On a Pennsylvania talk show, Bill Clinton accuses Barack Obama’s campaign of playing the race card on him. He also contends memos show the Obama campaign planned to play the race card on him all along.
Make sure you listen to the comment he makes at the very end when he thinks the phone is off.
It’s hard to tell what impact a radio interview will have on the campaign, but there are many who are not Obama operatives who feel he was out of bounds several times during this campaign and this blanket denial won’t convince them — or please them. On the other hand, it sounds like something he was trying to get off his chest and could influence some independents.
The call shows how up-tight Clinton is and his huge resentment against the Obama campaign. This IS personal at this point and it’s hard to believe he would argue in favor of a Clinton-Obama “dream ticket” — and even harder now to imagine Obama giving up his Senate career and agreeing to be Vice President and have to work under Hillary (and Bill) Clinton.
There is some puzzlement over what the “memos” say that he claims confirm that this was the Obama plan all along. TPM suggests it could be another Clinton inaccuracy:
It’s not entirely clear what “memos” Bill might be referring to. The closest such memo in existence is one the Obama campaign put out a while ago, accusing the Clinton people of playing the race card on various occasions.
Whether such memos exist or not, as the blog Perfunction says: “So much for keeping Bill Clinton in his box.”
Here’s the audio clip and be sure to listen to it for the comment when he thinks he’s off mike:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.