Misplaying the race card

Jonah Goldberg:

I like Barack Obama. The Clintons, not so much. But the Clintons are right and Obama is wrong.

Over the last week, the Obama camp has tried to suggest, insinuate, whisper or wink that the Clintons are somehow racist. Obama's staff sent out a memo compiling some quotes that allegedly demonstrate the "racial insensitivity" of Hillary Clinton's campaign. The Obama folks are fanning the overreaction to her suggestion that President Lyndon Johnson was a more substantive agent of change on civil rights than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Obama is also fueling the flatly erroneous view that Bill Clinton called Obama's historic run as the first credible black presidential candidate a "fairy tale." (Clinton used that phrase in reference to Obama's claim to have been consistently antiwar.)

However poorly the Clintons or their subalterns may have chosen their words, does anyone seriously believe the Clintons are racists? Anyone? Anyone? Of course not.

And this points to the real reason Obama's candidacy is a fairy tale, and it has nothing to do with being black or opposing the war. It's because he's selling a dream, not reality.

Obama's whole campaign is based on some of the most noble and inspiring sentiments in political life: hope, togetherness, bipartisanship. As he proclaimed last February at a Democratic National Committee meeting: "There are those who don't believe in talking about hope. They say, ŒWell, we want specifics, we want details, and we want white papers, and we want plans.' We've had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we've had is a shortage of hope. And over the next year, over the next two years, that will be my call to you."

He's stayed true to that pledge. Not only does he talk about hope - a lot - he talks about the importance of talking about hope. He talks about how he hopes to talk more about talking about the importance of talking about hope. Hopefully.

He touts unity the same way. If we all buy into his "message of hope," he explains, then everybody - blacks and whites, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, lions and gnus, bears and park rangers, Superman and Lex Luthor - will be united!

But united toward what end, exactly? Or does it all boil down to being united about being hopeful and hopeful about being united?

...

What Obama is really doing is repackaging liberalism with words that attempt to mask its inherent problems and weaknesses. At some point when he faces a candidate who is not a liberal and who challenges on the specifics of what he wants to unite for, he will be in trouble and it will have nothing to do with anyones race.