"They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender, and that's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance to win here," he said in Charleston.

Bill Clinton has pleaded with black voters not to vote for Barack Obama just because of his race, sympathising that "I get why it's hard to pass the first time" but insisting his wife Hillary is "on your side".

Truce my ass.

This was short in length but actually quite fulsome in content.

I think you have a very insightful point, BTD.

it is not 1992 and history NEVER repeats itself.

You are quite correct, and BC has said as much,  This is why I laugh.  It's Obama, not Hillary, who is stuck in the past.  Further, what a rude thing to say.  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Sorry Dionne, BC has a horse in this race.  Get used to it.  

Yes, I have also repeatedly pointed this out.  Obama is really running Bill Clinton's campaign, but at a totally different time and place we are finding ourselves in.  Wrong timing, wrong choice of themes, heck, the GOP is even much worse than it was back then, more conservative, more convinced than ever that their, and only their, way is the right way.  

Maybe I remember the 1992 campaign differently than other people.  I remember it as very much a "politics of contrast" campaign centered around a repudiation of Reaganomics.

I see Dionne's thesis as very empty.  He points out that in 1992, Clinton was bringing something new, and now in 2008, Obama is bringing something new, so gosh, it's the same thing!  But in 1992, Clinton was bringing something new that was SUBSTANTIVE - a rebranding of the Democratic Party away from the traditional liberal message that had gone down to crushing defeat in 1984 and 1988.  Obama, on the other hand, is offering the same fundamental mix of policies as the other candidates.  The distinctions are on wonky side points, like individual mandates.  The only "new" thing Obama is bringing is the rhetoric of post-partisanship, a procedural and dare I say mushy point.

Dionne also makes a Reagan point which I believe is instructive.  He references Bill Clinton, in 1991, praising Ronald Reagan for correctly choosing to confront Communism.  Well, today Obama is the one saying nice things about Reagan, so it's the same thing, right!  While I praise E.J. Dionne for having a political memory, this strikes me as the kind of random nugget of thought which has fathered a thousand columns of empty punditry.

Focus on the fact that when Clinton praised Reagan, he was identifying a specific, SUBSTANTIVE issue.  I'm sure the hypothetical netroots of the time would have given him a hard time for it, but the fact is, he was identifying a specific issue on which he agreed with Reagan, and you could agree or disagree.  (I think history has pretty much vindicated Reagan on Communism, although it felt kinda scary at the time.)

As for Obama, well, those supporters who have claimed Obama was getting unfairly pummeled because he didn't say anything controversial were exactly right.  Just because you're taking political hits doesn't mean you actually committed an act of brave apostasy.  In fact, his campaign has taken great efforts to point out that he didn't praise any specific ideas of Reagan's at all.  So yes, Reagan took office at a time that was ripe for a realignment, and he made it happen.  Consider how much less substantive this observation is than what Bill Clinton said in 1991.

I think perhaps I've been spoiled because Bill Clinton, for all his charisma and political gifts, is simply a relentlessly substantive person.  He may have been willing to adopt SPECIFIC ideas when he felt the other side got them right, but I see his 1992 campaign as one of clear contrast on substantive issues of economic policy.  The only contrast Obama offers is one of procedure and not substance, the shift from partisanship to post-partisanship.  There's no policy to it, there's no ideology to it.  It's just rhetoric.