Lamont Williams Calling: Gotta Pry The Nomination Away From Da Bitch's Cold Dead Fingers

There were a flood of robo-calls to North Carolina by Women's Voices, Women's Votes (WVWV), a non-profit get-out-the-vote organization. The call featured a man named Lamont Williams giving out instructions on how to register to vote. The instructions, if followed by new registrants, would disqualify them from voting. WVWV's director, Page Gardner, claimed it was all an innocent mistake and apologized for any inadvertent confusion her organization may have caused. Yet every person on her board is a core Clinton supporter and donor; her Executive Director is Bill Clinton's former pollster, all are long-time loyalists and donors, and one is the top Clinton campaign manager. The quality of incredulity is not strained, it droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven.

If you Google "Lamont Williams," the first hit is description of a felon. If you hit the "Image" button on Google, you get the mugshot of the felon pictured above. Coincidence? If you honestly seek the truth, there are no coincidences. There are just leads. And if these calls generating "confusion" were an anomaly, it would be one thing. But the same confused calls have already happened in Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Those are just the ones I've heard about. The difference in this case is that ABC published what someone had traced: the calls were coming from WVWV, and finally a reporter read their public records. This organization, its officers and its directors, can be sued for felony and indicted for a repeated pattern of election tampering. Voter suppression, fraud across state lines. Most juries would convict.

Ever since Maggie Williams (formerly chief of Bill Clinton's Harlem-based operations) replaced Patti Solis Doyle as the Clintons' campaign manager, they have been increasingly using "Fear of a Brown Planet" tactics to good effect. Despite the occasional Atticus Finch "To Kill A Mockingbird" successes, few people in America have come out behind in America when using race-baiting, and Maggie Williams knows exactly what raw nerves to rasp. Atticus Finch, a competent lawyer willing to defend a young (black) man accused of raping a (white) girl in a Southern town, do not grow on trees. Thugs like Maggie Williams do. She knows how to divide and confuse the black voter base, 90% of which has heretofore gone Obama, and this is straight out of the Rove playbook: if you're losing, attack the enemy at their strength. It's your best chance.

I freely admit the tactic is working--the Clintons have gained nicely in the polls, put Obama on the defensive; although the Clintonian super-delegate lead has dropped to only 17 today, they're succeeding down in the emotions of the people, where elections are won and lost. They know how to win now, or at least get to a brokered convention, and it won't be pretty if they do. For any of us who live in this Land O'Goshen. As of today, Obama will probably lose Indiana. How he responds will determine much; the election "ain'd jes" about delegates, it's about emotions. He has it within his power to turn public opinion against race-baiting once again by soaring above; but even if calls on his power, it will cost him. Like Barry Goldwater's new voice in the wilderness in the 1960s, he has twin destinies: one is to lead a new America, and the other is to lead to a new America. To do the former right now, he has to give a closing argument worthy of Atticus Finch, when the emotional smoke and fog is at maxim, and few indeed could cut through its sticky fug. Oh, for benign ataraxy. To respect our country for the long term, we honestly should ask ourselves: which candidate is most likely to effect beneficial change?