Bill Clinton

Monica Lewinsky
In a May 11 roundtable discussion on “Flashpoint,” Democratic strategist and super delegate Debbie Dingell argued that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton has every reason to stay in the race until a nominee is secured. Her logic is that the remaining states should be heard in terms of who their candidate is in this heated contest for the White House. This hot contest is healthy for the Democratic Party, Dingell asserted.

Apparently Dingell’s fierce explanation was a response to the position I took at the beginning of the Sunday roundtable that Clinton should quit the race. I insisted she is basically destroying the party by not conceding to Sen. Barack Obama, who is leading in super delegates and pledged delegates. The math for winning the nomination doesn’t work for her at this point. What else is she waiting for?

I am not opposed to having the remaining states declare their choice. My issue is that Clinton has applied all sorts of tactics to derail Obama’s candidacy, from the race card her husband Bill Clinton played in South Carolina to her most recent May 7 interview with USA Today where she basically intimated that Obama cannot win because he is Black. Clinton said she has a broader coalition to clinch the White House in the fall than Obama, citing an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, White Americans, is weakening again, and how Whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Clinton made these racially charged remarks the morning after she suffered a devastating blow in the North Carolina primary and managed to narrowly escape another defeat in Indiana. For her to suggest that Whites are not going to vote for Obama because he is Black is unfortunate and smacks of the sordid historical past of this nation that some of us are still caught up in. If she thinks that way, why in the first place did she show up in Selma, Ala., on Bloody Sunday?

Her remarks to USA Today reconfirms and reactivates Bill Clinton’s earlier dismissals of Obama as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever heard.” This sort of race card game must be called out because it is disgustingly disingenuous and a political betrayal after the many years that African Americans have rallied behind the Clintons. Black people stood for Bill Clinton even as the Republicans tried to chew him alive for his well-publicized dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. The conservatives said he brought dishonor to the White House and was not worthy of serving as the nation’s leader. Black people turned a deaf ear to the charge. Today the Clintons, by virtue of their insistence on an entitlement campaign, have lost much credibility in the Black community. History presented a rare opportunity for the Clintons to show honor and respect for a segment in the Democratic Party that has been its most loyal base, but they did not rise to the occasion.

After the race card failed, they unsuccessfully tried the experience card. Now it’s time for the gender card. Play on and give me some music as well.

Hillary Clinton should bow out gracefully, but on “Flashpoint,” Dingell tried to warn me that calling for an early Clinton exit could turn the women vote against whoever is the nominee. That was because I said African Americans have become very protective of Obama despite knowing that he is not running for president of Black America, but president of America. I did not know that Cllintonwas running for president of the National Organization of Women.

It’s the Clintons that have used the race card so well in the campaign. At some point you begin to wonder whether this was the same Clintons who were so close to African Americans.

So Hillary Clinton can go ahead and play the gender card as evident in her recent stomp speeches on the campaign trail.

Bankole Thompson’s latest book is “A Matter of Black Transformation.” Read his blogs at michronicleonline.com or e-mail