There’s a reason why, over the course of this long Presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has gone from the presumptive Democratic nominee to a much-reviled figure very capable of selfishly sabotaging her party’s chances of prevailing in the general election come November. And that reason, quite simply, is that she no longer looks like a leader but more like a sleazy race-baiter intent on securing the White House by any means necessary, even if that might leave the U.S. bitterly divided and Balkanized along ethnic lines.

By repeatedly resorting to disgustingly underhanded tactics, she has revealed herself to be incapable of rallying the country around her in the way that Barack Obama has captured the imagination of the younger generation. Thus, she pales, pardon the expression, in comparison to her relatively-elegant opponent, a solid statesman who has studiously avoided stooping to her offensive approach of making skin color an issue.

Ever since she lost the Iowa caucuses, Hillary’s henchmen’s shenanigans have been shameless. Let’s review a few. In the first of several kamikaze-style self-sacrifices, her national co-chairman Jack Shaheen, just before the New Hampshire primary, insinuated that Senator Obama was a former drug dealer. Those words carried considerable weight because Shaheen’s wife, Jeanne, is the state’s ex-governor. Yes, he later resigned from the Clinton campaign, but only after the damage was already done.

Next, another big Hillary supporter, former Senator Bob Kerrey, tried to scare voters by resurrecting the lie that Obama was a Muslim who had been brainwashed as a child at a radical madrassah. Kerrey even went so far as to suggest that Barack might be an “Islamic Manchurian Candidate” pre-programmed to hide his true anti-American agenda until after becoming President. Ultimately, Kerrey recanted his bigoted comments, too, but not before they had served their strategic purpose.

Black billionaire and BET founder Bob Johnson was the pawn asked to fall on his own sword prior to the contest in South Carolina. At a rally in Columbia, he insinuated that Obama had been selling drugs while a community organizer in Chicago.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton, seeing that his wife was well behind in the prediction polls, went out of his way to downplay her impending loss by pointing out that South Carolina‘s [Democratic] population was predominantly African-American, as if Barack’s only support came from the black community. That insensitive remark was still fresh in the collective memory of Obama’s omni-colored coalition of supporters who brought tears to my eyes when they started chanting, “Race doesn’t matter!” in unison as their candidate concluded his victory speech on election night.

Former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro is the latest foot soldier to make a fool of herself in the Clinton cause, this by speculating, “If Obama was [sic] a white man he would not be in this position.” Ferraro has proven to be not only perhaps the least articulate but undoubtedly the most inveterately-racist Hillary advocate to date, refusing to retract her words even after being repudiated by her queen.

Personally, I’m fed up with the Clintons. I’m taking Bill’s blackness back. As for his wife, she’s been exposed as the Machiavellian monster Samantha Power pegged her for. What else would you call a cold, calculating witch who would ask friend after friend to ruin their reputations by making racist statements on her behalf knowing full well she was just going to stab them in the back?

I suppose I should’ve given more credence to the words of New York Times’ Magazine Editor Edward Klein who, in his book “The Truth about Hillary” warned us a few years ago that she “is more frightening than you can imagine” because she’s “willing to lie, bully, cheat, and manipulate people in her quest for power.” Now, I wouldn’t put any dirty tricks past her in the fight for delegates en route to what will undoubtedly be an ugly Democratic convention.

Lloyd Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic and a member of the NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars.

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