The Ignorant Investor

Josh Marshall writes:

We seem to be at the point where there are now two credible possibilities. One is that the Clinton campaign is intentionally pursuing a strategy of using surrogates to hit Obama with racially-charged language or with charges that while not directly tied to race nonetheless play to stereotypes about black men. The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.

It amazes me that Marshall is so naive about the nature of racial politics in this country, particularly in regard to the Clintons (they of the Sistah Soulja controversy).

The Clintons want to stoke the flames with Obama on racial grounds. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, there's a very smart tactical reason for this move: black candidates cannot win national office or operate at the highest level of government when tagged as "one of those black people who are always complaining about race." No, for a black candidate or official, using the race card is an invitation to Mr. Angry White Guy coming for a little visit and a backlash.

Colin Powell, Condi Rice- they know they're free to say anything they want as national figures, as long as they don't accuse anyone of racism. Obama knows this, too. He's not stupid. Out of the 43 presidents we've had in this country, not one has been black. One never will be black by playing the race card. At the national level, playing the race card just doesn't work.

The same can't be said for white candidates. For white people, playing the backlash is a part of politics when facing a black candidate. Bill and Hillary may lose some votes among the African-American community by playing racial politics, but that won't bother them. They know that they can replace the lost black voters with middle class white voters who will vote only for a black person if the black person is "one of those kind" of black policians. What the Clintons want to do is keep dropping provocations until Obama responds, then they'll tag him as a radical and wipe up the floor with him in the big state primaries.

I'm wondering at what point guys like Marshall stop ascribing the comments coming out of the Clinton camp to poor wording or pure stupidity and recognize that there is an intentional effort underway to make Obama's race a part of the campaign?

UPDATE- I sent a shorter version of this post to Marshall as an e-mail, not expecting a reply. To my surprise, he did respond with the following message:

"You don't seemed to have read what I've written."

So Josh Marshall is not convinced by my arguments. What can I say? If I did misunderstand him, my apologies. But I continue to read his blog thinking that he's overly reluctant to find fault with the Clintons on this issue.