Where's the Left on the South Carolina Race Card?

Since before the Iowa Caucus, the Clintons and their helpers have been injecting race into the Democratic primary race, in an attempt to use it to their benefit. For months they've hidden it behind their use of terms like "experience" and "electability". In Nevada, they successfully played Hispanics against blacks in order to eke out a win. But it got out of their control during the build-up to the South Carolina primary.

It came out into the sunlight when Hillary ham-handedly seemed to credit the very white Lyndon Johnson with having more of an impact on the civil rights movement than did Martin Luther King, comparing herself to the former President and Barack Obama to King. Then Bill Clinton, who seems to take his anointment during the 90s as "the first black President" far too seriously, became the primary campaigner and attack dog in his wife's campaign. The Clintons over and over again slammed the subject of race into the discussion, while in practically the same breath attempting to deny it.

Well, the race card finally came home to roost in South Carolina. And while the long-term results of Obama's lopsided victory over Hillary remain to be seen, it appears as if the white Democratic elders' stranglehold over the black constituency could be over. All of the major black power-brokers have placed their bets on the Clintons. For their part, the Clintons have invested millions of their own and hundreds of millions of dollars of the federal governments' money to keep the black vote monolithic and theirs. Their approach is simple, yet insidiously effective. You back us and we'll give you whatever you want - especially power and a seat at the table. It's worked for the past fifty years, why not now?

Barack Obama is a threat to all of that. That's why, in the aftermath of South Carolina, you didn't hear cries of outrage about the Clintons' use of the race card against a black man from the Sharptons, the Jacksons, or members of the Congressional Black Caucus. At most, we saw an occasional tsk-tsk from the likes of a James Clyburn pre-primary, but that was more about the Clintons' misuse of the King legacy than it was about attacks on Obama. As for Jesse Jackson, he said a few months ago that he was an Obama supporter, but remained suspiciously quiet during the Clintons' attacks. Jackson was even silent when Bill Clinton attempted to marginalize Obama's victory in a parting shot comparing his win to Jackson's wins in South Carolina during the primaries there in the 80s, which turned out to be a flash in the pan. I wouldn't even be surprised if the Clintons went to Jackson earlier this year and asked him to be the token black power-broker supporter of Obama, just so that the race wouldn't seem so, well, unseemly.

Hillary and Bill still own most of the media and have access to tons of money, so it's hard to predict if the split of the black voter from their Democratic elders in South Carolina will either spread or have much of an effect in the rest of the primaries. But Barack Obama has managed to do something that I never thought I'd see within the Democratic Party. He's shown black voters that there is an option to the old guard, someone with a positive message rather than the same old tale of victimization.

Somehow I think Bill Cosby is nodding his head in approval.