Tag: presidential election

Race and the race — again and again

My column on race and the race has elicited a surprising number of responses. As I detailed in a post last week, the anti-Obama crowd has offered an interesting array of reasons for opposing the Illinois Senator — many of them legitimate — but the arguments tend to be marred by what I will call the “they do it, too” excuse.

I received a letter — yes, an actual letter — from a poet and teacher that I know, a political conservative who was disappointed and offended by my Dispatches column.

He identifies some reasons for his dislike and distrust of the Senator, including his ideology, “his cocksure demeanor” and his connections to his supporters. He calls him “an arrogant, narcissistic, professionally undistinguished (i.e, for POTUS), crypto-Marxist demagogue.”

This is harsh stuff that reads right out of the conservative playbook on how to attack Democrats over the years. But what makes it remarkable is his focus on what the black community thinks of McCain (only one in 20 blacks have a favorable opinion, he says), despite his resume — a fact worth discussing, but one used here to race the specter of black racism.

“That is racist; outrageous and racist, both,” he writes. “If only 5 percent of whites said they had a favorable opinion of Obama, not only would I buy your argument: I’d be shocked, embarrassed and angry, too.”

The 5 percent number is accurate, though misleading, implying as it does that 95 percent view McCain unfavorably. The poll, however, actually finds that 57 percent of blacks view him negatively — a decent majority but not damning.

Is it racism? Some of it may be. But it also is likely connected to anger over general Republican policies on race, affirmative action and poverty, the missteps of the McCain campaign and his willingness to pander during the last several years to the worst of the Republican coalition.

Black racism, however, does not address the issues I raise in the column. There remains a segment of the population — a significant segment — that will view Obama through the prism of race, which shades the way his personal attributes are seen.

Charles Blow deconstructed this argument on the op-ed page of Saturday’s issue of The New York Times, saying it is a vestige of the “murky world of modern racism, where most of the open animus has been replaced by a shadowy bias that is difficult to measure.”

If the percentage of white voters who cannot bring themselves to vote for a black candidate were only 15 percent, that would be more than all black voters combined. (Coincidentally, it also would be more than all voters under 24 years old.) That amounts to a racial advantage for John McCain.

And this sentiment stretched across ideological lines. Just as many white independents as Republicans said that most of the people they knew would not vote for a black candidate, and white Democrats were not far behind. Also, remember that during the Democratic primaries, up to 20 percent of white voters in some states said that the race of the candidate was important to them. Few of those people voted for the black guy.

Some might say that turnabout is fair play, citing the fact that 89 percent of blacks say they plan to vote for Obama. That level of support represents a racial advantage for him, too, right? Not necessarily. Blacks overwhelmingly vote Democratic in the general election anyway. According to CNN exit polls John Kerry got 88 percent of the black vote in 2004.

Race is a central element in this year’s campaign, even if we are talking about race in code. Arrogance can be translated as “uppity,” while experience — of which Obama has more than the current occupant of the White House, more than Ronald Reagan and at least as much as Jack Kennedy — allows the discussion to avoid saying what the right wing longs to say but can’t in polite company: Obama should know his place.

So, yes, race will be one of several determining factors this year — a sad fact of life in the United States 54 years after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of schools and 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

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Race and the race — again

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on race and the presidential race that called Barack Obama’s race the “wild card” in this year’s election. Basically, I said, there will be an element of the electorate that views him only through the prism of his skin color and that could — not will, but could — help determine the outcome.

The Princeton Packet picked it up, as well, leading to this letter to the editor:

I read with amusement and dismay the “Dispatches” column by Hank Kalet in Tuesday’s Packet (“Race and the presidential contest”).

His column ascribing racism to the failure of Obama to open up a bigger lead against John McCain might be more convincing were Obama actually an African-American as Mr. Kalet claims. Last time I looked Obama was biracial, just as are Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter, rather popular public personalities. Next time Mr Kalet may want to “Dispatch” a fact-checker before he launches a diatribe against racism and the November election.

John McCain, on the other hand, is old. His date of birth and appearance confirm this. When I ask my daughter’s friends why they won’t vote for him, I invariably am told, “He looks so old.” I await a column in The Packet on ageism in the presidential contest.

In November, when I and millions of others cast our votes for McCain, race will have nothing to do with it. Indeed, all things equal, I feel a bi-racial or multi-racial president would be quite desireable. Obama’s extraordinary inexperience, perceived arrogance and ultra-liberal political record are why I could never consider him as my November choice.

Nelson Obus
Princeton

Hmmm. First, as readers of the column know, I never said should Obama lose it will be because of racist McCain voters. There no doubt are some, possibly plenty, who are racist. But an Obama loss, if it happens, will be attributable to myriad factors, the same way that a McCain loss will be based on numerous questions.

But to ignore race — especially in the wake of the recent dust-up over who has injected it into the campaign — is to American history and American culture.

The Packet on Friday weighed in, reminding us as much:

True, a voter need hardly be a racist to prefer Sen. McCain to Sen. Obama for president. True also, pollsters and journalists are not mind readers. But the durability of racism is no figment of our imaginations, no matter what color the next president turns out to be.

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Curve balls

Josh Marshall makes an interesting point about press coverage of John McCain that, I think, could have implications down the road in this race. The press, he says, has been judging him on a “curve”:

On the campaign trail this cycle, McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused. Any single example is inevitable for someone talking so constantly day in and day out. But the profusion of examples shows a pattern. Some of this is probably a matter of general unseriousness or lack of interest in policy areas like the economy that he doesn’t care much about. But for any other politician who didn’t have the benefit of years of friendship or acquaintance with many of the reporters covering him, this would be a major topic of debate in the campaign. It’s whispered about among reporters. And it’s evidenced in his campaign’s increasing effort to keep him away from the freewheeling conversations with reporters that defined his 2000 candidacy. But it’s verboten as a topic of public discussion.

The other point that again goes almost totally undiscussed is McCain’s two reinventions of himself over the last decade. From a mainline conservative Republican to progressive reform candidate to Bush Republican. The reporters who have been covering him for the last decade know that there is virtually no public policy issue of note which McCain hasn’t made a 180 degree change of position on in the last half dozen years. An ideological shift of that magnitude is far from unprecedented. And such turnabouts or transformations can be a product of searching insights into the changing terrain of American governance. But two such shifts in the course of a decade strongly suggest either instability or opportunism.

Were the press to focus its attention on this with the same energy and resources as its commitment to uncovering the Al Gore “Love Story” lie or John Kerry’s elitism, as evidenced by his windsurfing, then the gap between Barack Obama and McCain would only grow.

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