Is it possible that this is Hillary Clinton’s strategy against Barack Obama?
"Far from conceding African-American support to the most credible candidate ever of African descent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the Clintons are pushing aggressively for the help of their longtime allies in the black business, political and entertainment elite. Clinton’s supporters say she intends to make the Illinois senator fight for every black endorsement and every black vote. It’s a strategy that pushes Obama to decide just how black he can afford to be: Will he pitch himself to African-American voters as the black candidate, or hew to the post-racial line that’s helped make him sensationally popular with white Democrats?" Could this be to Obama’s advantage, along with his smoking?
It would be great if the consequence was a genuine debate about what kind of political leadership would be beneficial to the black community (as well as the extent to which relying too heavily upon specifically black leaders ideologically attached to the game of identity politics has been counterproductive). The GOP could also capitalize on this as an opportunity to make the case that the Democratic dominance of the black vote has proved less that propitious. Of course, this could also set the stage for new levels of political pandering.
What Machiavellian genius! This is the inverse of Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment: instead of distancing herself from the black power brokers, Hillary forces Obama to align himself with them, thereby alienating himself from white voters.
Doesn’t Obama’s color just make him what he is? I mean in American political terms. I suppose, and I do not know, it depends on how much black voters identify themselves and their interests with "the civil rights generation of black leaders and to the black political establishment." If those leaders do NOT take Obama seriously, seeing more benefit with Hillary, their old friend, then he cannot align himself with them, and has no choice in the matter. If that is the case, he ought to ignore that dissonance and continue as he has begun. Will white Democrats abandon him if those black leaders do not support him? Has their lack of support hurt him, so far?
The theory is that Obama is black, but not "black." See this and this.
Which is NOT to say that his race is irrelevant, right? Is he the first Democrat that we’ve heard about in this black, but not "black" category?