It Didn't Last Long

The amity was over quickly, as the Clintons returned to appropriating Rabid Right Rovian tactics against Barack Obama today. Distortions of his health care plan continue, and now this new wrinkle, as described by Obama to a Las Vegas crowd:

"You may be getting some fliers, you may be getting some phone calls from the Hillary Clinton camp saying she will solve the social security crisis through fiscal responsibility while Barack Obama wants a trillion dollar tax hike," the Illinois senator told a jammed crowd Wednesday morning at the convention center in this booming Las Vegas suburb. Obama then explained he would bolster social security by removing the current cap on the very highest of earners and not be a general tax raise as implied by Clinton. "Maybe she thinks the top 3% of earners are average American taxpayers, but I don't."

Calling Repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy a "tax increase" is a Rabid Right standby. They've had a patent on this bullshit since Goldwater at least. And suggesting that middle class taxpayers will pay more social security tax if this plan were enacted is the same cynical dishonesty. Furthermore, should Hillary become President, she's pre-empting an alternative she might well have to consider.

As for the past two days of apparently burying the race hatchet as mutually damaging, columnist Mark Shields has a different opinion. Here is what he said on the PBS News Hour today: "I had six senior Democrats this week, unaligned in this campaign, independently volunteer to me that they thought it was part of the campaign strategy of the Clinton campaign to get this in to make it a black-white race going into February 5th."

The calculus is, Shields said later in the broadcast, that there are simply more white voters than black voters in the Democratic primaries. The Michigan exit polls suggests that black voters may see this for what it is, and if they come to believe what Shields says is the Clinton strategy, and Hillary ends up the nominee, she and the Democratic party are in big trouble. She's got enough enemies without alienating the single most dependable constituency the Democrats have.