Forty years ago, the Democratic Party blew up over race. Can it happen again?

In 1968, Richard Nixon and George Wallace invited conservative whites to leave the Democratic Party. They did – in droves.

Today, Democrats seem at risk of fracturing over race again.

It got this bad: Some Democrats seriously suspect that Hillary Clinton and Bill – the so-called first black President – were playing the race card to deal out Obama.

At the same time, there was an outbreak of clumsy-foot-in-mouth disease. Black and white Democrats alike could not seem to avoid racially charged words, rhetoric and metaphors.

This is a heck of a way to observe Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Here is what we don’t want to see in South Carolina: A poll showing that, say, 80 percent of African-Americans are voting for Obama and 80 percent of whites are voting for Clinton or John Edwards.

Obama and Clinton pulled back from the precipice in the last debate. But with South Carolina’s primary a week away and the stakes growing, there could be another blowup. Race is so central – and so sensitive – that it would not take much of a spark.

Can’t we all get along?

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