Dick Morris on the Clintons' Brilliance

Bernard Moon was at a breakfast with ex-Clintonista Dick Morris and describes Morris' perception of the Clintons' brilliance.

Anyway, so Dick Morris discussed how over the past week or more, much of the media attention has been on Bill on the issue of race in South Carlina ("Bill Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Stirring Race Issue" NYTimes). Morris stated that Obama has been a candidate not running on the race card, but the Clintons want to use the South Carlina election to make it about race to create a white backlash to the bloc-voting by African-Americans (more from Morris, "How Clinton Will Win The Nomination By Losing South Carolina"). ...

So it's not only luring Obama to hit the cape instead of the matador, but the star power of Bill draws the media to him and maintains the political status quo in the campaign. Morris described how Bill did this when John Kerry ran. During the Democratic convention in Boston that year, Bill came out with his new book two weeks before and held book signing events there right before the convention. The local press focused on Bill Clinton and not John Kerry. Morris said that this was a strategic move, so that Kerry wouldn't win and improve Hillary's chances to run in 2008. Brilliant (yes, I love Guinness beer). Evil but brilliant.

I may be out of touch, but I see Hillary as a far weaker candidate than Obama for a host of reasons. I hope she wins the nomination, because I don't think she'll be hard for any of the leading Republicans to beat. Am I deluded by my own echo-chamber?

Maybe so, because despite my analysis that beating Obama will alienate Hillary from the black voters she needs to win the general election, Dick Morris predicts the opposite.

If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama’s ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It’s one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don’t read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton. ...

Of course, this begs the question of how she will be able to attract blacks after beating Obama. Here the South Carolina strategy also serves its purpose. If she loses blacks and wins whites by attacking Obama, it will look dirty and underhanded to blacks. She’ll develop a real problem in the minority community. But if she is seen as being rejected by minority voters in favor of Obama after going hat in hand to them and trying to out-civil rights Obama, blacks will even likely feel guilty about rejecting Hillary and will be more than willing to support her in the general election.

That logic seems flawed to me. Only white leftists vote as a block based on guilt... the "oppressed" groups have been conditioned by the left to vote based on anger and resentment. I think Morris (and the Clintons, if this is their plan) are mistaken if they think black voters will react to their manipulations the way they're used to white voters reacting.