Remember the good old days when the Clintons were being accused of racializing the campaign? Lots of pundits and bloggers chimed in almost gleefully, with those on the right side of the political spectrum making no secret of their delight to see Hillary and her supporters hoisted by their own petard.

Well, that is now old hat. The debate seems to be shifting now, and I think this week's Bill Cunningham moment may have marked a turning point. John McCain may have put Cunningham in his place, but that only caused Cunningham to promptly join the Coulter-Clinton-Buchanan axis, and probably damaged McCain's chances to win over the red-meat conservatives on the right.

And it certainly did nothing to help McCain with the left. That McCain flirted with Cunningham in the first place is seen as damning proof that bigotry is alive and well in the GOP. The later attempt to create distance was widely seen as insufficient. A blogger I mistakenly called "hard left" in a previous post seems to have articulated the emergent mainstream Democrat position when he accused McCain of playing a racist "who me?" game.

Just today, respected liberal analyst Dick Polman said pretty much the same thing -- and more:

....By depicting Obama in ceremonial Somali garb (a 2006 photo posted on the "Drudge Report"); by running anonymous quotes, supposedly from a "senior Pentagon official," about how Obama's ascension would be "the final victory" for "the Arab street" (news story in the Washington Times); and by writing, more politely, about how Obama's priorities are really "post-nationalist" and "post-American" (the National Review), the goal is to insinuate that a Trojan Horse has breached the castle walls, with plans to lead us to ruin.

(Drudge said the photo came from a Clinton staffer, but this has never been confirmed, and Republican bloggers and operatives have been quite pleased to disseminate it.)

John McCain won't say such things, of course. If Obama wins the nomination, McCain will hew to the high road and merely suggest with great civility that his young rival would be a risky choice in a dangerous world. He will occasionally denounce the low-road travelers, just as he rebuked Cunningham, but he will not be able to muzzle them. It would be truly ironic if McCain, whose first candidacy eight years ago was wrecked by right-wing smears, managed to triumph with their assistance in 2008.

Notice that whether the Clinton campaign leaked the photo doesn't really matter. If the right wing does the heavy lifting for Hillary, that's just fine all the way around. The dirty work gets done, and the people who did the dirty work are blamed and shamed for it.

It's classic Machiavellian strategy. Hillary is free to go out of her way to condemn the right wing smears, and if she has any sense she'll be sure to go into as much detail as possible just in case anyone missed them.

Before this race is over, Cunningham, Coulter, Limbaugh and company will have been respun as McCain's dirty tricksters. Why, the very fact that they're supporting Hillary and urging their followers to vote for her instead of Obama could easily be spun as proof of right wing racism!

(Notice, of course, that far from disavowing their support, Hillary has welcomed it!)

Oh the irony.

And what about John Hagee, the anti-Catholic bigot condemned by Glenn Greenwald's favorite anti-gay bigot? How will he fit in? Will the fact that he endorsed McCain cause his rantings to be spun as the new Republican Party platform?

Stay tuned. Whatever happens, this race promises to be a lot of fun.

(Just to be clear, I remain adamantly opposed to the return of the Clintons to the White House.)