Frank Rich: Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War

[RamboLiberal]

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If that was the intent, it didn’t work. Mrs. Clinton did pile up her expected large margin among Latino voters in California. But her tight grip on that electorate is loosening. Mr. Obama, who captured only 26 percent of Hispanic voters in Nevada last month, did better than that in every state on Tuesday, reaching 41 percent in Arizona and 53 percent in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign’s attempt to drive white voters away from Mr. Obama by playing the race card has backfired. His white vote tally rises every week. Though Mrs. Clinton won California by almost 10 percentage points, among whites she beat Mr. Obama by only 3 points.

The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Last month, two eminent African-American historians who have served in government, Mary Frances Berry (in the Carter and Clinton years) and Roger Wilkins (in the Johnson administration), wrote Howard Dean, the Democrats’ chairman, to warn him of the perils of that credentials fight. Last week, Mr. Dean became sufficiently alarmed to propose brokering an “arrangement” if a clear-cut victory by one candidate hasn’t rendered the issue moot by the spring. But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?

A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10rich.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[splat]

1. High dudgeon, Frank. Get some sleep.

[Submariner]

2. So if Hillary wins we're in for hand-picked audiences and staged questions

just like Bush does for his lame press conferences. Just what we need, more Rovian tactics from Clinton.

[splat]

4. Huh?

That's quite a leap. You've conflated all your demons and projected them on this woman.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. This is your Frank Rich on drugs. Any questions?

--p!

[Demeter]

5. Hillary Is Alienating People Daily

It won't be civil war, because pretty soon nobody will be behind her. She's an embarrassment.

[margotb822]

6. Please

Don't act like Hillary is the 'bad-guy." I'm so sick of the MSM portraying Clinton in a poor light. She has worked her tail off for many more years than Obama. So what if she is driven and a woman. Why don't we debate Obama's weaknesses as much as we deride Clinton's? Tell me why I don't fell comfortable with a scripted canidiate. Tell me why I should vote for a person who is so willing to sell himself out to become the youngest president in a half a century. It is not racist to debate Obama's weak points, but it certainly is sexist to continually draw Hillary Clinton in a negative light. Don't be so upset that a woman is running for president, be upset that the best candidate will not be in the general election (John Edwards!)

[gaiilonfong]

8. PUHLEEEZZZZZE

Frank Rich said what MOST Dem party insiders are saying. Even Mike Barnacle who is NO Clinton hater said that long time party insiders don't want ANOTHER Clinton admin. because this is HOW they will govern, scorched earth ....AND...she will NEVER win the general because all those she has alienated will NOT vote for her.
Quit the gender-baiting.....this is NOT about Hillary the WOMAN(GETTING SO FRIGGIN OLD)...this is about Hillary the disengenuious, lying, hypocritical race-baiting candidate!

[tavalon]

10. I'm going to repeat my turnip story for you

And as for my affiliation, I caucused for Obama today. If and likely, when Clinton secures the nomination (super delegates, anyone?) she will win handily. At this point, the electorate has awoken and is as pissed as I've ever seen them. They would elect a turnip if it had a (D) after its name. Neither of our candidates are anywhere as low on the IQ and ability scale as a turnip. Relax, the Democrats will be taking the WH this fall. That you may not like the Dem who walks in ( I guarandamntee I don't like either one much), don't be so disingenuous as to pretend that one or the other "will NEVER win the general". It's a done deal.

[roseBudd]

13. It's not a done deal. Do not underestimate McCain. If the youth don't follow through

and transfer their affections to Hilary, McCain can win. There is a reason why McCain goes on the Daily Show so much.

[caligirl]

15. did you even read the editorial, it is disgusting to see this sort of politic

but it is a political race and we have seen this cheap shit before so read this excerpt i pulled from it:

In her California primary victory, Mrs. Clinton drew only 19 percent of the black vote. The campaign saw this coming and so saw no percentage in bestowing precious minutes of prime-time television on African-American queries.

That time went instead to the Hispanic population that was still in play in Super Tuesday’s voting in the West. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles had a cameo, and one of the satellite meetings was held in the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s smart politics, especially since Mr. Obama has been behind the curve in wooing this constituency.

But the wholesale substitution of Hispanics for blacks on the Hallmark show is tainted by a creepy racial back story. Last month a Hispanic pollster employed by the Clinton campaign pitted the two groups against each other by telling The New Yorker that Hispanic voters have “not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Mrs. Clinton then seconded the motion by telling Tim Russert in a debate that her pollster was “making a historical statement.”

It wasn’t an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign’s decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to “undermine one of Obama’s central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types.”

If that was the intent, it didn’t work."

[Thickasabrick]

7. K&R

[Johnny Battleground]

9. Not good

His line about "rancid spoils" puts the party in bad
light, and gets eaten up by the right.
It reveals a split along race and gender lines, and their
argument will be... how can a party that cannot unite itself,
unite the country?
Especially considering where they are split.

If there is brokering it will only come with a Clinton
victory. 
They will never accept a brokered defeat, especially claiming
to have won MI & FL.

Had Obama won Massachusetts I would have believed in a major
shift. The Kennedy's machine would have delivered a much
needed state.
It would have kept the Kennedy name in the foreground.
Didn't happen and now Kennedy is moot.

Only time will tell if Rich is correct. 
Frankly (no pun intended), Bill Clinton has been rancid.
His race comments has turned this into a wide open race.
Hillary has wept twice too many.
Obama has soaring speeches, but has been too thin on content.

[Joe Bacon]

11. Get off of Fantasy Island, Frank!

Be nice if this Koolaid drinkin Klown actually went out into the real world and see how we despise and loathe the grotesque Gomer Pyle wannabee that he helped put in the White House. Nope, Frank Bitch is your typical Clenis-hating Press Whore who still believes that the evilest thing in the universe is behind Bill Clinton's zipper.

[roseBudd]

12. I want to win PERIOD, I look at Hilary & see another charisma deprived candidate

Just because DUers think, investigate, compare, does not mean the electorate does. People do not vote for someone because they are the smartest person in the room. We lost 2 elections with charisma deprived eggheads.

If she were going to be battling the charisma deprived Romney it would be a completely different game. But she's not.

[saltpoint]

14. Excellent piece by Frank Rich, nicely written as usual.

[MarkInLA]

16. I found this to be fascinating!

If Hillary loses, think of the books that could be written about her failed campaign for President, and the overall rise and fall of The Clintons (TM).

Hillary repeatedly says that it's a historic campaign. Even if she loses, she's absolutely right.