You know, I–I love this, and I thank you, but we have important work to do tonight. I am here first to support Barack Obama. And second — and second, I’m here to warm up the crowd for Joe Biden, though as you will soon see, he doesn’t need any help from me. I love Joe Biden, and America will too.

What a year we Democrats have had. The primary began with an all-star line up and it came down to two remarkable Americans locked in a hard fought contest right to the very end. The campaign generated so much heat it increased global warming.

Now, in the end, my candidate didn’t win. But I’m really proud of the campaign she ran: I am proud that she never quit on the people she stood up for, on the changes she pushed for, on the future she wants for all our children. And I’m grateful for the chance Chelsea and I had to go all over America to tell people about the person we know and love.

Now, I am not so grateful for the chance to speak in the wake of Hillary’s magnificent address last night. But I’ll do my best.

Last night, Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she is going to do everything she can to elect Barack Obama.

That makes two of us.

Actually that makes 18 million of us - because, like Hillary, I want all of you who supported her to vote for Barack Obama in November.

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Trey Ellis in HuffPo thinks we should be afraid, very afraid of what Republicans might have up their sleeves for October:

We taxpayers already have shelled out $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since 2003. They have 180,000 employees in country now building what they had assumed would be permanent bases for a permanent occupation of an oil-rich land.

Does anyone really believe that Cheney/Halliburton/Blackwater will relinquish the keys to the American treasury without the nastiest of fights?

For six years Cheney has unleashed a gusher of obscene profiteering with little or no oversight of his petro/reconstruction/military contracting cohorts. You don’t have to be a conspiracy-addicted fan of Jack Bauer’s to understand that they won’t just quietly retire to their yachts in the Gulf of Mexico after regime change and their operations in Iraq are forcibly ended. They understand that not only will they be out of business, but that they could also go to jail — if Democrats hold hearings into war profiteering, just as Truman did as a Senator in 1943.

Remember, when Halliburton et al. first entered Iraq, Republicans had a virtual one-party lock on governance. Democrats acted like frightened little forest animals. The contractors didn’t have to cover their tracks because the vice president of the United States, the de facto ruler of the free world, was their capo.

Me? I sometimes subscribe to the pessimism that the writer voices here. Other times, I am euphoric over Sen. Barack Obama’s chances of winning the presidency. Practically everyone I know supports Obama. In my town, which not long ago, was a Republican town is now festooned with “Obama for President” lawn signs.

Yet, this is America we’re talking about. It is at the root of Bill Clinton’s restlessness. Republicans are counting on that thing that Bill feels inately. Bill knows. He has always known this country better than anyone. That’s why he was able to tap what was darkest in the heart of America into two terms in the presidency. Anymore than he wants his wife to win the presidency, he knows that Hillary, warts-and-all, would be easier for Americans to swallow than the pristine Mr. Obama.

Damn Bill!

Unfortunately, all the good Bill Clinton did as president, the goodwill he won with African Americans and the great relationships he forged over the course of his political, he’s not intent on frittering away in bitterness. He’s affronted by Sen. Barack Obama’s political ascent and he’s not going to let it go, promising now to speak his mind next year.

Next year?

Give it a rest, Mr. Clinton. The nation has more pressing matter to attend to than the swamp in your mind.

Clinton Embraces Return to Ambassador Role: After the Bitter Primaries, He Calls Charity ‘My Life’ By Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, August 3, 2008; A01

KIGALI, Rwanda, Aug. 2 — There will be no Clinton restoration — not this year, at least. But the rehabilitation of Bill Clinton has begun.

The former president in many ways ended the Democratic primary campaign more isolated than his wife, with his own friends and allies unhappy with his flashes of anger and ill-chosen words and blaming him in part for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s defeat. With a negligible relationship with Sen. Barack Obama — he has spoken to him just once since the primaries — Clinton has been shut out of the Obama campaign almost entirely and does not know even basic things, such as the role he will play at the Democratic convention.

It is uncharted territory for the most successful Democratic politician of his generation, and part of the reason he was in Kigali on Saturday, the latest stop in a grueling journey across Africa to visit some of the places where his charitable foundation has been active — and in the process re-establish his role as a global elder statesman. At the same time, Clinton began, slowly, to discuss the bruising Democratic primary season that ended two months earlier.

In his first extended interview since his wife exited the campaign in defeat, Clinton said he was glad to be back doing international foundation work. “This is my life now, and I was eager to get back to it, and I couldn’t be happier,” Clinton said in a hotel suite, with three aides looking on.

In a session that lasted more than 45 minutes, Clinton described his role in the 2008 campaign as “a privilege, an honor,” and said, “I loved it,” but he declined to discuss any of his own possible mistakes, describing them as a distraction. “Next year, you and I and everybody else will be freer and have more space to say what we believe to be the truth” about the primaries, he said.

Clinton volunteered very little praise of Obama, beyond describing him as “smart” and “a good politician” when asked about him toward the end of the interview. He did, however, muse at length about the role that race could play in the general election — the issue that some of his former black allies angrily accused him of introducing in the Democratic primaries — as a factor, if not a decisive one.

After the hard slog of the campaign, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton should now look into a long, long vacation.

Until Nov. 5.

Former President Bill Clinton doesn’t have to return. He should just stay gone.

Hillary Rodham Clinton biographer Carl Bernstein has a fascinating post at cnn.com about her plan to land the vice-presidential spot on the Obama ticket. Titled Could Clinton land the VP nomination?, her plan to end her campaign and win the vice presidential spot is to blackmail and threaten Obama:

Take me on as your vice president, or I’ll destroy you and the Democratic Party.

Bernstein wrote that HRC’s minions are still, remarkably, trolling for dirt to destroy the Obama campaign with, even as they vigorously seek the second spot on the ticket:

A person close to her, with whom her campaign staff has counseled at various points, said this week, “I think the following will happen: Obama will be in a position where the party declares him the nominee by the first week in June. She’ll still be fighting with everybody — the Rules Committee, the party leaders — and arguing, ‘I’m winning these key states; I’ve got almost half the delegates. I have a whole constituency he hasn’t reached. I’ve got real differences on approach to how we win this election, and I’m going to press the hell out of this guy. … Relief for the middle class, universal health care, etc.; I’m Ms. Blue Collar, and I’m going to press my fight, because he can’t win without my being on the ticket.’ “

Another major Democratic Party figure, who supports her for president, agreed: “It’s not going to be a quiet exit. … Obama has got a terrible situation. He marches to a different drummer. He won’t want to take her on the ticket. But he might have to, even though the idea of Vice President Hillary with Bill in the background at the White House is not something — especially after what [the Clintons] have thrown at him that he relishes. I believe she’ll go for it.”

However, several important Democrats aligned with Obama predicted that he — and Michelle Obama — will vigorously resist any Clinton effort to get on the ticket. Rather, Obama is more likely to try to convince Clinton to either stay in the Senate or accept another position in an Obama administration, should he win the presidency.

Several Clinton associates say there is still a ray of hope among some in her campaign: that a “catastrophic” revelation about Obama might make it possible for her to win the presidential nomination. But barring that, Hillary and Bill Clinton recognize that her candidacy is being abandoned and rejected by superdelegates whom she once expected to win over and that, even if she were to win the popular vote in combined primary states, she will almost certainly be denied the nomination.

This is mind boggling. HRC has lost and her ship is losing water. Yet she is still making threats. There are other people who help Obama, if he even needs this help, with the so-called blue collar, “hard-working” white voters. Jim Webb, as I’ve stated on a number of occasions, for instance.

HRC is a disaster. Bill Clinton has turned out to be a disaster for Democrats. They both need to go away. The sooner the better.

How Bill Clinton Got His Groove Back says the headline to an Adam Nagourney piece of hagiography on the website of The New York Times (I don’t know if it ran in the paper, or is slated to run tomorrow). My question is this: Did the former president get his groove back, or is the Times news pages continue a pattern of trying to prop up the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign by overstating things?

I cannot really say when it started but, recently, the news pages has been turning itself into pretzel spinning any news development into something positive for HRC.

They’ve, meanwhile, done the opposite for Sen. Barack Obama, covering his campaign as a constant crisis.

Just when the paper’s editorial pages was beginning to recognize its error in backing HRC and beginning to take a more even-handed tack to the campaign, the news pages has gone in the opposite direction by becoming more subjective.

This primary battle will end one day. The Times, as it almost always does, will regain its bearings. I cannot wait for either day.

Dick Gregory at State of Black Union ‘08

The veteran comedian/civil rights activist long ago made a practice of packing his humor with a stiletto scalpel that cuts so quick you sometimes don’t know whether to laugh, or cry. This late February 2008 event was no different:

Click to continue reading…

Transcript:
“It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
But there’ s a phone in the White House and it is ringing.
something is happening in the world
your vote will decide who answers that call.
whether it is someone who already knows the world’s leaders,
knows the military
someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
its 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
Who do you want answering that phone?”

This is inadvertent but former Pres. Bill Clinton just showed why his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), is not only not the person you want answering the phone, she might not even answer it if she gets the opportunity.
Mrs. Clinton has mentioned often in this campaign her “35 years of experience,” which she says has put her “across the threshold” to be commander-in-chief. Well, the phone rang in 1994 regarding Rwanda. It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang. No one answered.
Bill Clinton spared no effort trying to stop genocide in the former Yugoslavia republics. This was admirable. But close to a million people were killed in the genocide when Hutus decided to kill Tutsis in that African nation.
Bill Clinton said his wife had urged him to take military action to stop that genocide. History will record that, even if it is true that Mrs. Clinton did offer that advice, and there is no record whatsoever to prove she did, she was in ineffectual. Mrs. Clinton was just as ineffectual trying to ram a health care overhaul through the U.S. Congress.
That was when she became a full-time touring first lady. She visited many countries. This is part of the experience that she says qualifies her to be president and commander-in-chief. It is the lifetime of experiences that she says qualifies her and Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), to be president but not Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL).
If we know anything at all about Bill Clinton, besides the fact that he’s a political animal, it is that he is an inveterate and pathological liar. This advice that he remembers Mrs. Clinton giving him is clearly a political memory that he’s fantasizing now to help his wife’s candidacy.
Sen. Clinton, in her many statements lately, is also showing herself to be power-hungry.Not only did Sen. Clinton cross a threshold that qualifies her to be president, whatever that means, but she broke a golden rule of politics when she gave Republicans ammunition to use against Sen. Obama, should he be the party’s nominee.

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton debating in Texas on Thursday. (Photo by Deborah Cannon)

Washington Post Columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote a column on Wednesday questioning the Barack Obama phenomenon. We will see more pieces like this, especially if Sen. Obama, (D-IL), becomes the Democratic Party nominee.

Let me attempt to refute some of his more salient points.

I don’t want to say Samuelson’s column is ridiculous. He does raise some interesting questions about Obama. He says in The Obama Delusion that he came away from an encounter with Obama at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention “deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship.”

Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I’m dealing with known quantities. They’ve been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

By Samuelson’s standard, only people who have held national office and are well known should put themselves forward as candidates for President of the United States. Although George W. Bush came from a prominent family and was governor of a state, not much was known about him (we still don’t know about his going AWOL from his Air National Guard units during the Vietnam War; his drug use during much of his adult life; and other criminal behavior and activities before he allegedly found religion). His entire adult life (besides drinking and drugging) was spent as his father’s enforcer in the deep background.

Hillary Clinton is known to the whole world, which is both her strength and weakness. Many voters are rejecting her precisely because they know her so well. Obama, besides being a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer, was a state legislator for eight years.

Samuelson criticized the plans that Obama has put forth about what he would like to do in office.

If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.

He is right. Obama’s ideas are quite pedestrian. But Mrs. Clinton’s plans are only slightly less so. Obama’s supporters either cannot see, or refuse to see, the conventional politician right before them. They think it’s a revolution when, in fact, all it is is an election and a man running as hard as he can to win an office.

But, that said, I don’t believe it’s Obama’s job to lay out a plan on what he intends to do as president. That’s not part of the job description. I think most people trot out these plans because they think it’s required of them.

Did Bush talk about ‘unitary executive’ doctrine when he ran for President? No. He talked about being a ‘compassionate conservative’ and ‘a uniter, not a divider.’ We know now that both tropes are blatant lies.

A lot of people remember now Bill Clinton’s presidency fondly (willingly forgetting the impeachment and other assorted sordid goings on during those eight years) but what plans did he run on and did he implement them?

One of the things that a leader has to do is inspire and any other year I would have been inspired by Mrs. Clinton. Next to Obama, however, she depresses me.

I think Obama will be a better president and part of the reason is that he’s new and fresh and does not carry the scars and baggage of two decades of warring with Republicans. With Mrs. Clinton, we’re going to have to refight all the old fights.

And it helps that Obama is an inspirational leader.

Please, don’t get me started on McCain. As you all know by now, I think Sen. John McCain is a corrupt and immoral hypocrite.

Al Jolson, Elvis Pressley, Bill Clinton, just to name a few.

I’m sure I meant something by that list. But just what I cannot tell you because I am not really sure. The list is not random, however.

It took me a while to get to this Newsweek article by David Gates but I am glad I read it. Mr. Gates wrote a questioning and intelligent article about a sliver of American culture that is unstintingly honest.

Photograph by Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recorded a version of this song that is at once beautiful, sad, funny, and heartbreaking all at the same time. Today’s New York Times story about Sen. Barack Obama’s struggle with the issue of race in his campaign to become the Democratic Party nominee for president makes me feel all of those things.

Mr. Obama has largely succeeded in muting the issue of race in this campaign. He has succeeded in making the campaign not about his race, even as he has benefited from race (the whole ‘a credit to his race’ thing). The Clintons, Bill especially, recognized what was happening and quickly ended their subtle attempts to remind people that Mr. Obama is black. They, instead, took up a megaphone and blared it to anyone who would listen.

Photographs by Ozier Mohammed/The New York Times.

They earlier made the false claim to the New Yorker Magazine that Latinos don’t vote for blacks. When Sen. Obama won in Iowa, they became more daring and explicit in New Hampshire before going overboard in South Carolina.

Former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, (D-N.J.), was fond of saying (and I forget who he’s quoting here) that race is America’s original sin.

Nowhere is it more explicit than in this race. Mr. Obama’s campaign, as great as it has been, has had some significant failures. The deficits in his support now are testaments to those failures.

His seeming inability to craft a message that could appeal to lunch bucket, blue collar white voters is telling. It is my belief that Mr. Obama’s message benefits this constituency far more than the people who have been flocking to his campaign so far. He needs to find the language to talk to them.

As for Latinos, it is right that Sen. Obama has to work to earn their votes, just as he had to work (with no small amount of help from Bill and Hillary Clinton) to win over African-Americans. Latinos are diverse and not one single message will reach them. Again, reaching them is not an insurmountable challenge.

This just means Mr. Obama and his staff have to work harder to earn their votes. That is part of the promise of Mr. Obama’s movement. The solutions to our nation’s problems have to be deep and lasting. The blood, sweat and tears in this effort will only make sure both the achievements and the progressive coalition more enduring.

This is not to exclude Sen. Hillary Clinton. First, let me say that any other year I would be banging the drum hard supporting her. It is just a fluke that she is running at a time when her opponent is this remarkable man. She has taken some unfortunate steps in this campaign which she’ll ultimately have to atone for.

What must not happen is troglodyte John McCain winning the presidency.

That said, I will support Sen. Clinton if she wins the nomination. She will have the task of crafting the same progressive coalition, which I hope she is working on now, to carry her to the presidency.

This shows how little I know. I thought former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as Republican vice-presidential nominee answers all the problems that Sen. John McCain is having reeling in his party’s base. Mr. Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is now the president of the Club for Growth, thinks not.

Some have suggested Mike Huckabee. But that’s a legacy
of a hard fought primary season. Moving forward,
Mr. Huckabee on the ticket would be a disaster. The former
governor has a record of raising taxes and increasing
spending. Picking him would only make it more likely that
conservatives will sit on their hands come November.

Mr. Toomey would know better than I would, although you cannot discount that he and the group he heads have their own agenda. Club for Growth (CFG) bills itself as inheritor of Ronald Reagan’s “vision of limited government and lower taxes.”

It’s probably news to them that Reagan, among his many crimes against the American people, not only raised taxes, but he grew the size of government and the national debt beyond what was tolerable. Remember the national debt clock?
It took a Democrat, former president Bill Clinton, to erase the deficit and return sound fiscal management. Clinton left office with a significant surplus that another Republican president, George W. Bush, promptly squandered.

The Club for Growth advances this anti-government vision by supporting candidates for political offices who hew to its right-wing economic orthodoxy. It aggressively opposes moderate Republicans often to the consternation of GOP political leaders.

So who does Mr. Toomey think Mr. McCain should run with:

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint
Indiana Rep. Mike Pence
Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm
Forbes Inc. CEO Steve Forbes

I don’t much about most of these people (Sen. Phil Gramm probably belongs in prison, so corrupt was he; and Mr. Forbes probably belongs in an insane asylum, probably a well-appointed one since he’s wealthy but certifiably insane) other than that they’re Mr. Toomey and Club for Growth’s suggestions for the GOP ticket.

Here’s my question: Should the Republicans be banned from a couple of election cycles, considering the horrible state that George W. Bush is about to leave our country?

All the comparisons of Barack Obama to the Kennedys, both John and Bobby, bring to mind the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen’s putdown of Dan Quayle. Quayle was fond of invoking the martyred young president whenever anyone questioned his qualification to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

The question came up again during the vice-presidential debate on October 5, 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska. Quayle felt put upon and whined that it was the fourth time he’d been asked the question.

“I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency,” Quayle said.

Bentsen, who was lying in wait for this very answer to the question, pounced.

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen said to a roar of applause.

This brings me to my examination of the comparisons of Obama to the Kennedy brothers.

Hillary Clinton seems to have been scared off, at least for now, questioning Obama’s qualification to be president (her ‘ready on day one’ is an oblique way of coming at the question but that doesn’t help her because of Obama’s counter about judgment and ‘being right on day one’) for fear she’d be accused of racism, especially since Obama is the same age her husband was when he ran for the same office 16 years ago. Obama, in fact, has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

And his expectations and that of his supporters have grown as a result of his success.

But, over at TPM Cafe, Jim Sleeper pointed to at least one remaining weakness that Obama still has: He has great support among the young, blacks, and educated and affluent whites. In that respect, he’s very much like JFK. He’s no RFK, however, because his message is not resonating with women, Latinos and working class whites.

Even with RFK’s widow Ethel supporting him, Obama lost these key demographic groups to Sen. Clinton on Super Tuesday. For all his vaunted rhetorical skills, Obama seems unable to inspire them, losing them to Mrs. Clinton so far this primary season. And she seems to have come by this constituency by default—by being the wife of Bill Clinton, who is believed to be a friend of Latinos and the working class—not anything that she herself is doing.

Race is not the reason Obama does not have these groups’ support. He needs to find the key to reach them if the true promise of his campaign is to be realized.

Barack Obama said Bill Clinton is to blame for the plights of Democrats.

In the remaining days before Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), is reaping endorsements like they’re going out of style. What I know is that, whether this pushes him over the hump in California or not, this is impressive. The L.A. Times said this in its endorsement:

An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation’s youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama’s mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama’s life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.

Wow! The Times finishes with this little ditty:

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long — a sense of aspiration.”

Poor Hillary Clinton, (D-N.Y.). So she’s dutiful but stodgy and uninspiring. I mean it’s not as bad as what her rabid enemies usually say about her, but still . . . Imagine being married to that famous Cassandra, Bill Clinton? But to then run against Obama is worse than unfair. It’s cruel. Let’s say she wins the nomination (because, despite all the kudos Obama is getting, he still faces what seems like insurmountable odds). How do you run for the whole enchilada (with the tsunami of filth that the Republicans are readying to throw at you) knowing you ain’t the prettiest belle at the ball? You failed the inspiration test?

Wait. There’s more. La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the country, which is based in Los Angeles, also gave Obama its endorsement. Although the paper called Hillary “extraordinary,” it knocked her for being “calculating” in opposing to driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, the paper could not find enough nice things to say about Obama on immigration:

It is this commitment to the immigration issue which drove Obama to condemn the malicious lies made during the immigration debate, to understand the need for driver’s licenses, and to defend the rights of undocumented students by co- authoring the DREAM Act.

And, oh yes, they also think Obama is inspiring:

We need a leader today that can inspire and unite America again around its greatest possibilities. Barack Obama is the right leader for the time. We know that he is not as well known among our community and while he has the support of Maria Elena Durazo, Senator Gil Cedillo and others he comes to the Latino community with less name recognition. Nevertheless, it is Obama who deserves our support.

I have a radical proposal: Why not make Obama president and Hillary the prime minister. Someone’s got to run the country while Obama bats his eyes at its people, inspiring them.

Obama once said, in response to people (the Clintons) who said he’s in too much of a hurry to become president, that what they wanted was for him to wait until all the hope is boiled out of him.

It was a good line.

He probably did not realize that there was not going to be any waiting involved.

How sweet is this for Hillary. Send Bill out to bang Obama, then jump up and say, see, Obama can’t take the heat.

So what if the Democratic Party gets burned in the process? Who cares. Power. Corrupts. Absolutely.

So, last night, there was the evil dementor Newt Gingrish on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes decrying how Lord Voldermort, er, Bill Clinton, was trying kill off good little Harry (that would be Barack Obama) and it occurred to me, those are love taps that Bill is administering to Obama compared to what Republicans will do to the hopeful one when they get their hands on him.

Wow. That was a long sentence. I’ll try to curb that.

Bill Clinton, apparently, does not mind losing a little bit of respect if it means his wife gets to go back to the White House. Power corrupts. Absolutely.

I have said previously (as have others) that I believe Barack Obama is Bill Clinton’s truest heir.

The New York Times has a curious story today that I am still thinking about. I am not sure what I think about the strategy.

I know that I am happy that the Clintons are not ceding the ‘black’ vote’ to Obama. The most gratifying aspect of this campaign to me has been Obama’ run as a candidate who happens to be black, rather than as the ‘black candidate.’ For that reason, he has had to work hard to earn black support, which he still doesn’t have, not totally. Black women, for instance, may still end up supporting Hillary (because I may not return to this subject, consider this in the meantime).

Hillary, at first, did not think she would have to contest for the ‘black vote,’ such was the reservoir goodwill built by Bill Clinton over the course of his political career. Bill Clinton was no less exploitative of African-Americans in his political career than other Democrats. And the party during his reign still took African-Americans for granted. But, even if short of tangible gains for blacks, Bill Clinton was at least empathetic.

That was a change from the open hostility that Ronald Reagan in particular and Republicans in general have exhibited, something that continues today in some of the coded and overt gestures that the current crop of Republican candidates are making on the campaign trail.

Which is why Obama should have to explain better his apparent Nevada apostasy regarding Reagan and the gibe about the Republican Party being the ‘party of ideas.’

Reagan and those ‘ideas’ that the Republican Party continue to traffick in demonized African-Americans and devastated cities, preyed on communities of color , and the imperiled the poor during the past generation. It is not enough to say “I want me some’ Obama Republicans.’ ”

I remember some of the reasons the so-called “Reagan Democrats” deserted the party to vote with Republicans. I am not going to discuss them here but the consequences of that decision are still being felt today.

In any case, Hillary knows she’s in a race now and she’s truly fighting. I hope to take the cudgel to Obama some more on this subject but the person I want to talk about is Bill Clinton and his struggle for a tone against Obama.

Clinton has been too emotional, too hot, and some of his language too freighted for me not to wonder why he seems so bothered by Obama. This is a contest and Bill, of all people, should enjoy the arena and this battle. But he does not seem to.

Ok. I have to run now. I want to think more about this.

Bill Clinton is one of my favorite politicians. I appreciate the joy he brings to being in the public sphere. His presidency was a triumph. He accomplished a lot, especially for the economy, the environment and the general feeling he left that he had brought our nation back from the brink where the Reagan and the first Bush maladministrations left us.

Bill Clinton showed his fortitude and courage at the lowest moments in his political career. Anyone would have understood (well, maybe not) and forgiven him if he’d decided he did not feel up to delivering the 1998 State of the Union Address. Ken Starr and his posse were braying at the door. There were traps, perjury and whatever else, everywhere. And, in a closet somewhere, hid a certain stained blue dress.

Bill Clinton walked into the well of Congress in January 1998 defiant and strode out triumphant having delivered one of the best speech of his life.

That performance quelled, for a moment, the storms that would engulf him for much of 1998, one demeaning revelation after the other. But his travails served to focus him on his job as president. He expertly steered the ship of state and when he turned up in January 1999 to deliver the State of the Union Address, he reported to the country that he was just fine, thank you. And the nation, not half bad. The best economic climate in a generation and much, much, more.

Bill Clinton left office one of the highest rated presidents and he has continued to do good works even as he joined the ranks of one of the wealthiest men on the planet.

But Clinton is also a tragic figure. He possesses such prodigious talent, such intellect, yet barely scratched the surface of what he could have accomplished as president. He still has ambitions, things he wants to accomplish for the nation and for himself. I suspect that is why he’s fighting so hard to get his wife elected president. You cannot fault a man for that.

The problem is that the strain on him is showing.

Where is the old happy warrior? Why has Barack Obama’s candidacy so spooked him? Obama is Clinton’s truest heir. His pitch to the Reno, Nev., Journal Gazette, despite the backhanded slap at Bill, is classic Clintonism.

Whatever happens in this election, I want the old Bill back.