Olbermann was pretty much dead-on tonight, although I think he was probably being too kind to the Clintons when he said that HRC's campaign more resembles that of a Republican. The Republicans haven't really tried going to the well of Black/White tensions for twenty years, with the old Willie Horton ad. In reality, the Clintons' behavior in this election on racial issues is, in my estimation, far more regressive than that of any Republican national contender for the past twenty years. At least Bush made a show of trying to be conciliatory to Black voters during his two runs, even if it was just a show.
At first I was willing to believe that the Clinton stuff with race had been exaggerated. At first. But you know what our current president might say what happens when he gets fooled twice (he "won't get fooled again" is his answer). It seems like the animating energy of the Clinton campaign seems to be based, in large part, on trying to increase the historical legacy of the Clintons after an admirable (though not spectacular and disappointing in ways both gross and subtle) term in office. It also seems like Clinton, her inner circle, as well as her ardent supporters, seem to have a capacity to embargo so many embarrassing aspects of Clinton I that borders on repression. It reminds me of nothing more than the book The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz, which I have recently been reading. Milosz was a Polish Communist who broke with Marxism and wrote about the effects of communism on intellectuals--which is not to say that Clinton is a communist, though I suspect she'd be one happily if that were what the majority wanted. In any event, there is the idea of these energy-sapping truths of the Clinton past that cannot be mentioned and are probably not even consciously thought of by her followers--analogous to Milosz. Yet, that past is there, and it creates a constant conflict with the beliefs of the present that simply drains the person in question of creative energy. It's all there, right in Chapter 1. This is all just by way of illustration.
