Free Republic

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully. Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd. “There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton. There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to...

Is Barack Obama--now closer than ever to winning the Democratic nomination--nonetheless at a political disadvantage because of white racism, or "racial fears," or "race-baiting," or racial "double standards," as some commentators have suggested? The evidence indicates otherwise, as it pertains both to this election and more broadly to the perennial tendency of many in the racial-grievance groups, the media, and academia to exaggerate how much white racism remains and its impact on African-Americans. But many of the voters who have been unfairly tarred as racist do have a different flaw that Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain are working especially...