American Patrol

"Have you gone berserk, can't you see that man's a ni?"
--Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, et al.

This morning's Clinton campaign conference call, occuring as it did the morning after an Obama blow-out in North Carolina and a narrow squeaker for Clinton in Indiana turned Obama's statistical advantage into a lead pipe cinch of the nomination, may have been expected to be a fairly low key event. No such luck. The Clintonistas, it would seem, are still "in it to win it," facts be damned, and presented many indications that they have no qualms about winning it in as ugly a fashion as possible. A main theme of the call-- Clinton wins with white voters.

With a black identified biracial candidate running for President in a country that has never really faced down its racial attitudes, some crypto-racist content is to be expected. Indeed this campaign, particularly in the last few weeks, has inspired a plethora of racially coded commentary, from references to Obama's "elitism" (which many in the black community took as a code for "uppityness") to the observation that small town voters in Pennsylvania "weren't comfortable" with Obama and didn't see him as "one of them" (gee, wonder why).

While racial demographics have always played a role in the analysis of this campaign, it has been for the most part tip toed around until this morning. What exactly the Clinton campaign is actually trying to sell here is anybody's guess. Is it the idea that Obama's voters may be too lazy and shiftless to actually come out in November? The idea that it is somehow okay that the percentage of voters in this day and age who based their selection largely on race did so, and should be encouraged to continue doing so?

This is as disgusting as it is desperate, and it needs to end now.