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In the same week that Barack Obama delivered the most-important and eloquent speech on race in America since Martin Luther King climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to proclaim, "I have a dream," Hillary Clinton's surrogates slid down into the gutter of racial politics as they phoned Super Delegates to tell them in whispers that, because of racist remarks made by his former pastor, Obama can never be elected president.

When asked about this by an AP reporter covering a Clinton appearance in Terra Haute Indiana, yesterday, Sen. Clinton merely shrugged and turned to a different reporter.

She shrugged?

Don't you go shrugging at me Hillary Clinton. You're a presidential candidate and you owe me and everyone else in the country, including independents and Republicans but especially Democrats an answer.

It is unfathomable that a Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 2008 would be so desperate to pick up a delegate here and there that she would tolerate no, actively participate in the race baiting political tactics of de ol' Souff. I can almost hear the phone calls: "You know that nigra ain't never gonna get white folk voting for him what with that crazy pastor who married him saying God damn America.' And then there's that business bout Obama not wearin' a flag in his lapel. So you come on out an' say you're for Miss Hillary, and less you an' me meet at the club ta-marra for a bourbon and branch water after the bank closes."

Don't delude yourself into thinking that such tactics are either out of the question, or would fall on deaf ears. A Republican friend, who lives in Savannah Georgia but also has a home in a small coastal town in north Florida straight out of a John A. MacDonald mystery novel, has told me point blank that "except for those transplant northerners living around Atlanta, a lot of white Georgia is still fighting the Civil War." As for people in small towns along the North Florida coast, "they've never seen a black man they like, except maybe the one who works at the filling station."

I guess Hillary doesn't understand that those people aren't going to vote for a woman come November any more than they would vote for an African-American. Hell, they wouldn't vote for a Democrat unless, maybe, the party went totally haywire and nominated someone like David Duke.

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball the other night, Bill Maher said that Obama is to politics in 2008 what Jackie Robinson was to baseball in 1947. "He has to be perfect just like Robinson was when he broke the colour barrier in baseball, Obama is held up to such a higher standard. He must appear flawless in a way that no white candidate would be expected to be. Would Obama's experience or patriotism be as obsessively attacked as it is if he weren't Black? I don't think so."

Clinton is proving Maher correct. The campaign that had Bill Clinton slurring Obama's South Carolina win by comparing it to Jesse Jackson's some 20 years earlier and Geraldine Ferraro saying Barack would never be a candidate if he were white, now has its race baiting surrogates calling Super Delegates and playing the desperation card.

This week, Barack Obama appealed to American's best instincts. Hillary Clinton was busy trying to appeal to their worst. Given that Clinton's are always willing to win dirty as long as they win, I supposed I shouldn't be surprised.

But I am saddened.

Learn more about this author, Charley James.
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