She doesn't seem to have a problem in the last few days with complaining about sexism. I asked the question above back in April because it seemed to me that if Clinton WAS NOT trying to play games to get an advantage because Obama is black, then she'd uphold Democratic principles by telling people to cut it out IF they were voting on the basis of race. Silence.....

Today, I see a lot MORE people are also asking about this. Why isn't she?

Clinton Gave Voters Permission to be Racist

Normally the race issue is a third rail in American politics; you're not allowed to touch it. But Clinton did two important things to change that paradigm. First, she turned it into a legitimate issue by framing it as a matter of electability. The argument is -- it's not that you wouldn't vote for a black guy, but knowing how you and others around you feel, you know the black guy can't win.

This argument has soaked into the Hillary team so much that I'm afraid they've actually come to believe it themselves. That's part of the reason why they can't let this campaign go. I keep hearing them say -- we can't let the party make this kind of mistake. It is profoundly disappointing to see them internalize this ultimately racist argument.

What's interesting is that the primaries allow them to make this kind of race based argument. In the general election, you can't say -- don't vote for this guy because he's black. But in the primaries you can say -- don't vote for this guy because you know in the general election people will not vote for him because he's black. It's not that you're racist, wink, it's that so many other people are, wink.

Where is Hillary's Race Speech?

 As Hillary starts negotiating the terms of her surrender it would be so surprising and so uplifting if she would take the high road. Surely her last-ditch message to superdelegates cannot be an argument that America is too racist to elect a black president. That just cannot be the legacy of her historic campaign.

With at least twenty percent of white Clinton supporters in both Kentucky and West Virginia admitting that race was a factor in their decision-making how hard would it have been for Hillary to say she didn't want to win that way; that the America she intended to lead was better than that. When John Edwards saw that ugliness he jumped back in and endorsed Obama and Jim Webb, Appalachian himself (and Obama's future VP), just chimed in urging tolerance and mutual understanding.

Instead of ducking, winking and nodding if Hillary had addressed the issue head on, wouldn't that have been the Presidential thing to do?

And as Machiavelli could have told her from his grave, she'd still have gotten the racist vote, she just wouldn't look as if she were courting it.

Hillary's Hostage Crisis

She's also making it clear she can keep the racial issue on the front-burner. What was most outrageous about her now-infamous WaPo interview wasn't her claim of media sexism, which undoubtedly exists. It wasn't even her claim that she's losing because of sexism - despite the fact that she was once the odds-on favorite and was a woman then, too. More outrageous was her claim that there has been no racism in this campaign - this from a candidate whose last two victories came from white voters who, by 20% and 25% respectively, acknowledged that race played an important role in their choice.

What good does that do? It inflames her supporters' mistaken belief that she's been unjustly robbed of the nomination, and it dismisses the idea that both nominees had hurdles to overcome. The ongoing rage of Hillary supporters is her best bargaining chip. It's the dynamite she can use to blow up the party.

And speaking of racial: Was it just coincidental that she invoked Zimbabwe, of all places, in describing the Florida election? And not just Zimbabwe, but the President of Zimbabwe: "the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people." Nice. The President of Zimbabwe is, of course, a scary and possibly corrupt black man. (No subliminal racial message there, of course; it's just one of the ongoing series of "accidental" inferences the Clintons keep innocently making.)

Why Doesn't Clinton Reject and Denounce her Racially-Motivated Supporters?