Robert L. Terrell

Senator Hillary Clinton’s win tonight in the Pennsylvania primary probably portends bad tidings directly ahead for the Democratic Party. The reasons why are important and instructive. The key point to be understood is that the manner in which she and her husband went about manufacturing the victory is almost certainly going to engender bad blood across a large swath of the voting public.

For example, she and her most ardent supporters have been arguing for weeks that Obama can’t win the general election because he is black. That charge provides cover for Republicans, and whites who admit that they are opposed to voting for a black person, no matter how qualified and good that person might be. I might also note that a significant portion of Senator Clinton’s supporters consistently say that if Obama wins, they intend to vote for Senator John McCain. The ramifications of all this are not good.

Most important, the Clintons’ take-no-prisoners approach presents the Democratic Party with a massive dilemma. It is common knowledge that the party’s most loyal voting block consists of African Americans. And this has been the case for generations, even though African Americans have not notably benefitted from such loyalty in terms of party support regarding their/our most important problems and aspirations. If the Party has to broker a decision at the upcoming summer convention because neither Barack nor Hillary has garnered enough delegates to win the nomination outright, the Democratic Party will be, in a manner of speaking, faced with the worst of all possible worlds.

Given such a scenario, and if she runs true to form, Senator Clinton and her supporters will ardently reassert the mantra that they have been not so subtly uttering ever since if became apparent to her that absent mean-spirited, negative attacks on Senator Obama, she was probably going to lose. Her mantra consists of the assertion, slyly uttered, and obliquely spread, that white Americans are too racist to support an African American for president, no matter how qualified that person might be. If this occurs, and why would she reject the tactic which obviously worked for her in Texas and Pennsylvania, there is a distinct possibility that she will manage to garner enough super delegate support to win the nomination. But such a “victory” will almost certainly leave African Americans feeling betrayed in a way such that a substantial percentage of them will abandon the Democratic Party–forever.

Moreover, I suspect that many educated people, college students and people of color will feel much the same, and respond in a similar manner. Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi. Harry Reid, and everyone else who considers him or herself a bigwig in the Democratic Party, should take careful notice because if they mishandle this situation the Democratic Party may well shatter in ways which leave it permanently dysfunctional.