McCain cannot possibly win without being accused of being racist. He knows it and will go out of his way to bait the left to garner the accusations he needs.
Rove acolytes were recently parachuted into camp McCain because the pugs could that his campaign was going nowhere. The tactic they’re adopted is conscious and quite clever:
McCain can only win if the election is about race.
The only way McCain could make it about race unilaterally would be through the crudest sort of overt, sensationalist racism, which would be damaging to McCain.
So McCain needs to goad the Obama side into making the election about race.
The objective is to hit a tone that committed Obama voters hear as racist but that swing-voters do not, causing the left to make the campaign about race in ways that swing voters see as invalid and objectionable.
The objective is not to paint Obama as a scary black man. He is not very plausible in that role and efforts to paint him as such would be met with nothing but laughter.
The objective is to paint Obama as an over-sensitive race-hustler… the sort of guy who calls “racism” every time things don’t go his way. Unlike the cruder racist stereotypes that is a plausible frame. Not accurate, but plausible enough to work with.
“Dog whistle politics” is an excellent phrase. It refers to things that some people hear but others do not. The usual examples are code-word appeals to white racists or very religious folks. But everyone has his or her own whistle.
There are things Duers hear that swing voters do not hear and, to someone who cannot hear it, saying “Don’t you hear that?” sounds crazy. (Whether there really is something to be heard is completely beside the point.)
McCain’s recent efforts are well calibrated to make Obama and the universe of Obama supporters seem race-obsessed and “touchy”, which is a profound turn-off for the specific population voters who will end up deciding this election.
As an example, imagine if, hypothetically, the claim that there’s a subliminal burning cross in a McCain ad actually made it to the evening news. What would the effect be? It would cost Obama 4-5 points among the audience of that newscast.
I know this is counter-intuitive to many and I may lack the ability to clarify the concept, but I will try.
The key population of swing voters in election 2008: Over 30, married suburban and working class whites in the rust belt and border south. Virginia, Indiana, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, etc..
Simplistic ideas about racism offer no insight into how those voters think. Those voters are turned off by overt, ugly racism. They are also turned off by affirmative action. They revere MLK, or at least revere a caricature of him, but they despise Al Sharpton and Pastor Wright. They go out of their way to see Denzel Washington and Will Smith movies, but not Martin Lawrence movies. They live for Motown but have a negative reaction to rap.
They will not vote for David Duke and Pat Buchannan makes them uncomfortable, but many of them voted for Reagan and Bush. They will consider voting for Obama, but not Jesse Jackson.
They are genuinely offended by the idea of a business refusing to hire blacks or rent to blacks, but they prefer to work in largely white offices and live in largely white neighborhoods.
They do not subscribe to crude supremacist notions. They do not think African-Americans are categorically incapable or immoral. Their thinking about race is in terms of communities, not genetic categories.
They are quite conscious of race… overly so. Their interactions with African-Americans are tense. They feel uncomfortable in racially mixed company because they feel they have to be on guard, watching what they say.
They are
prejudiced. (pre-judgement) They do not think all black people are bad, but they are quicker to believe something bad about a black person.
And their nightmare is being called racist. To these voters “racist” is a deep, horrible slur. (One can say that their deep paranoia about being called racist stems to some degree from guilty knowledge of their attitudes. That’s probably right.)
To these voters the word “racist” conjures lynching, burning crosses, Bull Connor, attack dogs, fire hoses… If you tell them it is racist to send their child to one school versus another they hear it as being accused of clandestine Klan membership. (Maybe klandestine should be a word.)
Once you recognize that fear/anger of being called racist is a powerful motivation for these swing voters their voting behavior becomes predictable.
If Americans voted in public Obama would carry those voters. They are eager to not be seen as racist. With a secret ballot they would still consider voting for Obama
unless they perceive that vote as likelier to lead to future accusations of racism. This is why it is counter-productive to tag McCain a racist. In doing so, you are saying to those swing voters, “John McCain supports segregation, the indiscriminate murder of black people, and probably slavery.” That is what the word “racist” means to them.
There is no hope of convincing white swing-voters that McCain is what the word racist means to them. And they take charges of racism deadly seriously. They empathize with anyone facing a bum rap of racism because they fear the same for themselves.
For a charge of racism to stick (among white swing-voters) it has to be over something that is more crudely, unambiguously racist than anything the voter ever says or thinks, and also worse than what the voter’s parents, neighbors and friends say and think.
When the topic is race, it is, as a political matter, bad for Obama. (That’s hardly my personal theory… the Obama campaign is well aware of the fact.) And all charges of racism that don’t stick 100% redound to McCain’s benefit.
Hence the majority of net-roots racism hunting is—however objectively valid—a predictable, induced and necessary element of the McCain campaign’s conscious, specific strategy.
I know that a lot of DUers disagree with this whole line of analysis, believing that exposing McCain’s racism is productive in electoral terms
If the intention is to gin up base enthusiasm, I understand that. Enthusiasm matters in elections. One can argue that viewing the campaign through the lens of race and racism is useful to turn-out, eliciting volunteers and donations, etc.. That’s all plausible.
If, however, anyone believes that exposing McCain’s racism will gain actual net white swing or undecided votes for Obama, that is woefully incorrect.
For the remainder of the campaign McCain will not be brushed back by accusations of racism. He will rush forward to make them central to the campaign narrative.
If you doubt the truth of what I’m saying, recognize that it is a testable hypothesis. Just watch it unfold.
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