There’s been no end of debate over the last week as to former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro’s (D-N.Y.) comments about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). But setting aside whether it’s outrageous or not, can anyone seriously claim that it’s an asset to be an African-American in a U.S. presidential race?

Happily, what we’re now seeing is that race does not in itself seem to be an eliminating factor in a presidential race. But an advantage? There’s no doubt that Obama’s race is the central factor in allowing him to consolidate almost unanimous support from African-American voters, especially in the South. It’s also probably helping him with some white liberals.

But African-Americans make up only about 13 percent of the population. And does anyone doubt that the advantage he gains there is not balanced, at least to a substantial degree, by resistance to voting for him among whites? Why did Obama run so poorly among white voters in Mississippi? And in South Carolina? We hear a lot about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) bedrock of strength among non-college-educated white voters. Do we really think that’s simply a matter of appeal of Sen. Clinton? More speculatively, but I think no less true, is that a lot of the Farrakhan/Muslim/foreign influence stuff has more sticking power because of Obama’s race.

Most of the same points could be made about the advantages and disadvantages Sen. Clinton bears because of her gender. In fact, I think there’s a pretty striking symmetry. It’s clearly helping her among female voters, especially her generational peers. But we’d be foolish not to realize that some of Obama’s big margins among white men are not simply a reflection of support for Obama.

And look at where this new direction in the campaign is taking us.

Now Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is in the news again. They did a segment on him on “Good Morning America” on Thursday. And the primary focus is on a video that has surfaced, of a sermon Wright gave in January that Fox News got a hold of. It’s racially charged and will certainly get a lot of play, though I’m not sure there’s much in it that doesn’t come out of the sermon tradition of African-American Christianity, with a ’60s twist.

Last week, Obama, who has denounced various of Wright’s statements, told a Jewish audience that Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.” You can find the sermon on YouTube and make your own judgment. For myself, when watching something like this, it is often difficult to distinguish between what I actually find offensive and what it is ingrained in me to believe others will find offensive. Particulars aside, the political relevance is to show Wright as an angry black man — and to tie him to Obama.

If Obama’s the nominee, we will see no end of this kind of stuff. And there’s probably some small benefit for Democrats of getting a preview. But the simple fact is that we wouldn’t be seeing this stuff now if it weren’t for the fact that this is the kind of campaign Hillary Clinton’s staff has decided to wage — often directly and at other times indirectly by not reining it in among her supporters when it crops up on its own. Wright is news today because Ferraro was news in the days just previous. Are her comments racist? That’s a loaded word. And there have been cases where the Clinton team has gotten a bum rap on these matters. What I do know, however, is that Clinton’s campaign and her surrogates have injected the subject of Obama’s race into this campaign too many times now for it to be credible to believe that it is anything but a conscious strategy.

Lincoln’s quote of Matthew 18:7 is instructive here: “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”

It is not enough to say that since Republicans will do this in the fall, there’s nothing to be lost in hearing it now from Democrats. Because by doing this now, as a Democratic campaign, they are mainstreaming the message. If Obama is the nominee, when this emerges again, no doubt in a harsher, more rancid incarnation, it will come pre-approved by dint of a Democratic campaign’s imprimatur.

I’ve got too big a backload of admiration and support for the Clintons to be sure they know exactly what they’re doing here. But this is the campaign they’re running. I no longer see any way to deny that.

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it