The XX Factor: What women really think.

Who Was Hillary Kidding on Meet the Press?

Back to Hillaryland (because who can stay out for long?): Who is she kidding when she said to Tim Russert yesterday, about herself and Obama, "I don't think either of one of us want to inject race and gender in this campaign"? I'm pretty much in favor of giving Clinton the benefit of the doubt on her recent statement about the comparative roles of MLK and LBJ, as Josh Marshall does in this post. I'd like to think she was being boneheaded rather than deliberately challenging King's legacy (which would constitute temporary political insanity). And I think it's over the top to say that pointing out that the Republicans will use Obama's drug use against him is akin to painting him as a "stereotypical black drug dealer." Obama is about as far removed from that stereotype as you can get. And a realistic assessment of his weak points in the general election is just as important as assessing his strengths. But I worry that Clinton and her people are tiptoeing up to the line of injecting race into the campaign--I hope at their peril. And they have certainly crossed it in injecting gender. They did that a long time ago, when they started preparing "handmade signs that read, 'I can be president' to hand to young girls, as John Dickerson reported. 

 I know that part of politics is calling the sky green when it's blue. But this disingenuity plays right into the case against Clinton that Christopher Hitchens sketches here, and this fact check today belying the Clintons' claims that Sen. Chuck Hagel drafted the 2002 Iraq war resolution that Hillary voted for, and that Hagel "said it was not a vote for war,” as she said in another problematic Meet the Press moment. Also, as my dad points out to me, Hillary was aggressive and confrontational with Russert, at exactly the moment when she's supposed to be warmer and more likeable. Is that the first female candidate conundrum that she's stuck with, or a playing out of her particular weaknesses? Both, I suppose, but today it feels like more the latter.