It's now day 3 or so of the Ferraro fluff-up, and we've had a bit of time to vent our spleens over her comments (or defend them, as the case may be). But nobody is asking why she said them, and said them now. Well, this is Clinton's last play, and it's a big one and it just might work. And we can look to Bush's invasion of Iraq as why it may work, since Clinton is drawing off his playbook.
The candidates stance on the Iraq war confounds many since politicians that opposed the war before the invasion found themselves now supporting it out of pragmatism. Why? Because we need to recognize that invading a country is an act that can't be undone. Once Bush did it, there was no point arguing over whether it was right or wrong - it was done and efforts needed to be brought to bear to minimize the impact of that decision. Bush knew this of course. He knew that once he forced their hand that they'd have to grudgingly support him.
That's the gambit we're seeing played out now by Clinton. Clinton has been attacking Obama on experience for some time, but nothing has been effective enough to tip the vote enough in her favor - and the details on Ireland and Kosovo are just causing things to unravel further. What Ferraro is doing here is doubling down on that argument - by suggesting that voters have been substituting race for his experience. By ignoring his policies, judgement, character, charisma, or vision (which have proven nearly unassailable) she is planting the seed that his race will overshadow his experience and counting on voters to not take the time to refute that with evidence. This isn't a play to win racist voters to her side. It's a play to tip the electability calculus strongly in her favor by making the general election out to be a contest where race will play a strong role (even though she's the one that uncorked that bottle), and where Obama loses.
The timing of the remarks is a big tip. The Mississippi primary was always going to split somewhat on race, but by charging the environment up to drive black voters further into Obama's camp, Clinton can count on Mississippi to validate Ferraro's charge. Indeed, if you look at Mississippi results, Obama wins the black voters overwhelmingly and Clinton wins the white voters by a reasonable amount. So when Ferraro says that Obama wouldn't be here unless he was black, the pundit class and Clinton's people can point to Mississippi is proof positive that her charge was true. It's always a safe bet that the public will be too lazy to consider whether Mississippi is representative of the nation at large, or whether that trend held true from the start, or whether Clinton (and not the voters themselves) might be responsible for black voters going to Obama. And sure enough, they're proving themselves too lazy to do that and they are, at least in some numbers, accepting the assertion even as they renounce her comments.
The goal of this is simple. If enough voters come to believe that Obama needs black voters to beat Clinton, they will buy into the idea that since black voters are predominantly Democrats anyway, that only Clinton can bring in enough white voters to win the general election. What's more, it doesn't matter if they find the tactic repugnant, if they think Hillary is a monster, or if they think Obama is wonderful, if they don't have a racist cell in their body - just as politicians found themselves grudgingly backing the war effort once it was underway, some voters will find themselves backing Clinton on the assumption that other voters will be biased against Obama and that therefore he is unelectable.
So just as Bush knew that his invasion couldn't be undone and that support would have to follow, Clinton is counting on this perception of Obama as product of social affirmative action as being an act that can't be undone either, and expecting that support will have to move to her. And remember, she's not counting on us to accept Ferarro's charge - she's counting on us to assume other voters will and for us to give up on Obama as a result. Clinton doesn't care if you are outraged, if you hate her, if it's hypocritical. What matters is that she knows once the well is poisoned, we'll go to the stagnant pond out of sheer pragmatism. It's the final play, because if Obama can overcome the charge, Hillary will be dead to the Democratic party. If not, she knows the voters, pledged delegates and superdelegates will back her out of their own self-interest to see a Democrat win in November.