It's difficult to avoid agreement without reservation with what Andrew Sullivan writes today about the destructive nature of the Clinton campaign and find it very hard to understand what glues remaining Clinton supporters to their candidate. Even Karl Rove, in his worst moments of destructiveness, never actually spoiled his own nest as Clinton is doing.
I think Clinton has decided to use race in the way that Republicans have for the past couple of decades, to play on white resentment of what are regarded as double-standards on race and to fuse the integrative, dignified campaign of Obama in the minds of some white ethnic Americans with demagoguic soundbites from Wright.
The goal is to win a huge margin in Pennsylvania and to use that as an appeal to the super-delegates that Obama cannot be elected in key swing states with white working class voters. If that won't work, Clinton will have done all she can to ensure Obama's defeat by McCain in the fall, which she will then use as vindication for another run in 2012.
It's called destroying the party (and wound the country racially) in order to save the Clintons. It doesn't surprise me, but I can't help but feel it is going to enrage many Democrats, especially those who felt that this time, a candidate they loved had a chance to bring the country together. Not if the Clintons can help it.
It makes us wonder what the results would be if Barack Obama decided to withdraw his candidacy at this point. Perhaps it would be a good move.
