Billary and the politics of hope

So its official: Barack won South Carolina today. What’s interesting is a point that was brought up by Ian Lustick at the talk he gave here at Dartmouth last year entitled “Are we trapped in the War on Terror” in which I asked him if it was possible given the era of campaign finances and the American industrial-military complex he describes in his book for a candidate to win a presidency without “selling out” to special interests. He replied that in his view, it would not be possible. But yet this is exactly the choice that the Obama campaign claims Americans must make in this presidential campaign: the choice for change vs the “divisive politics of old”.

The British newspaper the Independent makes a very interesting analysis that by ceding South Carolina (in fact, Hillary was seldom there in the last week and Bill even gave the concession speech tonight while Hillary campaigned in Tennessee), the Clintons are taking a page out of the Republican playbook which Bill described when I heard him speak last month here at Dartmouth as “making the other guy look so ugly that people will have to vote for you” and “dividing people”. In essence, the article describes the Clinton’s political calculus that despite the importance of subsegments of the Democratic party: blacks, hispanics, women, they know that the majority of Democrats are still white and that by catering to blacks and being rejected by them, they can actually galvanize the white democratic base as well as hispanics into shifting away from Barack even while blacks flock to him. Indeed, early polling by MSNBC in the states with lots of hispanic voters show Hillary favored 4 to 1 and looking at exit polling only 25% of whites supported obama compared to 36% for hillary and 40% for edwards. With Edwards likely fading out of the race, I’d be willing to bet that most of that 40% votes for Hillary with Edwards out of the mix.

In contrary to my article about picking Bill Clinton, I am thinking now that it was probably a good thing I didn’t cast my vote the next day . . . he sure is one persuasive (and calculating) fella!