Breakthrough
There’s long been some sentiment that if Barack Obama wins the election it will not merely reflect improvements in the race/racism situation in the United States, but also possibly cause further improvements. I’ve always been a bit skeptical of that, but watching the recent controversy over Gwen Ifill’s book, the right-wing’s bizarre effort to blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the financial crisis, and the McCain campaign’s attacks on Obama’s non-existent ties to Frank Raines are making me realize that the reverse is likely to be the case.
For different reasons, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush implemented political strategies that were designed to decrease the salience of racial issues in American politics. To Clinton, it was a way to render the Democratic Party safe for moderate white voters. For Bush, it was both a way of presenting himself as a “different kind” of Republicans and also an effort to broaden the GOP coalition to include more Hispanics. Those two strategies helped create the circumstances under which it’s possible for Obama to win. But an Obama victory would, on its own, transform the circumstances and elevate the salience of racial considerations. The McCain campaign has, thus far, hardly been playing by marquess of queensbury rules but (presumably fearing a media backlash) they’ve largely shied away from the explicitly racial stuff — didn’t have Sarah Palin wonder why Barack Obama thinks his kids deserve special treatment in college admissions that her kids don’t get — but it’s been bubbling up from the grassroots recently. On top of that, I think you’d have to assume that a McCain defeat would lead to the ascendancy of anti-immigrant forces within the GOP and the return of a political strategy that doesn’t really care about reaching out to non-whites which would, in turn, make post-2009 GOP candidates less wary of racialized attacks.
84 Responses to “Breakthrough”
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October 4th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
This is a quite good overview on the racial dynamics at play, but I really don’t understand why panda-loving Matthew isn’t panda-blogging about the adorable vomiting panda.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
We can only hope. That would be the final nail in the GOP coffin.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Not to mention Obama’s inability to simply respond with “that’s racist,” since that turns many white voters off like little else.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I think I agree with MY here generally, but on the other hand I think that if Palin had in fact “wonder[ed] why Barack Obama thinks his kids deserve special treatment in college admissions that her kids don’t get” that would in fact be a reasonable political question related to actual public policy worthy of some public discussion before an election, and quite a different issue from the he’s-not-muslim-as-far-as-I-know themes that Obama’s various opponents have advanced sotto voce.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
We can only hope. That would be the final nail in the GOP coffin.
exactly.
this isn’t the 1960s. overt racism is a lot less fashionable. racism is seen as ignorant, backwards, and ugly. anyone embracing it publicly is piled-upon (heard much from Micheal Richards lately? Imus was given a nice long vacation, etc.). the mere suggestion that a person is being racist is a grave insult (ask Bill Clinton).
i just don’t see a big public appetite for it.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
hard economic times - which are surely looming - have a tendency to bring all kinds of scapegoating out of the closet.
and cleek, you don’t need a “big” public appetite; you just need the marginal voter to have an appetite for it.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Matt - your confusing two arguments. One is whether there will be improvements in the race/racism situation in the US as a whole. The other is how the GOP will behave as a party in opposition. It seems to me that the GOP could say to hell with it, we’re going with crypto-racist appeals, and that the party would become more strident. But the culture at large could witness a steady reduction of racial problems. And the net result would then be that the GOP commits political suicide.
A question I have is whether Obama will have any African-Americans in his cabinet? I’m sure he’ll have a number of women, but I wonder about the representation of other minorities.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I think it would be wonderful news if the Republican Party were seized by an overtly racist/anti-immigrant minority. It would ensure that moderate suburban and urban republicans in states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida would lock down in the Democratic Party.
Additionally, there are a great number of young voters who will vote for Barack Obama, but (by socioeconomic and demographic projection) belong to Republican-leaving segments of society. They too would lock down as lifelong Democrats.
It seems the surest way for the Republicans to ensure a permanent majority status for a generation. Don’t believe me? Karl Rove has been the bulwark against a racist turn because he knows what it will mean to the Republican Party.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I see two reasons for optimism here. First of all, just having Obama in the White House will reassure a lot of nervous folks who are expecting him to be Marion Barry or Kwame Kilpatrick on a national scale. Those people aren’t racist in a hardcore Klansman way, but they judge people by stereotypes until proven otherwise. Obama will be the proof otherwise.
Second, the current dogwhistle racism is subtle because it’s unpopular with most Republicans. I live in Dallas, which is pretty hardcore GOP territory. Most of the good ol’ boys around here are trying to be race-neutral. They don’t oppose affirmative action because they’re trying to keep the black man down, they believe all that color-blind society stuff. As the racial attacks ramp up, the Republicans start losing suburbia.
Grand New Party, anyone?
October 4th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
This is also a grim thought, but I wonder if the GOP’s philo-Semitism has peaked, and whether with the coming of economic bad times and the unquestionable role that ‘wealthy bankers’ have played in causing it, an ancient prejudice will again rear its head. I could see the Ron Paul wing of the party going down that path.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
As lampwick notes, this post seems to confuse two different matters — the near-term electoral strategy of Republicans, and actual racial attitudes in America.
I’m hardly expecting full racial reconciliation the moment Obama is sworn in, but I do think that an Obama presidency will have some salutary effect on racial attitudes. Insofar as the softer forms of racism stem from simple ignorance (call it “grandmother racism”), it’s hard to imagine Obama’s example won’t challenge some unspoken assumptions. This may be a subtle effect, but I think it will be real.
Will hard-core racists and political opportunists demagogue the hell out of the situation? Sure. But, you know, whatevs. An Obama presidency won’t magically clear the country of assholes.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
One problem in your analysis is that, given demographic trends, it will get harder and harder for whites only candidates to win. Ultimately, any electorally viable political party is going to have to find non-white constituencies.
That said, I’m not sure how race-based affirmative action can last when you have a black man becoming president. That single fact suggests that some sort of competitive parity has been reached between the races. Means-based affirmative action I suspect is another story.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I don’t buy it, Matt. I agree with lampwick. The Republicans will try to foster more racial hatred, division, etc. But just having a black man in the White House, and the country not collapsing, will have a demonstration effect. A whole generation will see that it doesn’t matter, and this will leak into other areas of life.
In other words, the general tone of many of these posts is that the GOP will try to foster racial division, *and will fail*, because people will see for themselves what Obama accomplishes.
Of course, if he’s not much of a president–which Democrats can’t bring themselves to believe as a possibility, but which is always a possibility for anyone in the Oval Office–then maybe it will set race relations back. Even then, I doubt it.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Perhaps Sarah Palin’s handlers are aware that Obama does NOT support racial preferences for his own children, but has rather suggested that class be the basis for any college admissions preferences.
I do think that if the GOP gets too overtly racial it would push Colin Powell to publicly support Obama. And it would alienate suburban whites who don’t want to be associated with paleo racism.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
lampwick and Hank Porter are right. The most plausible scenario at this point is probably not simple polarization, but a kind of meta-polarization, with a more firmly entrenched divide between those who exploit racially polarizing strategies and those who disdain those strategies. While MY identifies some trends we’ll almost certainly see from some Republican operatives in upcoming years, a minimally competent Obama administration will undercut the effectiveness of those strategies among significant voting blocs–suburban independents, young voters, possibly even white blue-collar folks. What will be particularly interesting to see is if some of the latter groups actually get better at *recognizing* those strategies, even in subtler forms.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
On immigration: the non-election years provide a very, very brief window to get some serious legislation done to drag the bureaucracy out of the 1950s. That’s going to be hard when there’s other big legislation — healthcare, further economic triage, energy etc. — but if it doesn’t happen in 2009, it won’t be done in 2010.
(One other thing to consider: the number of American flags that will be waved, rather than burned, in foreign countries.)
October 4th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
There is nothing covert about racism and anti-immigration sentiment in the current GOP and so I don’t see the need for all these predictions about the turn of the Republicans after the potential Obama win.
Repubs will go on with their merry ways, with Mark Steyn and Jonah Lucianne and their boys at the Corner.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
“For Bush, it was both a way of presenting himself as a “different kind” of Republicans and also an effort to broaden the GOP coalition to include more Hispanics.”
You know, I’m really not one to defend Bush, but I have to here. I really believe that Bush really wants to decrease racism because he personally believes it should end. Bush will play plenty of issues in a very cynical way. But I really think he actually cares about this issue. He’s chock full of flaws, but racism is certainly not one of them. He deserves credit for that. As much as it pains me to defend Bush, I will give credit where it’s due.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Like others here, I think an overtly racist GOP would doom itself to permanent status as the minority party. Demographic considerations are part of this. Obama’s competence and grace will tend to undermine the latent negatives that drive some of the racism in our country. And I think the first family would tend to have a positive effect. The girls are very appealing.
But I’ve always thought that the main positive effect would be in the black community. To kids trying to figure out what’s possible for them, it just has to make a difference to see a man of color in that office.
Not a panacea. But more positive than negative, I would think. Unless the administration is a spectacular failure. That would be a big set-back.
A shift to means-tested affirmative action would be a good thing. Obama has flirted with the idea. But that would do a lot to lower the toxicity in this country on race issues. And I think it would be salutary in general. Affirmative action is a double-edged sword for its beneficiaries. On the one hand it probably has opened doors that otherwise would be closed. On the other hand, it means that accomplished people of color (and women) labor under the perception that they didn’t work their way to their positions. That’s what Ferarro gave voice to. And it’s out there. And it’s damaging. At some point the damage from that outweighs the good.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
The Republican Party is going to become irrelevant to politics whether the Republicans pander to minorities or play the anit-minority card.
The real question is how will race and ethnicity play in the Democratic Party once the Democratic Party is the only relevant political party.
Currently White Progressives and black Democrats can happily co-exist because they have a common enemy in the Democratic Party. When that enemy is gone, who will the anti-immigrant sentiments of blacks be reconcile with the open borders, unlimited immigrant attitude of the white elites in the Democratic Party. How will white progressives reconciel their hatred of religion with blacks and Hispanics overt religious nature?
How will white progressives reconcile their own personal choices of private school and exclusive white neighborhoods reconcile itself with the demand for race based social engineering from blacks and Hispanics? (Think Seattle busing case)
October 4th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Bigotry and colonial attitudes against arabs and muslims seem to be going strong in both GOP and the Democrats, not to forget, and it’s at least as interesting to think whether Obama will bring any change there.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Your reading of an Obama presidency rekindling racism may apply to the Deep South and blue-collar areas of Northern states in decline (MI, OH, PA), but the blowback from growing states with rising Latino and multiracial populations (AZ, CO, NV, VA, NC, FL, TX) would be fierce. Racial polarization is the politics of a party planning to spend the indefinite future as a hunkered-down minority.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I have to be skeptical. Coinciding with Clinton’s election was a powerful rise of the militia movement and a rise in violent and borderline-violent anti-government activism. It is hard for me to imagine that Obama’s election would not breathe new life into these groups.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
It depends a lot on what Obama does once elected; if he appoints Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to major cabinet positions, look out! I would expect Obama to not do it that way. Certainly, some whites will have a bit of paranoia to get over. It’s also true that a lot of Republicans who are not racist are nonetheless quite willing to play the race card to gain an advantage in the election, such as the Gwen Ifill book controversy, Pastor Wright, CRA….
October 4th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I think you are missing the dynamic that has taken place in American society…the amount of inter-ethnic marriage is amazingly high.
As a result, people are likely to have more religious and ethnic diversity in their immediate family. For instance, Jeb Bush is married to a woman of Mexican heritage. In addition, it is important to remember that Obama is actually bi-racial, it’s only in America that he is consistently identified as being black only; yet, the fact that he’s is bi-racial actually makes him safer and even more appealing to the under 40 crowd.
As a result of the PERSONAL relationships, it is harder and harder to explicitly attack race questions without immediately losing a lot of support. Also, by explicitly attacking Obama on race, Team O can turn around as say you are attacking the diversity of American — it’s greatest strength.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Electing Obama will be like landing a man on the moon. Since 1969, whenever we want to express frustration or challenge ourselves we say, “How come we can put a man on the moon but we can’t (make drive-thru speakers intelligible, whatever)?” After Obama is elected (knock on wood), white people will say, “How come that black guy was good enough to be president, but this one can’t even (mow his lawn, whatever)?”
It will still be racist, but it will be a racism of aspiration, rather than desperation, as we often encounter now (”He’s just another black guy, as incapable as the rest at doing (whatever)?”)
Baby steps.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
There will be more racist attacks but they will be less effective. That’s still progress. Future demographic changes are going to render turn the GOP into a perennial losing party, the rump of the body politic, not it’s heart and lungs and brain.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Well, my own guess is that Obama will end up being a totally disastrous president, with important ramifications for the Democratic Party, race relations, and the political landscape in general.
Still—unlike the super-crazies around McCain—he probably won’t start WWIII, which is why I’m so extremely glad that the Financial Meltdown finally arrived just in the nick of time to salvage his tanking campaign…
October 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Yesterday, an old friend of mine from back East who I don’t think has ever voted for anyone but a Republican (but will now vote for Obama) told me that a lot of the people he knows (white upper-middle class suburbanites) will still vote for McCain-Palin primarily because of their fear that “Obama will give all the money away to the jigaboos.” This includes his wife, an Academy Award-nominated film producer. Logic does not work with these people. Are they on the wane? One would think so and hope so. But, only an Obama-Biden victory will do the trick, and even then…
October 4th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I hope it will move the discussion, and the sentiments, from race to class. It’s about time poor Caucasians realized they are just as much taken advantage of by the wealthy and their trickle down philosophies as African American or Hispanic Americans are.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Never underestimate the pervasiveness of American racism. Many white Americans have been acculturated by the reassuring images of Bill Cosby, Will Smith, Colin Powell and the like to the point where they would choose Obama over the trainwreck that McCain has become. However, the sight of a black family in the White House, surrounded by all those black relatives and friends, and millions of black people celebrating with tears of joy and terrorist fist bumps, is going to spark an outpouring of vocal resentment from many whites who have not been vocal to this point, spurred by those who have, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. In the eyes of many Americans, if Obama is Jimmy Carter, the entire black community is a rapping, thuggish version of his brother Billy.
This racist groundswell could align perfectly with a hurricane of unfocused resentment and scapegoat-chasing when President Obama and the Democrats face economic choices that spell political suicide. As the bottom drops out of the American Dream, we could easily revert to a Palinesque rednecks-with-nukes government in 2012.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
i don’t understand matt’s logic here at all. isn’t it a more likely scenario that following a mccain defeat republicans would be compelled to reassess their heretofore inability to reach out to minority voters in any meaningful way, especially given that as their party becomes increasingly whiter the country, as a whole, is becoming increasingly less so? otherwise, republicans will be a relic of a bygone era.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
The consequences of an Obama victory for racial issues go well beyond Republican strategy. Specifically, the Obama candidacy has resulted in a significant amount of “latent” racism becoming “manifest.” To give one example that’s very painful for me, my mother in upstate New York started being explicit about her racism as soon as Obama won the Iowa caucuses and began talking about “blacks taking over everything,” etc. I now live in Eastern Kentucky and students here tell me there’s a fair amount of chatter about assassinating Obama if he wins.
The question for the Republicans is not whether they need to appeal to voters like my mom. She’d never vote for Obama for election or re-election. The question is whether they can still make covert anti-black appeals to moderates while drawing support from overt racists. My own opinion is that the Republicans can still so (they’ve put out a number of covert and effective racist messages over the campaign), but that the margin for error keeps shrinking.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
It seems to me that the GOP could say to hell with it, we’re going with crypto-racist appeals, and that the party would become more strident.
Look for this to manifest itself in the faux populism of the Right’s newest & favoritest culture warrior, Sarah Palin. Republicans’ latest version of the politics of resentment could be effectively neutered by a savvy recalibration of affirmative action so that it benefits anyone economically disadvantaged, rather than just racial & ethnic minorities. I wouldn’t be all surprised if Obama did just that.
Nevertheless, I fully expect the small-town shtick begun by Palin & her ilk to morph into an attack on the “darker” aspects of urbanism — mostly, this’ll be done through associations of violent crime with big cities, but look for a renewed emphasis on urban centers as hotbeds of permissiveness, too. This aw-shucks small-town bullshit is your new dog whistle.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Sorry, all. My attempt to respond to lampwick should’ve looked like this:
It seems to me that the GOP could say to hell with it, we’re going with crypto-racist appeals, and that the party would become more strident.
Look for this to manifest itself in the faux populism of the Right’s newest & favoritest culture warrior, Sarah Palin. Republicans’ latest version of the politics of resentment could be effectively neutered by a savvy recalibration of affirmative action so that it benefits anyone economically disadvantaged, rather than just racial & ethnic minorities. I wouldn’t be all surprised if Obama did just that.
Nevertheless, I fully expect the small-town shtick begun by Palin & her ilk to morph into an attack on the “darker” aspects of urbanism — mostly, this’ll be done through associations of violent crime with big cities, but look for a renewed emphasis on urban centers as hotbeds of permissiveness, too. This aw-shucks small-town bullshit is your new dog whistle.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
The outcome of an interaction between two people is largely set by the expectations (both conscious and unconscious) of each other that they bring to it, and through which they shape and determine both what happens, and what they “learn” from it. If Obama’s election alters the beliefs that black people hold about white people–like the many black people who said they assumed that white people would never elect a black man–then they may approach white people differently, and end up getting a different response. Conversely, Obama’s behavior in office will confound all sorts of racist expectations, and some of the people who held them will have their beliefs changed some, and will generalize those changed beliefs to other black people. Of course, there will be those on both sides whose minds won’t change, and those whose racist attitudes will harden; but I believe, maybe naively, that on balance the outcome is going to be good for us.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Oh, I give up.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
“On top of that, I think you’d have to assume that a McCain defeat would lead to the ascendancy of anti-immigrant forces within the GOP and the return of a political strategy that doesn’t really care about reaching out to non-whites which would, in turn, make post-2009 GOP candidates less wary of racialized attacks.”
I don’t think so.
Their immediate response will probably be to try it, of course, but I think if they do, they’ll lose Texas. Without Texas, the Republicans can’t win the White House. Once they realize that, that will be it for the Tancredos.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Yes, just as the election of JFK increased the vitriol towards Catholics.
You’re smarter than this Matt. It all comes down to whether Obama is successful or not. If he flubs things up Jimmy Carter style (although I like Carter), then perhaps it would confirm racist sentiments in the minds of some. But if he enacts good programs and ends the Iraq war and leads us through tough times, only a diminishing core of the far right will still be peddling that crap. Attempts by the GOP to further polarize the public along racial lines will lead to their downfall. Look at the Republican party in CA after the 1994 race, where Latinos were demonized. Now imagine that nationwide. This isn’t 1968 anymore.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Sorry it didn’t work out, junebug.
The problem with the racial backlash thing is that I can’t see any figures of national prominence tapping into it. The new generation of evangelicals tend to be as tolerant as their socialist hipster peers. I don’t like Palin as VP, but I doubt she has a racist bone in her body. Huckabee, the same. Romney, the same. Petraeus, presumably the same. I think Macaca Allen is done. The only place where you’re going to see racism is in the quasi-secular libertarian good-ole-boy types, and they don’t have ‘one of their own’ on the scene at the moment, save I suppose for Todd Palin.
As someone noted above, W deserves credit for one thing, and that’s purging his party of most of the casual racists, sending them off into the wilderness or the think tanks.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
RKU
I don’t know if Obama’s campaign was tanking, since all McCain experienced was a bounce. A test on whether or not a bounce is permanent is its ability to withstand some external event. McCain’s bounce could not withstand the financial meltdown. Moreover, his initial response didn’t help the situation. This makes sense because even during when he was experiencing a bounce, McCain lead only in the South
Obama lead everywhere else. In other words, McCain’s bounce was mile wide and an inch deep.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Optimism, I think, comes from Obama’s ability to use a different language for talking about race — inserting the civil rights struggle into the narrative of U.S. history and progress and not the narrative of zero-sum ethnic conflict. He’s also shown that you can face down bullies.
I expect you would get a range of reactions to an Obama administration. Some of the people who are silly enough to expect Sharpton and Jackson cabinet appointments will be reassured by all the shining white faces that will feature in an Obama administration. But anyone who wants to nurture a sense of grievance will find a way — remember the lurid conspiracy theories surrounding the Clintons.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised that immigrant-bashing has not been prominent this year. McCain deserves credit for not pandering to nativists.
October 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I think Palin is already positioning hwerself to run as a Buchanan-type Republican 2012.
October 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
but it’s been bubbling up from the grassroots recently
If by “grassroots” you mean “Republican strategists, heirs to Lee Atwater and Karl Rove” then yes, you are correct. Otherwise, don’t be so naive.
October 4th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
This makes sense because even during when he was experiencing a bounce, McCain lead only in the South
Obama lead everywhere else. In other words, McCain’s bounce was mile wide and an inch deep.
McCain also led (and still leads) in the Great Plains states and much of the Mountain West, plus that usual Great Lakes oddball out, Indiana (though Obama has almost pulled even there).
Re: I think Palin is already positioning herself to run as a Buchanan-type Republican 2012.
Unless McCain-Palin somehow do manage to win this year, Sarah Palin will be widely regarded as one of the causes of their defeat- already some conservatives are doubting the wisdom of her nomination. The GOP in 2012 will be no more interested in her as a candidate than it was in Dan Quayle in 1996.
October 4th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I haven’t read the comments yet, but have to get this in: I’m a French teacher in a small Pennsylvania town. One of the shop teachers, who I’m good friends with said, “So, who are you voting for?” I smiled and said “Obama”. He said, “Aw, come on, you’re not gonna vote for that nigger are you?” I said, “yes!” He just said “I thought you were one of us.” I said, “I guess I’m not.” The whole exchange just made me sad, then the more I thought about it, angry. What the hell did he mean by “one of us” ?! I don’t know how I’m even going to look at him now.
October 4th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
“The GOP in 2012 will be no more interested in her as a candidate than it was in Dan Quayle in 1996.”
Sarah Palin is 10 times, no make that 100 times, the politician that Dan Quayle was. Also, she somehow got wired into the GOP establishment from the get-go. As mayor of a town of 7,000 she was able to snag a high-powered Washington lobbyist. How often does that ever happen?
If McCain loses, the GOP will blame strictly him. That was the deal from the beginning. They’ll say he lost because he wasn’t a real Republican. Palin is already separating herself from him by wanting to continue to campaign in Michigan while McCain wants to shut it down.
And the Republicans love Palin (literally in Rich Lowry’s case). When Kathleen Parker criticized her, Parker got hate mail like she’d never seen before.
You underextimate Palin at your own risk.
October 4th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
“She was able to snag a high-powered Washington lobbyist”.
Unless I’ve been reading “The Economist” too much, the only requirement for snagging a lobbyist is paying them. In Palin’s case, taxpayer money.
Unless you were typing “shag” and the “h” in your typewriter is worn out badly (in that case, a hint: you can save ink and extend your keyboard’s life if you avoid writing Sen. Obama’s middle initial)
October 4th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Matt writes:
“For Bush, it was both a way of presenting himself as a “different kind” of Republicans and also an effort to broaden the GOP coalition to include more Hispanics. Those two strategies helped create the circumstances under which it’s possible for Obama to win.”
The subtext joke here is that Matt is hazily but wittily referring, as he so often does, to a recent article of mine on how Bush’s strategy to turn Hispanic into home-owning Republicans by pushing zero down payment mortgages has helped caused the economic collapse that ought to make Obama’s election inevitable.
October 4th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Here’s a bit of President Bush in 2002 helping pave the way for the election of Obama in 2008 via Hispandering:
President George W. Bush addresses the White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership at The George Washington University Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002
“More and more people own their homes in America today. Two-thirds of all Americans own their homes, yet we have a problem here in America because few than half of the Hispanics and half the African Americans own the home. That’s a homeownership gap. It’s a — it’s a gap that we’ve got to work together to close for the good of our country, for the sake of a more hopeful future.
“We’ve got to work to knock down the barriers that have created a homeownership gap.
“I set an ambitious goal. It’s one that I believe we can achieve. It’s a clear goal, that by the end of this decade we’ll increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families. (Applause.) … And it’s going to require a strong commitment from those of you involved in the housing industry. …
“To open up the doors of homeownership there are some barriers, and I want to talk about four that need to be overcome. First, down payments. A lot of folks can’t make a down payment. They may be qualified. They may desire to buy a home, but they don’t have the money to make a down payment. I think if you were to talk to a lot of families that are desirous to have a home, they would tell you that the down payment is the hurdle that they can’t cross. And one way to address that is to have the federal government participate
October 4th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Another vote for lampwick’s post earlier — Matt, I think you’re overly focussed on short-term GOP tactics and on the inevitable cultural backlash against any long-term change. Focus on the change.
As Al Giordano noted, Obama has already formed the first large multi-racial coalition in this country in decades. That’s progress.
For the long term, how much Obama can change racial relations in this country will depend entirely on how he does in office. If he becomes a good or a great president (and he’ll be dancing backward in high heels to achieve that status), then he will positively influence others’ perceptions of African Americans forever. If he becomes another W then he’ll be the punch line of a million racist jokes, and it won’t matter that W came before him.
I honestly think he’ll make at least the “good” category, and maybe the “great”.
October 4th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I think racism and nativism have been subsumed into something that Roger Cohen recently called “angry exceptionalism.” Cohen believes that angry exceptionalism is the clue to Sarah Palin’s appeal among a certain section of the American population. The Republican party has long exploited this sentiment, and will do so even more particularly if McCain is defeated.
October 4th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I think this election has a weird reversal of stereotypes. Since the black guy has the superior intellect and educational bona fides (Ivy League, Harvard Law et al), the conservatives are simply denigrating achievement. Sarah Palin is the personification of white privilege. If an African American woman talked this way, she’d never get elected, and would be accused of only getting as far as she had because of affirmative action. We have an African-American “cross-over” Mayor here in Philly. Like Obama, he is Ivy league educated and a policy wonk. People voted him in over white party hacks and an African American lightweight. It seems to me there is “Black politician” = inner city, heavy accent, fiery cultural stereotype and a new emerging one: Technocrat who is polished, urban, sophisticated, Ivy, and happens to be black. I think that is the topic of Gwenn Iffel’s new book. Corey Booker NJ, Obama, Michael Nutter here in PA.
October 4th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Here’s a bit of President Bush in 2002 helping pave the way for the election of Obama in 2008 via Hispandering:
In Popeye-land, it was blacks and Hispanics buying up all those exurban McMansions in Orange County.
October 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Progress always generates pushback from reactionaries. To me, this (the original blog entry) seems to be saying that we had progress so long as we made it so people didn’t have to think about race, and the blacks were nice and stayed out of the spotlight. But that’s not real progress. Real progress is what’s happening now, a black man being elected President of the United States. The inevitable pushback doesn’t mean we’re moving backwards, it just means that this is a fight. A small group will become increasingly nasty, but a much larger group is learning to become comfortable with our most powerful figure being a black man. Spreading that comfort and familiarity decreases the fear of the other, and is the greatest weapon of progress against race.
October 4th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Re Walter Crockett
However, the sight of a black family in the White House, surrounded by all those black relatives
How about all Senator Obamas’ white relatives from his mothers’ side of the family?
October 4th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
It is totally ridiculous of you to lump CRA opposition together with those other policies.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Racism is one aspect of a toxic brew that will develop if Obama wins. Even if Obama cleans McCain’s clock, beating him by many millions of votes and fifty or more electoral votes, there will develop a right wing meme that somehow the election was stolen and that Obama is not a legitimate winner. These will be the same people who cried foul in 2000 when Gore did not immediately concede to Bush and have spent the last 8 years telling the rest of us to get over it. There will be a vocal minority in the GOP Caucus in Congress that will do everything and anything to undermine an Obama Presidency and if there is another national emergency on the level of 9/11, far from closing ranks behind their country’s President, the way all Democrats did in September of 2001, and well into 2002, they will scream foul if their patriotism is questioned in any way.
But all that would happen no matter what Democrat gets elected…it is the way that some Republicans, those who came through the College Republicans Farm Team system, play the game. Now, add in the fact that Obama is a man of color and the 40+ years of racial politics that the Republican party has practiced and I think things are gonna get nasty out there. Real nasty.
There hasn’t been anything particularly overt to date, but we’re heading into the home stretch and I imagine the heat will be turned up under the pot. Loss of the WH is going to be a stunning blow to some of those people and they will not take it well.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Correction:
far from closing ranks behind their country’s President, the way all Democrats did in September of 2001, and well into 2002, they will call for impeachment and scream foul if their patriotism is questioned in any way.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
make post-2009 GOP candidates less wary of racialized attacks.
Bring it on.
Yes, the Repugs post-2000 have followed a strategy to designed to decrease the salience of racial issues in American politics.”
They didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts — they did it because they realized that the changing demographics of the US makes Atwater- and Gingrich-style race baiting a doomed strategy.
When a party as addicted to white racial resentment as the GOP is finally decides they’ve got to dial it back a little, you can bet their pollsters are frantically telling them that that road is a bridge to nowhere.
So, fine: let the latter-day George Wallaces take control of the Party of Lincoln all over again. Let them run ugly primary campaigns in 2010 and 2012 where each white Republican falls over himself trying to “out-Nigger” the others.
They’ll do to themselves what the Democrats should have been able to do to them long ago: reduce the Republicans to a rump party of Confederates and Nazi sympathizers, clearing the way for a mainstream conservative party take their place.
October 4th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Well shucks, I was all set to vote for Mr. Obama, but then Mr. Yglesias told me that it would be terrible for race relations if I did. Oh well, guess I’ll vote for for the old white guy with the short fuse, because that will really bring all the ethnicities together in one big happy group hug.
October 4th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I think this is really confused, Matt. If Obama becomes President, we will be treated to 4-8 years of seeing a black man in the ultimate position of authority in the country, and indeed, in the world. Never again will people look at a black candidate for any office and say, that person cannot possibly win.
During the Civil War, when the U.S. identified itself with the black cause, racial outlooks became much more tolerant; that’s one of the things which enabled Reconstruction. By the same token, if we take the racially idealistic step of elevating a black man to the most powerful office in the land, the country will become more racially idealist.
I think this campaign has already shown fairly clearly what happens to candidates who try to use race against Obama. You think McCain wasn’t watching the Clinton campaign?
October 4th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
“watching the recent controversy over Gwen Ifill’s book, the right-wing’s bizarre effort to blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the financial crisis, and the McCain campaign’s attacks on Obama’s non-existent ties to Frank Raines are making me realize that the reverse is likely to be the case.”
Yes, there still is racism, but no these things do not prove that some kind of strong reaction is afoot. The fact is that these tactics are not working; Obama is winning. The GOP gone completely dog-whistle, fearing anything that smacks of overt racism, even though they’ve already lost 95% of blacks in this election whatever they do. This is where we’re at–the GOP knows that racist or race-baiting attacks are political losers *among white voters*.
As impressed as I am with Obama, his supporters should also realize what is going on. A black man with relatively little experience in government may be running away with the election. The point is that Obama has not had to be a cut above his competitors in every way, as so many African-Americans have had to be, just to be allowed on the same stage.
Another huge step, which can never be taken back, is that many African-Americans will be genuinely impressed that a black man won the presidency. I know many of them will not believe it until it happens. White people, either because they’re used to black people doing great things, or because like Geraldine Ferraro they think blacks get all the breaks, won’t be as surprised. But on the African-American side alone there will be more optimism and hope about America.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
McCain campaign has, thus far, hardly been playing by marquess of queensbury rules
In other words, they’ve been acting like nasty old Victorian homophobes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Douglas,_9th_Marquess_of_Queensberry
October 4th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Going to disagree with your “realization” here.
Seeing Obama as president, competent and even-tempered, day in and day out, will affect people’s attitudes on race. And people’s attitudes are the most important thing to improve on the racism issue. Good laws are dandy, but if we can get to where those laws don’t need to be appealed to as often, that’s even better.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Actually, Todd Palin’s is 1/8 Alaskan, That means the Palin kids WOULD count under the 1/16 rule that qualifies in this country.
So in effect, they would get the same preferential treatment as the Obama girls.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Re SLC
How about all Senator Obamas’ white relatives from his mothers’ side of the family?
Good point. That will make a difference. Some Deep South whites might not like the evidence of miscegenation. But that group has been lost to the Democratic party since Kennedy.
And even if there were no racial animus, south and north, President Obama would face the biggest challenge since Roosevelt - an equal challenge. Today our human foes are weaker, but the fate of humanity is at stake. The Earth warms, and we’re too busy fighting humans to pay attention.
When President Obama is forced to raise taxes to solve problems, he’ll face the full wrath of Ronald Reagan’s ideological spawn, echoed by a big swath of the rest of the public. All that is corrupt on the right will combine with all that is fundamentalist, exclusionist or just plain greedy to fire the country’s resentment, anger and fear.
The challenges will start the minute Obama takes office. There will be no respite. The economy is getting worse for all. Americans aren’t used to what they’ll get if things really go south.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:17 am
I think it’s important to point out that the Ifill and Raines examples are extremely poor evidence that racially coded attacks will increase under an Obama administration. Frankly MY is just being alarmist because he feels like it. Basically come back when you find better evidence, cause this ain’t it.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:06 am
A quick question for MY and people who count numbers obsessively:
If the election were held today, would the 2009 House and Senate GOP contingents be more or less conservative than the current GOP contingents?
I ask because it was widely observed that the devastating electoral defeat the GOP suffered in 2006 resulted in a far more conservative GOP congressional delegation than before.
(This was because GOP moderates were defeated because they were in blue or purple states; while GOP conservatives were re-elected. So the question is, has that dynamic played out?)
It seems plausible that whether the GOP becomes more nativist / anti-intellectual / racist / whatever will depend a lot on those who are left to be the public faces of the GOP.
Remember that even a sane relatively moderate technocrat like Romney became a crazed blood-drinker in the GOP primary. Presumably he decided on that transformation because he thought he had to be a raving lunatic to have a chance at the nomination.
And there’s plenty of evidence that the base really does love Palin.
There’s a market for racism and know-nothing-ism in this country. Just guessing like everyone else, but it seems to me that the key factor is who is left standing to lead the GOP after Nov. 4th. That’s Palin and Huck and NRO and The Weakly Standard. Where are the moderate GOP reformers? Where is their constituency?
Which is to say that my money (pun intended) says that MY is right.
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