Clintons again dividing the party for their own gain

From the NY Times:

One week before Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, contests that party officials are watching as they try to gauge whether Mr. Obama or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would be the stronger nominee, the controversy surrounding Mr. Wright again erupted into a threat to Mr. Obama’s ability to show that he could unify the Democratic Party and bring the nominating contest to a quick and clean end.

Because, after all, Hillary Clinton is not the most divisive person in American politics today.

Unifying the Democratic Party is, and has always been, a fool's game. Talking about a unified party always brings to mind Will Rogers' famous quote, "I don't belong to any organized party; I'm a Democrat." The Democratic Party consists of a unwieldy amalgamation of beliefs, goals and perspectives. The presidential nominee does not so much organize this melange as begs them to please play nice until after election day.

And yet Barack Obama has, until the recent media onslaught conducted by the Clinton campaign and happily carried out by the much of the maintstream media, been bringing a wider variety of belies and perspectives than even before into the madhouse of the party's tent. With the goal of making a real difference in both Washington and the nation, millions of Democrats, independents and even some disaffected Republicans have united to promote the Obama candidacy, only to run up against the person who is proving to be the biggest divider of all: Hillary Clinton.

Because of her vote on the invasion of Iraq, and her on-going refusal to take personal responsiblity for that failure, she immediately set herself against possibly the majority of those who would be voting for a Democrat in November. Her initial campaign strategy, to win a few big states and wrap up the nomination by Super Tuesday — what Kos termed the "insult 40 states strategy" — sent the message that small and/or red states did not matter. And her desperate attempt to pull back the nomination by cravenly appealing to Rust Belt white Reagan Democrats has alienated her, perhaps permanently, from the black voters once considered an essential part of her base.

Yet somehow it's Obama who is now the decisive one. Hillary Clinton could end the controversy over Rev Wright and return the campaign to a discussion of issues by denouncing as strongly as possible the media's insistence on beating this story to death. Instead she subtly plays the race game by invoking Rev Wright at times and reminding the remaining voters and super delegates that only she can win the "key" states like Ohio and Pennsylvania (a demonstrably false proposition), which is code for saying "they have a lot of scared white people who won't vote for the black guy."

This campaign has divided the Democratic Party much more than usual because it has lasted longer than any other in forty years. But to blame Obama, who not only brings a message of unity but has practiced it over the years, is to use Rev Wright and the opportuntistic video to alienate a certain element of white Democratic and independent voters. Divisiveness among the Democrats originates where it has done since 1992 — with the Clintons. The may be good at winning elections, but somehow the Democratic Party never seems to come out of them very well.