"[T]he Obama folks are practically making an artform out of playing the victim."

I would disagree emphatically with that statement -- Obama hasn't mentioned any of this garbage until forced to by Clinton's MTP performance.

But, taking your comment at face value, suppose the Obama campaign was playing the victim card? Where might they have learned that from? Counting 'em up, we now have:

1. A vast right-wing conspiracy

2. A vast mainstream media conspiracy

3. A vast Obama conspiracy

Now, that's a lot of conspiracies out there, and they're on both sides of the political spectrum.

The Clintons have made a political career out of acting the unfairly aggrieved party, and they've conditioned Democratic voters to back their play. When in doubt, as they were in New Hampshire, they went back to the well. The more divisive they can make this campaign, the more they thrive.

If Senator Clinton had just said, "I meant in no way to disparage Dr. King. He is an American hero who inspired me in my youth [even though I voted for Goldwater in 1964 -- well, she can leave that part out], and I regret that anyone could think I was disparaging him. I think my commitment to civil rights speaks for itself," we'd be done with this godforsaken nosedive into racial politics.

But, she couldn't do that. Instead, she started pointing fingers at the Obama people, arguing that they must be behind it all.

As for that stalwart foe of the estate tax, Robert Johnson, the main problem with his remarks isn't so much Johnson's dumb swing at Obama. (And you can say his drug use is on the table, ok, but I haven't seen Obama introducers make snide remarks about marital fidelity. Even if marginally appropriate, it's classless, particularly from the un-inhaling Clintons.) It's that his follow-up to explain he was talking about "community organizing" is so patently false on its face that it's insulting to voters. And Bill Clinton said we should take him at his word!

People make mistakes on the campaign trail. Just apologize and move on. When Obama got in the Senator from Punjab situation, he didn't blame a vast Clinton conspiracy. He called it stupid and caustic, took full responsibility, apologized in the media and to the Indian-American community, and moved on.

Go look around at comment boards at the various political sites. This sort of thing may still win Clinton the Democratic nomination, but she is bleeding voters in the general election right now with the underhandedness going on.

So is Barack Obama. What does your post have to do with the race card? Try again.

Two points you failed to make about that Palmer race. I'm quoting from Kyle-Anne Shiver's recent article in American Thinker, which got some run at Daily Dish and elsewhere.

* "Alice Palmer had held the seat for a number of years, but she announced that she wanted to run for Congress. So, Obama seized the opportunity and proclaimed his intention to run for Alice's open seat. Well, Alice lost the congressional race and decided that she wanted to hang onto that hard-won state senate seat." So Palmer changed her mind after losing a congressional bid. That makes things seem a bit different.

* "Instead Obama performed his first real act of political jujitsu. He sent his aides to the courthouse to carefully examine all of Alice Palmer's signatures to see if enough could be disallowed to knock her off the ballot altogether. And indeed, some of Alice's signatures were fake. The aides also found enough other fake signatures on opponents' ballot initiatives to knock them off the ballot as well." Fake signatures? Doesn't sound like he was disenfranchising any, you know, existing people.

Is Obama ambitious? Of course. Why else would he subject himself to the presidential process? Is he ruthless? Well, one hopes. He'll have to be to weather this Clintonian morass of invective and identity politics that's coming his way.

But your post tells us nothing about the situation at hand. And invalidating FAKE signatures -- i.e. making sure people are playing by the rules -- is not the same as the current wallowing in the old-school race game, as the Clintons are now doing.