Grasping at straws as she continues to stay in the contentious Democratic race, Hillary Clinton claimed the following in an interview this week:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on… Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me … There’s a pattern emerging here.”

This followed Democratic strategist / Clinton supporter Paul Begala’s quote during Tuesday night’s coverage of the Indiana primary on CNN:

“We cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans. Okay. That’s the [Michael] Dukakis coalition, which carried 10 states and gave us four years of the first George Bush. President Clinton, you know, reached across and got a whole lot of Republicans and independents to come.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton are the ones dividing the Democratic party, rather than uniting it, by diminishing all that Barack Obama has accomplished.

With their dismissive strategy and divisive remarks such as these, the Clintons are indeed reaching across the aisle. Right to John McCain.

Barack Obama just spent a month being labeled an elitist by Clinton and the mainstream media for his comments about “bitter” Pennsylvanians who “cling” to guns, religion and antipathy towards others.

Not his finest moment.

Yet it’s hard to imagine the firestorm he would ignite if he were to reverse this Clinton argument and said that Democrats couldn’t win with a coalition of working class white people?

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright furor would seem tame by comparison.

Amazingly, and somewhat ironically, Obama stunned the political world and got where he is in this election because he’s not the typical “black” candidate, while the Clintons are the ones embracing stereotypes.

When Bill Clinton wrote off Obama’s win in South Carolina by likening him to Jesse Jackson - unlike other candidates who won the state but not the nomination, like, say, John Edwards! - he effectively marginalized black Americans.

If the Democratic party is to unite and defeat John McCain this November, these politics of division must end. And despite Obama’s “bitter” slip-up, the main culprits in perpetuating this damaging cycle are his formidable rivals.