I don't think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it's not about race.
This responds to a tension which has been simmering since the Iowa result.
Clinton was accusing the Obama campaign of distorting her remarks to make race an issue; others have found the Clintons' remarks ill-judged, particularly her comments that 'it took a President', contrasting the impact of Martin Luther King with that of LBJ in passing the Civil Rights Act. (Video clip). But isn't Obama running for President too, not to be leader of a new civil rights campaign?.
One view is that, if a backlash to sexism helped Clinton in New Hampshire, then Obama might be helped by a sense that the race card is in play. The Obama campaign's approach suggests they may think this.
As Joe Klein writes, this is not an argument which the Obama camp should want to have. He is not running on race - while he is consciously pitching a unifying candidacy which allows America to heal the race tensions of past decades. There is not much evidence that a 'Bradley effect' was a factor in Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire win, but the discussion of that in the media has again put race at the centre, and the Obama campaign have not discouraged that.
There have also been a few references to the 'Do the Right Thing' factor, the Spike Lee movie about inter-racial tensions. As Ryan Lizza writes in the New Yorker, the Clinton camp are confident of strong support from Hispanics, in part because Hispanic voters are thought less likely to support a black candidate.
The electoral demographics of race will be a key theme in South Carolina and Nevada. Race and gender are unavoidably part of the story which makes this a compelling race. But it will be damaging for the Democrats if the two campaigns continue these skirmishes. The Clintons' record on race is strong. Obama's better argument is not that attacks on his experience have racial undertones, but that they are examples of a negative approach to campaigning that he rejects.
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