comments over 200, thread closed.)

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 02, 2008 (boomark / email).