Cunning

Once again I find myself surprised that I am the only person, perhaps in the entire world, to see through the cunning campaign trickery in the Democratic party. When I last exposed a dastardly ploy, it was the Obama campaign planting the photo of him in traditional garb, and blaming it on Clinton operatives.

Today we have a trick by a real Clinton operative; and it's a good one. Ms. Geraldine Ferraro, last seen in 1984, has turned up as an honorary finance member of the Clinton campaign saying some controversial things in a newspaper interview. By now, everyone is familiar with what she said - essentially that Obama has been successful in the campaign because he is black.

I won't argue the merits or racial aspects of what she said, that is for other, far simpler minds to dwell on since it is essentially a side show. The real meat of the matter is what is going here? Was it a ploy, a slip of the tongue, or something else all together? In my view, this was a planned move by the Clinton campaign from the start. Here is why.

Essentially the Clinton's have realized that Obama has out maneuvered them and gained the high ground in this campaign. The game has almost run out and they need to accomplish one of two goals very soon:

1. Either bring Obama down to earth pronto and demonstrate that he is unelectable in a manner sufficient to convince enough super delegates to vote for Hill or,


2. Damage him enough so that he cannot win in November against McCain and preserve Hillary's chances to run again in four years

With these two goals in mind, the Clintons needed an expendable minority to go after Obama and execute their diabolical plan. In this role, Ferraro has been perfect.

The plan, works on 4 levels:

1. On the first level Ferraro is effective in questioning Obama's readiness for office. A previously unknown candidate with a thin resume and vague promises of change is uniquely vulnerable to this assault. No matter how this turns out, this issue is raised and will not go away.


2. The second level is to play to the white blue collar workers in the Democratic party and the black voters who still harbor doubts that a black man is electable in this country. In both cases it plays to the voter's fear that Obama is a gamble, and in the white blue collar voter's mind a potential beneficiary of some sort of electorate granted affirmative action vote, which the white voter believes is unfair and is unwilling to go along with. By themselves these are powerful motivators to swing voters to Hillary and try to save the nomination for her. But there is much more to her plan.


3. This next, third level is particularly crafty, and I must say Obama so far has played right into Hillary's hand. You see, up until now much of Obama's appeal to the white wine and intellectual crowd has been, in their mind, that he has been above racial politics. Indeed his message of "change" stands as much for a change in the way that black candidates run their campaigns as it does for anything else. He is running as an American, offering himself for service in a time of need. Powerful stuff. Hillary realizes that to win, she absolutely must pull Obama down and once again make him the aggrieved black candidate and thus distasteful to the white winers. Sadly, Obama has taken the bait, and spent the past two days talking about race in place of the qualities that made him such a successful candidate. All it cost Hillary was an honorary member of her finance committee as Ferraro was booted earlier today.

Of course, at this late date, all this conniving may still not be enough to secure the nomination which is where Hillary's awful plan rises to it's most diabolical level. You see, Hillary, by making Obama crawl down in the mud with her, is trying to install a fatal flaw in the Democrat's most likely nominee. If she can't win now, it is imperative in her view that Obama be stopped in November. If McCain wins, she will have a shot at a 75 year old guy, who already is looking pretty frail, in four years. If Obama wins, he will either cruise to re-election in four years, or lose to a Republican. In either case Hillary is out of the running for 8 years if Obama is elected to the presidency, after which, his vice president will be the most likely successor. Scorched earth politics are all that can save her now.

The bottom line is that the Clintons have never been about the Democratic party, or America, or anything else that the rest of us hold dear. They are all about the Clintons, and one wonders why it has taken the Democrats so long to figure this out.