African-American Backlash will Cost Clinton Election

Jesse Jackson said this morning (on FOX Business channel) that Bill Clinton stands the chance of alienating black voters by attacking Obama. It was also reported this morning that some prominent Democrats are telling "Slick Willie" to shut his trap.

It is too late. The damage has been done. On election day, in the Fall many African American voters will stay home, thus cost her the White House. And she, and Bill, will have only themselves to blame. Tragically, the smears directed against Obama by Billary have succeeded. Hillary will win the nomination.

But was is typically Clintonian they will have done it by destroying the Democratic Party's chances of winning the Presidency. We've seen it all before. In 1994, Democrats lost control of the Congress, and never regained it for the rest of Bill Clinton's presidency. It occurred because of the duplicitous, unprincipled tactics of the Bill and Hill. They not only lost the Congress, but lost the 2000 election, despite 8 years of a "prosperous" Clinton reign. The Democrats only regained control of the Congress in 2007 because of George Bush's unprecedented incompetence.

The Clintons are all about themselves. And as Mike Barnacle pointed out, they will do just about anything to gain and keep power:

Bill and Hillary had probably assumed that the love for him could be seamlessly transferred to her, that African American fealty to the Clinton brand was a given in Democratic politics. But the steady ascendancy of Barack Obama - and the Clintons' ham-handed, racially tinged attempts to stymie his rise - now threaten to sever those ties.

Hillary has sought to lower the temperature in recent days, but shorthand impressions linger, and she has not helped her standing by seeming to minimize the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (perhaps due to a poor choice of words), and by sending out surrogates who seemed to be implying that Obama was once a stereotypical black drug dealer.

[...]blacks were starting to bail on the Clintons long before the Clinton camp launched its veiled insinuations (surrogate Andrew Cuomo said the candidates needed to converse with the voters, because "you can't shuck and jive at a press conference"). I doubt there was a mass exodus from Hillary just because surrogate Bob Johnson compared Obama to Sidney Poitier, who played a well-mannered black seeking a white family's approval in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but clearly the Clintons' trademark pugilism has made matters worse.

There once was a time when blacks instinctively rallied to the Clintons. They liked Bill's style; they liked the fact that he curbed black poverty more than any predecessor, and, during the Lewinsky sex scandal, they likened Ken Starr's pursuit of Bill to the FBI's wiretapping and harassment of King.

But that was so 10 years ago, back when the Clintons were stuck on defense. Now, they're back on offense, playing for the highest stakes, and their target is a black guy who embodies the black American dream. If Hillary takes him down, she will face a massive repair job in the black community[...]