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WHAT HAPPENED Advisers to Hillary Clinton said that her husband, Bill Clinton, would probably shift into a less combative role in her campaign after his attacks on Barack Obama drew sharp

criticism from powerful Democrats. The latest controversy came after the former president compared Obama’s resounding victory in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, in which slightly more

than half the voters were African-American, to Jesse Jackson’s victories in the state in 1984 and 1988. Hillary Clinton said the comparison was just an off-the-cuff remark. Critics accused

Bill Clinton of suggesting that Obama merely appealed to black voters because he is black. (_The New York Times_, free registration) WHAT THE COMMENTATORS SAID SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape

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delivered directly to your inbox. Democrats must be “shocked” to see the Clintons use their “divisive politics” being used “against one of their own,” said _The Wall Street Journal_ in an

editorial. If a Republican had so blatantly tried to portray Obama—whose explicit campaign theme has been transcending race and uniting the country—as a “Rev. Jackson-style black candidate,”

he would have been denounced as a “racist” trying to whip up support among white voters with a GOP “Southern strategy.” It will be “fascinating to see if Democrats and the press let the

Clintons get away with” playing the race card so shamelessly. Obama’s South Carolina win showed him to be much more than the “black candidate,” said _The Christian Science Monitor_ in an

editorial. He “drew votes across both racial and gender lines,” and nearly beat Clinton among white male voters. More importantly, Obama “stuck to the high ground” by refusing to play the

race card in a bid for plentiful black votes. There's no denying the significance of Obama’s historic victory, said the _Los Angeles Times_ in an editorial. Obama is the “first black

man with a realistic opportunity to be elected president of the union that Lincoln saved.” And “black men and women stood beside whites and a smattering of Latinos” to make him a state’s

Democratic nominee in “the Confederacy’s cradle.” Whether you support Obama or Clinton, that’s “a moment to treasure.” The Clintons are making a “risky gamble” by attacking Obama, said

Robert Novak in the _Chicago Sun-Times_. “They are betting that African Americans will forget the slurs of January and loyally troop to polls in November.” A Clinton pollster has even said

that Hispanic voters wouldn’t vote for a black candidate, attempting to create a “brown firewall” for Clinton’s campaign by “condoning Latino racial hostility toward the first

African-American with a chance to become president.” A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com For anyone who was ever a “fan” of

Bill Clinton, said Richard Stern in a _New Republic_ blog, the spectacle of the last few days has been hard to watch. “The charming, decent, empathetic, learned, hard-working, sincere human

being I once thought so wonderful,” now “black-baits as if an older, meaner Arkansas voice was let loose in him; he distorts Obama’s remarks about Republicans and Reagan as if he were the

liar the impeachment-mad Republicans claimed he was.” He couldn’t do more to “sink Hillary’s candidacy” if he tried.