How low can Clintons go?

If the Nevada Democratic caucuses were summarized on a bumper sticker, it would go something like this:

"When the going gets tough, the Clintons get slimy."

Nevada witnessed Sen. Hillary Clinton, who initially held a commanding double-digit lead here, stoop to conquer Sen. Barack Obama by only 5 percentage points. To do it, she played the gender card, she played the race card and she tried to stop people from going to caucus. All in all, a most disgusting display of eye-gouging politics. Let’s review the lowlights, shall we?

Knowing her lead had dwindled to single digits, Hillary used gender to pander for votes. In a robo-dial phone campaign days before the caucus, the recorded voice from her campaign asked: "Isn’t it time we had a woman in the White House?"

In a panic to overcome the surprise Culinary union endorsement of Obama, and in a move contrary to Democratic Party principles, she (via her teachers union surrogate) tried to suppress voter turnout by getting a judge to outlaw special "working" caucus sites inside casinos. She failed. In doing so, she revealed a ruthlessness that surely startled local Democrats. It must have been a moment akin to the horror movie cliché when the trusting villagers glimpse Dracula failing to cast a reflection in the mirror, thus realizing the presence of evil.

The Clintons are evil, politically speaking.

There’s no other way to describe Hillary and Bill going racial on Obama after her Iowa loss. They are sly about it, of course, but racial nonetheless. For example, she used the civil rights struggle to contrast her ability to enact change with Obama’s. She said that despite the "pretty" speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., it took President Lyndon B. Johnson to get the Civil Rights Act passed and signed into law.

In other words: "Blacks have their place … and it’s not the White House."

To their eternal discredit, the Clintons made subsequent statements highlighting Obama’s race, prompting this blunt rebuke from the Rev. Al Sharpton: "Shut up!"

In Nevada, the race-baiting tactic took a new form. The Clinton campaign euphemistically calls it their "fire wall" against Obamamania. But let’s call it by its right name: racism. The Clintons know racial tensions exist between brown and black communities. Tapping into that is one of the ways Team Clinton blunted the Culinary union endorsement. A whisper here and a reminder there about Obama’s race touched just enough of a reaction from rank-and-file Culinary workers (many of whom are Hispanic) to help overcome the union’s endorsement.

And now we are 48 hours away from Super Tuesday. By all accounts the "firewall" politics of the Clintons are in full gear, for she knows that if she can fuel the Hispanic resentment of blacks, she can win the nomination.

In California, 22 percent of eligible voters are Hispanic; in Arizona, it’s 17 percent; Colorado, 12.3 percent; New York, 11.4 percent; and New Jersey, 9.9 percent. It’s enough to win. All that’s needed is voter turnout, and the best way to do that, as they learned in Nevada, is a whisper of hate here and a reminder of hate there.

It could not be simpler, or uglier.

But the worst part is barring a massive breakout of karmic justice, she’ll win Tuesday. She’ll win the nomination. And she very well could be our next president.

If that happens, for at least four years, mirrors will be banned in the White House.

Health care warning

The so-called universal health care plans being floated by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are fraught with danger. If you want to catch a glimpse of what life under a "single payer" system is like, go to http://www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php and watch a short film by Stuart Browning about Canadian health care.

The video will only take about five minutes of your time, but it’s well worth it.

Get well, Jim

My friend and colleague Jim Rogers (who also dinks around as chancellor of the Nevada university system) will undergo surgery next week for bladder cancer. The Frederick family prays for your quick and full recovery, Jim. The sooner you get back in the saddle, the more fun it is debating education issues in Nevada.

Jim should watch the aforementioned short film and be glad this country’s health care system hasn’t copied Canada’s — yet.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com) is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.