At the risk of ascribing motivations to Orlando Patterson that he may not actually harbor, I think his much-blogged-about op-ed in today's Times - in which he charges the Clinton campaign with injecting subliminal racist messages into its "red phone" ad - looks like an attempt to write talking points that the Obama camp might employ when it comes time to respond to the barrage of foreign policy attacks their candidate will undoubtedly face from John McCain this fall. I don't think it represents a particularly effective set of talking points: The long-running liberal complaint - sometimes justified, often not - that conservative arguments on crime and welfare were just code for racism didn't win the Democratic Party many victories at the polls, and Patterson's attempt to apply this template to the national security debate feels like awfully weak stuff. But if Obama finds himself on the defensive on foreign policy this fall, I wouldn't be surprised to see his surrogates pick up where Patterson's op-ed leaves off, and try to label certain kinds of security-related attacks as racist, and therefore out-of-bounds.
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Coming Attractions
11 Mar 2008 03:07 pm
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The media has shown no signs that it understands Sen. Obama does not speak for all black people -- eg. Tim Russert on Farrakhan. Obama will continue to be asked to defend or reject statements made by African Americans about his candidacy, and the absolute last thing Obama wants (or needs) is to be talking about his campaign in "racial" terms.
I don't care if Patterson thinks he saw "Birth of a Nation" in the 3am ad. I don't care if people think he has a point. What I care about is the fact that 1) the majority of Americans will disagree -- strongly -- with this view; and 2) black Americans need not to overplay the race card in this campaign.
Even the comparison of an overtly racist movie like "Birth of a Nation" (which virtually no one in America today has seen) with Sen. Clinton's campaign is completely unproductive and hurtful to Obama's message of inclusiveness.
And it gives Clinton the ability to pivot away from statement made by surrogates like Ferraro, which are legitimately and overtly and intentionally offensive.
In all likelihood, Sen. Clinton will continue to fumble the ball in her attempts to divide the electorate along racial lines, she doesn't need intellectuals like Patterson trying to link the 3am ad to the Ku Klux Klan.
Charges of racism, if they are overplayed, will create a backlash among white Americans that could really hurt Obama's chances.
Already we're seeing the signs. One of Clinton's surrogates went on TV a few weeks ago and said that Clinton was having trouble attacking Obama because he is black, and thus she was afraid of being called a racist. That comment was so telling; it is a right wing talking point. It's debated on Fox News. It's one step removed from the claim that white Americans are now "victimized" in our society. And this was coming from Sen. Clinton's campaign!
Intellectuals like Patterson and Michael Dyson, who insist on viewing this campaign through a racial lens, are playing right into the hands of people who want to polarize the electorate along color lines. At present, that person is Hillary Clinton. As the race progress, it will be the GOP and John McCain's surrogates.
SomeCallMeTim
Even the Obama campaign is going there now...
Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, grouped former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro's suggestion that Obama owes some part of his success to the fact that he's black with other gaffes by Clinton backers Robert Johnson and Bill Shaheen, and with Clinton's "own inexplicable unwillingness" to flatly deny that Obama is a Muslim in a "60 Minutes" interview.
"All this is part of an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed," he said.
Axelrod asked "whether she's trying to send a signal to her supporters that anything goes."
As Kissinger remarked, Sometimes paranoids have real enemies.
"All this is part of an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed," he said.
Um, he said this possibly because he's right? It is possible to distinguish between complaints we find credible (e.g., Ferraro, Shaheen, Johnson, Cuomo, off the top of my head) from those we don't find credible (whatever the fuck Patterson is wittering about). How nutty do you have to be to not believe in distinctions?
I'm not sure which is funnier - liberals being shocked! shocked! to realise that the Clintons are capable of dirty tricks, or conservatives' belated discovery that sometimes, election advertising can have a racial sub-text even if no one actually speaks the N-word aloud.
The long-running liberal complaint - sometimes justified, often not - that conservative arguments on crime and welfare were just code for racism didn't win the Democratic Party many victories at the polls
I don't see why anyone should assume that these particular rhetorical strategies are general-election strategies.
These are strategies to win Democrats. Given that Democrats do actually think that conservative arguments on crime and welfare are significantly (not "just", that's a straw man) about stoking racial divisions, it seems that such an argument can be effective in winning Democrats.
Charges of racism - especially when it's questionable, or inferred - just galvanize the borderline-racists that hate "those uppity politically-correct liberals."
I'm a little disappointed in Patterson: he was once a refreshing voice in the affirmative action debate (e.g. pointing out that people on both sides of the debate, claiming that it had gone too far, or not far enough, had no idea what that even meant, because both blacks and whites had wildly distorted ideas of the size of minority populations). But these claims about Hillary's ad are just plain over the top and out there. Comparing it to "Birth of a Nation"? Give me a flippin' break.
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I wouldn't be surprised to see his surrogates pick up where Patterson's op-ed leaves off, and try to label certain kinds of security-related attacks as racist, and therefore out-of-bounds.
I'd be well past surprised, up to and including astonished, if the Obama campaign used that argument. Largely because, as you seem to suggest, it won't work. His campaign has been relatively canny, particularly when measured against the conventional wisdom, about making "will work"/"won't work" decisions about political arguments. At some point you have to give his campaign staff credit: they're pretty good.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 11, 2008 3:34 PM