Backlash
Posted on August 3rd, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Appealing to the crowd is not a good argument for one position or another, but it is interesting how many more voters (53%) believed Obama’s “dollar bill” remark to be actually racist than found the ridiculous “Celeb” ad to be so (22%). That would suggest that I vastly underestimated the potential backlash against Obama for toying around with these sorts of thinly-veiled accusations of race-baiting, and I am genuinely surprised by how strong the reaction is. I speculated that this sort of thing might not go over well with the general electorate, even as I was pretty sure that the media would eat it up, but I could not have imagined how badly it would be received by the public.
What I find even more remarkable is the idea that anyone could interpret Obama’s comment as being racist. It is now “racist” to hint that others are going to use a candidate’s race against him? Does that make any sense? Do 53% of likely voters really think Obama making an obvious reference to his race (one so obvious that you have to think your audience morons to deny it) is racist? If so, can we officially declare that the word has no more meaning, or at least that for the most part it is trotted out whenever we want to refer to something as Very Bad? Obama’s remark may be many things, but of all the words I can think of to describe it racist is not among them.
What doesn’t surprise me is that the response to the “Celeb” ad breaks down for the most part along racial lines, as a majority of black voters regard the ad to be racist, while less than a fifth of whites and just 14% of “other” take that view. The numbers are to some extent simply flipped concerning Obama’s remark, but even 44% of black respondents said that the comment was racist. What we seem to be seeing in the results to both questions is an intensely negative reaction to McCain’s ad among the groups that give him his greatest support, but an even broader, more negative reaction against the claim that McCain was engaged in race-baiting. Added to this is the confusion, encouraged by the bizarre phrasing of the question about Obama’s statement, between accusing someone of race-baiting and racism.
Obama’s strongest supporters are, as usual, rallying against any slight against their candidate in the most overwrought way possible, while Obama’s blunder of a remark seems to have given a green light for just about everyone who is not favorably disposed towards Obama to pin him with a very damaging label. Having been shielded by a friendly press and overprotective, hypersensitive supporters for most of the year, Obama seems to have become very careless. In making an incendiary charge (his opponents will engage in race-baiting) that was also false (to the extent that he blamed McCain by name for it), he may have done the kind of serious damage to his campaign that all of the other controversies, both real and manufactured, and all of the spurious but widely-circulated claims against him have failed to do.
Filed under: politics
This latest brouhaha seems to indicate that whites are now as touchy about race than blacks.
As Mr. Larison points out, neither Obama’s dollar bill comment nor McCain’s strange video-montage of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Obama are racist unless we drain the word of all meaning.
Since whites outnumber blacks, this is not good for Obama, but it is a low victory for McCain.
In terms of offensiveness McCain’s tactics also take the low trophy. Obama’s comment was off, but it did after all deal with reality (a McCain video a bit back photoshopped Obama’s face on a $100 bill). There is no reality in McCain’s videomontage - it is just a baseless smear.
Hypersensitivity reigns in the commentariat. Whether the voters get excited about this stuff remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, we have a $1/2 trillion deficit, a burst housing bubble, banks in trouble, a tumbling dollar, two mismanaged and difficult wars, and a record of unparalleled fecklessness in the White House and the Congress.
It might be refreshing, or at least educational, if one of the candidates started to talk about this stuff, instead of whose commercial was mean. I’d rather hear about the monetary and fiscal policies of the candidates than who looks like the faces on our fiat money.
I’m probably just old and in the way, as the song goes.
Yes; does the typical American voter knows enough about both candidates to distinguish them beyond party affiliation and appearance?
Daniel,
Simply back-to-front. Let’s ignore the blatant Harold-Fording of the Celeb ad. McCain’s June 27th Seal ad - youtubed here - superimposes Obama’s (darkened) face on Mt. Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and the currency. When Obama said that McCain et al would try and scare voters by emphasising his difference, he was simply pointing out something they’d already done.
McCain is ultimately responsible for the conduct of his campaign; it’s entirely reasonable to hold him personally responsibe for its actions. Quite evidently, that campaign’s strategy is to play the race card, then accuse Obama’s campaign of playing the race card when the inevitable protest follows. Your poll numbers show that white resentment abounds; McCain might just pull it off. That’s no reason to get the chain of causation all wrong, as you do here.
“It is now “racist” to hint that others are going to use a candidate’s race against him? Does that make any sense?”
“They’re going to tell you that I …” isn’t just a way of warning your supporters about potential attacks. It can also be a way of implying things that you don’t want to come out and say. In this case, it’s “I’m not one of those old White guys.”
I don’t know what to make of the comment or whether racism enters into it. But I don’t think you can simply take it at face value. As the first poster said, Whites “are now as touchy about race” as Blacks. In such an enviroment whatever can be construed racially wil be, and wherever race becomes a topic, charges of racism follow.
Have you read the questions for this Rasmussen poll? The key questions on Obama’s statement and McCain’s ad are poorly written and should not be taken as indicative of the overall impression for or against Obama. Rasmussen’s analysis seems to be relying on these poor questions to fit a pre-conceived narrative.
First of all, I don’t find comparisons to the Harold Ford ad persuasive, but there was also a different agenda in the Harold Ford ad than many people seem to think. There was a consistent RNC campaign against Ford in ‘06 to portray him as someone who enjoyed a “fancy,” expensive lifestyle (a line of attack I regularly mocked at the time); the purpose of the ad was to continue to push this line.
Second, the dumb McCain ad where he put Obama’s face on the currency and Statue of Liberty was a direct reference to his silly pseudo-presidential seal. The purpose of that ad was to attack Obama for being presumptuous. Now, I know that there are plenty of people who automatically assume that this line of attack is also race-related in some way, but I just don’t see it in this case.
I should have added another point. Yes, I saw Rasmussen’s questions when I was looking at the crosstabs. As I said above, the question about Obama’s comment was bizarre and encourages the reaction to label the comment as racist, when what many of the people who said yes probably meant was, “I don’t like what he said.” Since there was no way to say that directly, they picked the option that allowed them to show disapproval. So we get this wacky result. All the same, people aren’t automatons and presumably they know what racist means, so the result isn’t meaningless, either. I would still say the result is very bad news for Obama, even though the question was poorly designed.
But Dan…a poorly designed question will produce as you say a “wacky result.” To me the result is inconclusive toward Obama and indicative of the biases of Rasmussen who should know better than to base so-called analysis on skewed questions. I will admit, though, that Obama is likely facing a significant voter segment that will base their decision on race as the deciding factor.
It’s hard to separate the notion that Obama is “unsuited” for the job, that he is “arrogant” and “pretentious”, that “he isn’t like most people” with the notion that he’s a black dude. When McCain photoshops his face onto a dollar bill, isn’t he just reminding people how “pretentious” it would be to have a black man’s face on the currency? I mean, really. This from a guy who voted against making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday. This from a guy who puts out ads calling himself “President McCain”, and others looking back from the year 2012 at McCain’s successful Presidency. Why is this not harped on as pretensious and arrogant? Why is this not “uppity”.
Well, we were not all born yesterday. I think it’s obvious McCain is using Obama’s race to make it possible to ridicule him mercillessly over the mere idea of an Obama Presidency, and to exagerate the notion that Obama is “different” from average Americans, in a way that centimillionare McCain is not. This is you basic coded message. Of course it’s not a direct racist criticism of Obama. That would of course be too crude to be effective. But it’s still an incredibly dubious notion that this is not related to race at all. It’s also completely at odds with the promises McCain made during the primaries to run a respectful campaign that did not sink to personal disparagement of his opponent - because that’s what America wants and deserves. Now that McCain is desperate, and has discovered that these themes actually have emotional resonance with the electorate, it’s all fair game to him. He’s the guy who would sacrifice his good character for the sake of winning an election. Of course, that presumes McCain ever was of good character, something this election campaign is pretty much relegating to the world of media mythologies.
Funny how Obama seems to bring out the worst in his opponents. First Bill and Hillary, now McCain. Taking advantage of race is just one of the character flaws we are seeing in these types. I think you are generally right that an Obama Presidency is going to make the reactionaries even worse. But perhaps this is the kind of purification the country needs.
conradg makes a good point that Obama brought out the worst in HRC and now McCain.
This is because Obama is a very good politician. His opponents have no choice but to go low. It didn’t work for Hillary, but this isn’t a Democratic primary, it might work for McCain. Certainly any day where race is the subject is a good day for McCain.
McCain does not need to make a racist ad (unlike conradg I do not think he did). All McCain needs to do is make an outrageous ad, say with a video-montage of Paris Hilton and Barack Obama. A ridiculous non-sensical smear will be perceived by race-sensitive people on the left as racial code, they will raise a stink, and voila! the conversation is about race. Point to McCain.