This ought to help with the whole quiet backing away from the race issue that the race-baiting Clinton campaign has failed so spectacularly to exploit in recent weeks.

As the Obama campaign basks in the Kennedy glow, chief rival Sen. Hillary Clinton picked up an endorsement today from a larger-than-life southern entertainer known for his sideburns and white rhinestone-studded jumpsuit.

The name isn’t Elvis Presley, it’s Dwayne Turner, known locally as “Belvis, the Black Elvis.”

Prepare to shift in your seat uncomfortably.

Clinton, who jokes about having two left feet, shook her hips and did a little shimmy. She then gave Belvis a big high five, sparking applause from the crowd of mostly African-American long-time Clinton supporters.
…
“Bill Clinton was inducted into the black hall of fame. Like Elvis, he transcended race,” Turner said.

Still, as charmingly impromptu as this well-scripted bit of meticulous spontaneity may have been, Clinton may regret her decision to high-five… a *racist*.

He says he has liked the Clintons since 1982 when he was 12-years-old and Bill Clinton was in the early days of his governorship.

Turner says he was playing hide-and-go-seek at the state capital and snuck into a press conference with the then-governor. He says he raised his hand and asked Clinton why white kids got bused to their schools but black kids had to walk over a mile every morning. A week later, Turner says, his school got buses. “I walked right into the state Capitol with my nappy headed self, and I raised my hand and he called on me and he fixed it,” Turner says.

Source: Suitably Flip

By Eugene Robinson

Playing the race card against Barack Obama didn’t work out quite the way Bill Clinton had hoped. Neither did a reported last-minute personal appeal to keep Ted Kennedy, venerable guardian of the Camelot flame, from joining the Obama crusade. The question now is whether the Clintons understand how the country they seek to lead — and, regrettably, I do mean "they" — has changed.

I wonder how all the Clintonistas who protested that Bill and Hillary would never, ever dream of stooping to racial politics must be feeling now, after Bill was videotaped in the act. On Saturday, as Democrats in South Carolina went to the polls, a reporter asked Bill about Obama’s boast that it took two Clintons to try to beat him. Bill replied: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ‘84 and ‘88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

Now, the question had nothing to do with Jesse Jackson. So why do you suppose such an expert on American politics as Bill Clinton, with no prompting, would bring up contests that took place decades ago — back when South Carolina picked its convention delegates in caucuses, not primaries? John Edwards’s victory four years ago, in a primary, would have been much more relevant; he ran a good campaign, too.

The only possible reason for invoking Jackson’s name was to telegraph the following message: Barack Obama is black, so if a lot of black people decide to vote for him — doubtless out of racial solidarity — it doesn’t really mean squat.

And the reasons to send that message would be to devalue an Obama victory in South Carolina; to inoculate the Clinton campaign against potential losses next Tuesday in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee — Southern states with large African American populations; and, most important, to pigeonhole Obama as "a black candidate" as opposed to a candidate who, among other characteristics, is black.

That would help Hillary Clinton in other states, because the more prominent race becomes in this campaign, the more likely it is that she will win the nomination. They don’t call us a "minority" for nothing.

But a funny thing happened in South Carolina. Clinton didn’t lose by 10 or 12 points, as most polls had predicted; it was a 28-point blowout, with Obama more than doubling her vote. Yes, he took 78 percent of the black vote, according to exit polling, and she beat him among white voters, 36 percent to 24 percent. But if you look more closely, Clinton and Obama were practically tied among white men, 28 percent to 27 percent. Clinton’s advantage among whites came from women.

If Obama wanted to take a page from the "identity politics" playbook of the 1990s, he could try to hang the "female candidate" label around Clinton’s neck.

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By: Karen Russell

It’s baaack! Just when you thought it was safe, we are back at Whitewater. If Hillary and her attack pack want to play the Rezko card, let’s all strap on some waders, because now we’re forced to wade through the Whitewater mud again.

Clinton claimed Obama represented Tony Rezko. Obama never represented Rezko. Never. Ever.

According to the Washington Post:

"William Miceli, Obama’s supervisor at the law firm, said the firm represented the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., a nonprofit group that redeveloped a run-down property on Chicago’s South Side with Rezko. He called Clinton’s assertion that Obama represented Rezko in a slum landlord business ‘categorically untrue. He was a very junior lawyer at the time, who was given responsibility for basic due diligence, document review,’ said Miceli, adding that Obama did what he was told by the firm. According to Miceli, that was the only time Obama worked on a Rezko-related project while at the law firm…But investigations by Chicago newspapers have not produced evidence that he represented Rezko in a slum landlord business. What has been demonstrated so far is that he did some due diligence legal work for a joint venture between Rezko and a Chicago nonprofit. Two Pinocchios for Clinton."

FactCheck.org says "Obama was associated with a law firm that represented the community groups working with Rezko on several deals. There’s no evidence that Obama spent much time on them, and he never represented Rezko directly. So it was wrong for Clinton to say he was representing … Rezko.’ That’s untrue."

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Damn, this is going to hurt.

Oh, wait, no it won’t. The media won’t cover it at all. Because the remark wasn’t said to a Republican candidate. It was said to Bill Clinton, supporting his wife.

Couple of points for the sake of fairness. First, Clinton responded appropriately enough:

Clinton responded, "First of all, as an American, I have to tell you I hope you’re not right."

Second, of course, the story was reported by the MSM– barely. Fournier writes it up for his AP semi-blog.

Still, I tend to think the coverage here would be slightly more intense if it had been a Republican addressing this church.

In related news, Clinton accused Obama of executing a "hit job" on himself and his pretend wife:

A poisonous new exchange erupted on the Democratic campaign trail Wednesday as former president Bill Clinton accused his wife’s chief rival Barack Obama of a political "hit job."

Hillary Clinton insisted that Democratic wounds would heal in time for the party to recapture the White House in November’s election, but the bad blood was spilt anew as Obama himself came out firing against his tag-team opponents.

The running battles on the Democratic stump have sparked disquiet among party grandees heading into South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday and a slew of contests in more than 20 states on "Super Tuesday," February 5.

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Thursday pulled a controversial ad about rival Barack Obama that has been panned by several independent observers and called inaccurate by the Obama camp.

The ad, which was running on South Carolina radio ahead of Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary there, featured Obama’s recent comments about the GOP in which he said that the Republicans were “the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time.”

“Really?” the narrator says in the ad. “Aren’t those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we’re in today?”

Obama made the remarks in an interview last week with the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board before the Nevada caucuses, and they have since become fodder both for Clinton and rival John Edwards.

The ad “straightforwardly uses Senator Obama’s own words in his own voice saying the Republican Party was the party of ideas for the past 15-20 years,” said Clinton spokesman Zac Wright.

But Obama has repeatedly stated that the comments he made described the prominence of Republican ideas under Ronald Reagan, not an endorsement of them. In fact, he says he disagreed with many of those ideas, and they were only noteworthy because they challenged “conventional wisdom.”

After Clinton pulled the ad, Obama’s campaign issued a statement from “South Carolina Truth Squad” member David Agnew saying: “This is a victory for the truth … Obviously the deceptions go beyond this one radio ad. It’s time for the distortions of Senator Obama’s record to stop. And it’s time for Hillary Clinton to start running an honest campaign focused on the issues that really matter to the people of South Carolina.”

The campaign set up the “truth squad” to deflect negative attacks in the state.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) secured more than $1 million in federal funding last year for a Harlem-based non-profit whose leader gave her presidential campaign a major endorsement last weekend.

Clinton — who is aggressively competing for the black vote with her chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) — touted the endorsement of Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, a prominent black leader and pastor of one of the oldest black churches in America, the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem.

The $555-billion FY 2008 omnibus spending bill approved last month by Congress included 11 appropriations bills with almost 1,000 earmarks. Clinton teamed with senior New York Sen. Charles Schumer and New York Rep. Charles Rangel, both Democrats, to provide three earmarks for the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC).

The ADC is a separate non-profit community development organization chaired by Butts that focuses on increasing quality housing, delivering social services, and boosting economic and educational opportunities in Harlem.

Clinton backed an $839,000 earmark to the development corporation’s programs for at-risk youth; $446,500 for the organization to expand youth after-school programs; and $146,000 for the group’s social service work.

Clinton accepted credit for the Abyssinian earmarks and other earmarks in a statement released in December, saying, "I am proud that these funds will help support critical investments in New York City — from strengthening community programs for our children to supporting the city’s colleges and universities to cleaning up our waterways."

An analysis by the government watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste found that of all the presidential candidates serving in Congress, Clinton had the most earmarks.

Clinton’s Senate press secretary Philippe Reines said in a written statement that Clinton is "very proud" of the federal funding she secured for the state of New York, but the statement did not address any specific earmarks.

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ABC News’ Sarah Amos Reports: While campaigning for his wife in South Carolina, Bill Clinton scolded a reporter Wednesday.

The former president was answering questions about the back-and-forth between himself and his wife’s chief Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama.

A CNN crawl said Clinton was "responding to allegations he’s playing the race card in S.C."

"Are you saying the Obama camp is bringing up these racial issues?," asked CNN reporter Jessica Yellin.

"You want another story. I’m not gonna get in a fight with him, I’m just gonna answer what the facts are. … There are indisputable facts. You wanna make this about words and name calling. I hate it," Clinton said after a campaign event at Huger’s Restaurant in Charleston.

For many reporters, it was hard to hear exactly what set the former president off, but it quickly became clear he wasn’t happy. According to one reporter’s transcript, the back-and-forth began like this:

"Dick Harpootlian has called some of the tactics used in the campaign reprehensible and reminiscent of Lee Atwater to try to appeal on the basis of race and gender and for suppressing the vote in Nevada," a reporter asked.

"I would ask Dick Harpootlian — he wasn’t in Nevada," Clinton said, arguing he spoke to Hispanic women in Nevada who wanted to caucus for Hillary Clinton who were told by union officials they couldn’t sign up for her.

Then Clinton appeared angry with the reporter for asking the question.

"You asked me about this. You sat through this whole meeting. Not one, single solitary soul asked me about this. And they never do," he said.

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One of the nation’s major, liberal-leaning newspapers is giving Sen. Hillary Clinton "two Pinocchios" for "significant omissions or exaggerations" at Monday’s Democratic debate in South Carolina.

And a former Senate leader — a Democrat — is part of a new South Carolina Truth Squad to counter the Bill and Hillary Clintons’ "incredible distortions."

In a page A-7 "Fact Checker" column on Wednesday, The Washington Post noted that Clinton and her Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama "sparred repeatedly" at Monday’s debate in South Carolina, with Clinton "questioning Obama about his ties to a real estate developer and his comments about Ronald Reagan."

The column, by Michael Dobbs, said "Clinton is reading too much into Obama’s remark that Republicans were the ‘party of ideas’ and is overlooking her own kind words about Reagan."

The column also said that Clinton exaggerated when she accused Obama of "representing your contributor [Tony] Rezko in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

According to the Post’s "fact-checker," all that’s been demonstrated so far is that Obama, as a junior lawyer doing the bidding of his bosses, "did some due diligence legal work for a joint venture between Rezko and a Chicago nonprofit."

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By Monica Crowley 

Once upon a time, there was a Mythical First Black President who held court with his white Wife. They lorded over the land, until he was impeached and she bolted for the world’s greatest deliberative body.

Today, the Mythical First Black President is trying to help the Wife beat the Candidate who could be the Actual First Black President.

The Wife launched the first racial salvo, when she suggested that all Martin Luther King, Jr. did for civil rights was to "make speeches." To reinforce the point, she said, "It took a president (Lyndon Johnson) to get it done." Meaning: it was swell that King made some speeches and stuff, but it took the white guy in power to make it happen.

The Mythical First Black President then disrupted his welcome in Black Presidentville with a cranky tantrum: the campaign of the Candidate was "the biggest fairy tale" he’d ever seen.

Blacks around the country took offense that their Mythical Leader would dismiss the actual black candidate as a fantasy, so the Mythical First Black President took to the airwaves to try to clarify: he meant that the Candidate’s position on Iraq was a "fairy tale," not his candidacy. Most black audiences weren’t buying what the MFBP was selling this time.

Meanwhile, the Wife claimed that while the Candidate was an "inspirational speaker" (shorthand for a great preacher), he hadn’t "put in the spade work to be president."

The Rev. Al Sharpton must be too busy admiring his "Destroying Don Imus Award" to notice.

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Bill Clinton became visibly upset Wednesday over comments by a prominent South Carolina Democrat that compared the former president’s actions on the trail to those of infamous Republican strategist Lee Atwater.

In an interview with CNN’s Jessica Yellin, Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a supporter of Barack Obama, said some of Bill Clinton’s recent remarks on the campaign trail were appeals based on race and gender. He said the comments were meant to "suppresses the vote, demoralize voters, and distort the record," and said they were "reminiscent of Lee Atwater."

Clinton sharply disputed the charge, and lashed out at Yellin for raising the question.

"You live for this. This hurts the people of South Carolina," he said. "Because the people of South Carolina come to these meetings and ask questions about what they care about. And what they care about is not what’s going to be in the news coverage tonight, because you don’t care about it.

"What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along. I mean, the people don’t care about this," he added. "They never ask about it. And you are determined to take this election away from them. And that’s not right. That is not right. This election ought to belong to those people who are out here asking questions about their lives."

Source:  CNN