The Wall Street Journal-20080126-Identity as a Hazard
Return to: The_Wall_Street_Journal-20080126
Identity as a Hazard
Here's the key part of the Clinton & Clinton stratagem: They didn't care if Hillary got some negative backlash over the race issue ("Obama's Clinton Education," Review & Outlook, Jan. 23). In the end their bet was still that they could win the "women versus blacks" fight, especially if they could achieve some separation between the perceived "African-American identity group" and the perceived "Hispanic identity group" (which is how Nevada went down, essentially). They are more than willing to lose South Carolina, because their real target is the set of primaries on Tsunami Tuesday.
And here's the pitfall for the Obama campaign: If he engages Clinton on these issues of race, he loses the war even if he wins the battle. As long as Clinton can frame the debate in terms of herself as the "woman candidate" and Obama as the "black candidate", she wins. The only way for Obama to defeat this strategy is to return to his original message, as he's spoken about so often -- only in this case, it's his political opponents rather than the pundits who are trying to "slice and dice" the electorate into red states and blue states, women voters and black voters and Hispanic voters. As long as he allows Clinton & Clinton to play the cards of identity politics, he's going to get a losing hand.
Dan Browning
Decatur, Ga.
