Through a series of subtle digs and racially charged statements, Team Hillary Clinton has been turning Barack Obama, a candidate who happens to be black, into a black candidate replete with all the baggage that black candidates carry, effectively resuscitating the GOP's "Strategy of the South."
Just as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan exploited the anxiety of white voters toward blacks in the South to gain votes, Team Hillary is playing up fears of dastardly Muslims and ugly stereotypes of blacks to obliterate Barack Obama's chances at winning the Democratic nomination.
Hillary Clinton is probably not a bigot. She most likely truly likes black people, especially those who trip over themselves to hurl invective at her opponents - like Bob Johnson.
Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and the first black billionaire, recently introduced Clinton at a campaign event by ridiculing Obama.
He mentioned that the Clintons were "deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book."
Johnson's words were a thinly veiled reference to Obama's past drug use, which he admitted to in his autobiography published well over a decade ago. When Johnson was confronted with this misstep, he responded in Clinton-like fashion: He lied about it. Recalling Obama's drug use is nothing new for Team Hillary. Top adviser Billy Shaheen resigned last month after he infamously brought the issue to light by expressing concern that Republicans might use it against him in the general election. He then took it into the territory of the ugly racial stereotype by asking whether Obama had sold drugs.
On the Internet this is called "concern trolling," which means pretending to be concerned about "X" in regard to "Y" when one is actually and actively floating "X" in an attempt to delegitimize "Y."
And for the Clinton campaign, this tactic is usual business.
Professional union-buster and Clinton campaign top strategist Mark Penn made a point of reiterating Obama's drug use even as the Clinton campaign made the perfunctory overtures of dismissal toward Shaheen's comments. This transparently planned repetition even drew a sharp rebuke from John Edwards' top strategist Joe Trippi.
But sometimes the tactics aren't subtle at all. An anonymous Clinton adviser recently told The Guardian that people are voting for Obama so that he'll be their "imaginary hip black friend."
This blisteringly stupid utterance is perhaps a hint that white guilt is spurring a great deal of Obama's support. Or perhaps it is not. But it is definitely turning the campaign into a referendum on race.
Days ago, Clinton supporter and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo used the phrase "shuck and jive" when discussing the race between Clinton and Obama.
The phrase "shuck and jive" is a racist throwback. It recalls minstrelsy, a convincing and entertaining show of blackface buffoonery and dumb luck.
It was obviously aimed at Obama and his soaring, inspirational rhetoric, and it's not a phrase that would have been used if John Edwards were Clinton's foremost opponent.
Obama's skin color is not all that the Clinton team is content to "whisper" about. Another thing that Obama can't help, and that the Clinton campaign can't help but mention, is the fact that he lived in Indonesia for a while and has Muslim relatives.
In his endorsement of Clinton, former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey couldn't keep Obama's name out of his mouth and made pains to emphasize and re-emphasize that Obama has some relatives whose superstition of choice is Islam.
The next day on CNN he defended his remarks by reviving the bogus claim that Obama attended a madrassa.
And let's not forget that at least two Clinton staffers were canned for their part in propagating the smear that Obama is a Muslim plant sent to enact Sharia Law in America once president.
When one or two of these things pass by, you write them off as campaign gaffes. But when they are frequent, unabated and well-timed then it's quite obvious there's a strategy.
Feeling slightly threatened, the Clinton campaign has desperately amped up their use of mud. First they attacked Obama's record, to no avail. Then they went after his rhetoric, which backfired. So now they've had surrogates attack his character - and we will see what's next.
The Clinton team has resorted to rumors and innuendo predicated on Obama's race, family and heritage. That's race-baiting and that's racism through and through. Intentional or not, if it walks, talks and quacks like a duck ...
Of course, all of this has come out of the mouths of Hillary's supporters and she disavows every bit of it. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. Tear, tear - all the way to the nomination and defeat in the general election.
Kalmbacher is a journalism senior.
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