After winning in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton proudly proclaimed that she had rediscovered her voice. There was actually some meat to her statement; unlike in Iowa, in New Hampshire, Hillary took questions and answered them. During the debate, she wasn't afraid of showing a measured, appropriate dose of anger when challenged.
After New Hampshire, for a few days at least, everything seemed to be going in her direction. The only problem she faced was blowback from the drip-drip-drip pattern of racially tinged statements made by her and her campaign, most notably her dismissive view of MLK.
The real problem for Hillary came in Charleston on Sunday when she appeared with Bob Johnson, and he directly raised the race issue, taking a swipe at Obama's teenage years in the process. Things turned south for her after that moment, and badly.
I don't think the problem was anything in particular that Bob Johnson said, however.
I think it was that Hillary Clinton seemed to think the only way she could reach out to black voters was by having a black man speak on her behalf. It didn't help things that she picked a surrogate who was singularly unfit for the task.
Instead of choosing Bob Johnson to speak for her, she could have addressed the controversy on her own, confronting the suspicions about her campaign in her own voice.
This whole episode should put to rest the offensive notion that there are "gatekeepers" to the black vote, and that white politicians can do or say whatever they want as long as they appear with a prominent black person from time to time.
There's no doubt that Hillary Clinton would have been better off speaking from her own mouth -- white though she may be -- instead of relying on a surrogate merely for the color of his skin.
But she didn't, and now the question for her campaign is whether she will be able to regain her voice yet another time.
© Jed Lewison