Slicing and Dicing

Donna Brazil and Paul Begala got into it recently on CNN. This debate is really quite interesting because Brazile and Bagela are really two of the more likable and sensible pundits on the air. As Brazile correctly articulates, dismissing one person's coalition and emphasizing another's is implying superiority of one over the other. As I stated in my earlier post, why hasn't Hillary won (or really worked hard to win) the black vote. Hillary followed up this tense debate by making her, by now, widely circulated comment about her white support.

I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

Peggy Noonan, in her Wall Street Journal column, was one of the many commentators to denounce these words and Begala's comments. I think the Clinton camp really needs to stop this nonsense. Her supporter, Carole Simpson, on today's Larry King Live, blatantly said whites would not vote for Obama in November, arguing, in effect, that America is too racist to vote for a black candidate. To his credit, Clinton supporter Lenny Davis disagreed. And what does Paul Krugman do in his latest column? He chastises the Obama camp and Donna Brazile for her comments in the video above while blaming Obama for not winning over whites. This column is so willfully blind of Mrs. Clinton's damaging actions that I have to respond to its inanity. He writes,

There’s just one thing that should give Democrats pause — but it’s a big one: the fight for the nomination has divided the party along class and race lines in a way that I believe is unprecedented, at least in modern times.

Ironically, much of Mr. Obama’s initial appeal was the hope that he could transcend these divisions. At first, voting patterns seemed consistent with this hope. In February, for example, he received the support of half of Virginia’s white voters as well as that of a huge majority of African-Americans.

But this week, Mr. Obama, while continuing to win huge African-American majorities, lost North Carolina whites by 23 points, Indiana whites by 22 points. Mr. Obama’s white support continues to be concentrated among the highly educated; there was little in Tuesday’s results to suggest that his problems with working-class whites have significantly diminished.

Okay, Krugman. Do you suppose your candidate might have had anything to do with that? Do you think you should perhaps also mention that your candidate started out with 40% support in the African American community? He continues,

So what can be done to heal the party’s current divisions?

More tirades from Obama supporters against Mrs. Clinton are not the answer — they will only further alienate her grass-roots supporters, many of whom feel that she received a raw deal.

Nor is it helpful to insult the groups that supported Mrs. Clinton, either by suggesting that racism was their only motivation or by minimizing their importance.

After the Pennsylvania primary, David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, airily dismissed concerns about working-class whites, saying that they have “gone to the Republican nominee for many elections.” On Tuesday night, Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist, declared that “we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics.” That sort of thing has to stop.

Yes, and so do your candidate's attempts to encourage those racial divisions by suggesting that she alone can win the white vote. The blatant decontextualizing of Brazile's comments, which you can view above, has made me lose any respect I might have had for Krugman. As you can see from the video, Brazile is arguing, exactly against the division of the electorate into racial categories and saying one was more important than the other! The sooner Mrs. Clinton steps off the stage, the sooner will be able to bridge those racial gaps.