Reality is that Team Clinton needs to show that Obama is unfit to be President of the United States in order to win.
How much do the Clintons want the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination for Hillary?
Obviously enough to loan more than $10,000,000 of their personal funds to Hillary's presidential campaign.
But enough to play the Kenya card (that is, call public attention to Obama's Kenyan ties)?
Would they dare to do that?
With exits polls showing that rookie United States Senator and now front-running Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is taking more than 90% of the black vote against Hillary, will the Clintons finally play the Kenya card?
The liberal media blasted Team Clinton for supposedly playing the race card when Bill Clinton compared Obama's success in the 2008 Democrat presidential primary in South Carolina to earlier successes of Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The liberal media blasted Team Clinton when a photograph of Obama in traditional African garb was publicized.
The liberal media blasted Team Clinton when Bill Clinton complained that Team Obama had played the race card against him.
So the liberal media would blast Team Clinton for calling attention to Obama's Kenyan ties and call it racist.
But political reality is that Team Clinton cannot beat Team Obama so long as they assert, as Hillary did long ago, that she and Obama might run together for president and vice president, or, as Hillary said during the Pennsylvania debate, that Obama can be elected, or, as Hillary publicly stated during the latest Super Tuesday night, that she would support Obama if he won the Democrat presidential nomination.
Reality is that Team Clinton needs to show that Obama is unfit to be President of the United States in order to win.
Obama inadvertently contributed greatly to that perception among non-black voters by the way he handled his Rev. Jeremiah A. "God damn America" Wright, Jr. problem, first refusing to disavow Rev. Wright personally as equivalent to disowning the black community or his white grandmother, and finally doing so only after it finally became politically imperative, because Rev. Wright not only reiterated his crazed views at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., but essentially said that Obama had deceived the public about his genuine beliefs when he had distanced himself from Rev. Wright's incendiary remarks with respect to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, AIDS as an instrument devised by the United States government to exterminate blacks and, of course, God damning America.
Since Obama became the Democrat frontrunner, some of Obama's problematic associations--Rev. Wright, domestic terrorist William "I should have done more bombing" Ayers, slumlord Tony Rezko and wife Michelle "America is downright mean" and "Black Community first and foremost" Obama--have received significant public attention, to Team Obama's consternation.
But that scrutiny of Obama associations came only AFTER he had become the Democrat frontrunner, too late for Team Clinton, and Team Clinton has NOT played the Kenya card to show how politically extreme Obama really is and how Obama is tied to the radical Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga (who told the BBC that he is Obama's cousin on his father's side and who ran an unsuccessful race for president of Kenya posing as an apostle of change).
Unfortunately for Team Clinton, the media has not compared and contrasted the Odinga and Obama presidential campaigns and scrutinized the Odinga-Obama connection, although it certainly should have.
If Hillary is to become the 2008 Democrat presidential nominee, Team Clinton will not only have to brave the reflexive charges of racism, but convince the American people, including most Democrats, that the man who disparaged religion, denigrated small-town America and supported Rev. Wright as long as politically possible is a false messiah and an extremist, not a unifier-in-waiting who will solve America's racial problems because he happens to be half-black and half-white.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.