Got a Lot of 'splainin' to do

Well, OK, maybe I was a little premature in thinking that Hillary was history. The day after I wrote that, the polls turned out to be incredibly wrong, and I mean Dewey-defeats-Truman kind of wrong. There was not a single poll saying she was going to win. A few had her losing by 2 or 3 points, but most had Obama by 10 to 12 points. She won by 2-3 points. The pollsters spent a little time analyzing it, but all they could come up with were theories about late breaking trends, Hillary crying and folks changing their minds in the voting booth. Interestingly, Dennis Kuccinich thought the results were strange enough to ask for a recount. Apparently the difference in machine counted totals versus hand counted ones made him suspicious. I have always said the voter “fraud” of 2000 and 2004 was a paranoid fantasy of the screwball left, and I’m sure this is too, but if anybody would actually stoop to that, it would be the Clintons.

But now what was looking like a cake walk has suddenly become interesting and is being bitterly contested. The Clintons have chosen to attack Obama through surrogates, that much is clear. They realize that she looks bad when attacking the first legitimate black candidate for President, so we are now seeing others taking on Obama on her behalf. Recently, I’ve seen hit pieces by the likes of hubby Bill, Barney Frank (his sister heads up Hillary’s campaign), James Schlesinger (Arthur Jr.’s son), Robert Johnson (Chairman of BET) and Andrew Young. But it’s turning out to be a lot trickier than they thought. Every cheap shot now has to be accompanied by a lengthy and tortured explanation because it seems blacks aren’t exactly down with this strategy.

The Clintons seem to think that the drug storyline is the one that should work best. I say that because despite the backlash that occurred when her campaign chair in New Hampshire tried it out and had to resign, they tried it again this weekend! This time it was BET founder Robert L. Johnson. Perhaps they thought that if it came from another black man, it would be received differently. It wasn’t. Here is the exact quote:

“And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood –­ and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book –­ when they have been involved.”

He then also made some disparaging remarks comparing Obama to the Sidney Poitier character in “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.” But the best part was the convoluted spin that he had to try when the predictable shit hit the fan. Here is what he had to say a few hours later:

“My comments today were referring to Barack Obama’s time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect. When Hillary Clinton was in her twenties she worked to provide protections for abused and battered children and helped ensure that children with disabilities could attend public school.
That results oriented leadership — even as a young person — is the reason I am supporting Hillary Clinton.”

Of course nobody is buying it. Obama’s campaign rightly called it tortured and pointed out that this spin doesn’t fit the quote. But it’s merely one of the cases of backtracking that her campaign has had to do. Over the weekend Bill and Hillary both were everywhere trying to spin his “fairy tale” comment. And wouldn’t you just know it, we all got that one wrong too. You see we just weren’t paying close enough attention and aren’t smart enough to understand what Bill says in plain English. We all know Bush is illiterate and can’t be understood in any language, especially English. But Bill is such a master of the spoken word that a two minute monologue could take days to explain properly. You see it all depends on what the meaning of “is” is. Bill & Hill spent the weekend ‘splainin’ fairy tales and their historical revisions on the life of Martin Luther King.

Now, to be fair (not that I feel any compulsion to be with the Clintons) some of these remarks came from people just trying to “help.” Like the supporter who introduced Hillary with an observation that while JFK had started Civil Rights legislation, it was LBJ who saw it through because JFK was assassinated. People were wondering if he was suggesting that Obama was going to be killed. Personally, I think the one that will have legs in this campaign was Hillary’s remark in Vegas. While trying to peel away Hispanics from the union endorsement that Obama received, a guy said his wife was in the country illegally. To rousing applause Hillary said “No woman is illegal.” Really? What about men? Is nobody illegal?

UPDATE: The Clintons were called on the drug reference, but have decided that they will accept Johnson's explanation and not demand that he step down. And they have obviously taken steps to insure that even the mention of illegal drugs by their campaign will not be tolerated. They even sent the head of the campaign, Mark Penn, on to Hardball to make this point perfectly clear. Here is what he said:

“Well, I think we've made clear that the issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising.”

See? Like he said, they will not be talking about COCAINE use anymore at all. In fact, they think it is a shame that the subject of COCAINE use, and possibly COCAINE sales, were ever even brought up. But if somebody were to bring up COCAINE, it certainly wouldn't be us. Maybe those other guys over at the Edwards campaign said COCAINE, but nobody over here said it. Outloud. On TV. Not us. We don't want to run that kind of campaign, what you think we are a bunch of CRACKHEADS?