Bill Goes Off the Reservation Again

On MSNBC’s First Read, Mark Murray transcribes an interview of Bill Clinton conducted by WHYY Radio in Philadelphia (NPR affiliate), in which the former president seems far more concerned with his own legacy than with his wife’s campaign. This on the even of the Pennsylvania primary, arguably the most important day in his wife’s campaign, and a day when the focus should be on her. Questioned by WHYY about his comments on the day of the South Carolina primary. comments clearly intended to minimize Obama’s victory by comparing it to Jesse Jackson’s victory in ‘88, Clinton responded, “No. I think that they played the race card on me.” Say what?

Yes, you read correctly. Bill believes the Obama camp played the race card on HIM, when virtually every objective observer believes otherwise. This is the fundamental problem with both Bill and Hillary — it always depends on “what the meaning of the word is, is.” The full rant can be read on First Read, but here are some highlights:

“No. I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it along.

“I respect Jesse Jackson. He’s a friend of mine, even though he endorsed Senator Obama. One of his sons and his wife endorsed Hillary. Their whole family’s divided… I frankly thought the way Obama campaign reacted was disrespectful to Jesse Jackson….”

“I mean this is just, you know… You gotta go something to play the race card on me — my office is in Harlem. And Harlem voted for Hillary, by the way. And I have 1.4 million people around the world, mostly people of color in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and elsewhere, on the world’s least expensive AIDS drugs. I appointed more African American, Hispanic and women judges and U.S. Attorneys than all previous presidents put together and had nine African American Cabinet members.

“I was stating a fact. And it is still a fact. You know, I was amazed that we got almost 20% of the African American vote in South Carolina, and I think it was because we had so many local officials who believed in Hillary and stuck their necks out for her, some of which were threatened with their jobs. But I can see that this used against me, but this was a conversation that occurred early in the morning. We didn’t even know what the vote was gonna be at the time. We were all sitting around drinking coffee. We’d just been to breakfast. We were talking about South Carolina political history. And this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere.”

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