i'm stealing this

from seth abramson, but only because it's true:

"The most evidently racist thing said in the election season thus far was Clinton's recent comparison of Barack Obama's appeal to Jesse Jackson's. Quite simply, that was racial politics at its worst, an attempt to marginalize a brilliant, Harvard Law School-educated attorney and activist (and U.S. Senator) as a "blacks-only" candidate. Indeed I think the Clintons are now blatantly playing racial politics, while maintaining--hmm, I wonder which Democratic politician coined this phrase?--"plausible deniability." And the media is falling for it. Newsweek published an article this morning, four pages long, detailing how Obama is in trouble because he really only attracts black voters. On page four of the article--the second-to-last paragraph--the author notes that Obama did as well among white men in South Carolina as Hillary, the presumed "white candidate." Also noted is that, while only 18% of the primary-voting populace in South Carolina was white men, white men make up 25% or less of the Democratic primary-voting populace in almost every Super Tuesday state. It's as though the author's editor said, "We can't run this unless you concede the point about white men in South Carolina; it'd be irresponsible journalism otherwise. Just throw it in at the end of the article."

A better argument would be that Obama has a "gender" problem, inasmuch as Clinton seems to consistently beat him, in every state, by 15 to 20 points among women, and in every primary thus far women have made up more than 55% of the voting base (so far as I remember). But then, that storyline wouldn't match up quite so perfectly with the Clinton's desired race-based analysis, would it? Because the last thing Hillary wants to be seen as is the "women's candidate"--which, honestly, at this point much polling suggests she might be--so thank God, from her perspective, the media hit-job on Obama is taking its toll and misdirecting the attention of Americans toward race."