[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]
It was easy to predict, going in, that the dynamics of race and
politics were going to be a big factor in this year’s election — the
main question was how naked the Republicans would play it.
And now we’re seeing what their plan is: Play it subtle, with a raft
of images that will send off all the necessary messages to the
lizard-brained wingnuts of their base, but nothing overt that can be
readily flagged as racial — and when the Obama camp inevitably responds,
play the wounded party. In other words, turn Obama’s race into a
liability by making him respond to subtle, easily denied racial appeals
so that he seems like he’s making unfair use of "the race card."
McCain’s "Celebrity" ad, and its aftermath, have so far played that
strategy to perfection — Obama has been forced to retreat after
initially calling it out, and his nominal defenders on the left have
taken up defensive positions as well. Meanwhile, the wingnutosphere is
in full roar;
Peter Kirsanow’s post at NRO today, portraying Obama as making absurd overuse of "the race card," is the apotheosis of their emerging meme on race.
A little while back
Jane pointed out
that Republicans have done extensive polling to figure out how to play
the race question, and they have concluded that they could succeed
mainly by making "implicit" appeals instead of explicit ones. What we’re
seeing now is that polling converted to campaign strategy.
No doubt, the end game of this strategy will be to open the
floodgates so that more explicit appeals with similar dog-whistle
content — like Floyd Brown’s ads linking Obama to black criminality —
will gain added cover and be treated as legitimate.
It’s not, as
Bob Herbert has argued,
that the racial dog-whistle components of these ads are self-evident;
they’re far more subtle than that. Neither, on the other hand, are they
as utterly absent from them as
folks like Taylor Marsh would have us think.
Last month in Austin I was on a panel about political rhetoric with Michael Shaw of
BagNewsNotes, who presented the slideshow and talk you see in the video above (Michael has a post about it
here.)
As you can see, he makes a compelling case that a campaign has been
well under way on the right — and becoming entrenched as a result within
the mainstream media discourse — to marginalize Obama through these
subtle appeals.
He explains it thus:
In looking at the fearful or polarized treatment of Obama, it breaks down into three categories:
- Obama as “Other.”
- Obama as racial stereotype
- And third, in descending order: Obama as shadow figure; Obama as man
with a covert, anti-American agenda; Obama as Machiavellian mastermind;
and Obama as closet Muslim and even Islamic Manchurian candidate.
It’s important to understand that these three categories interact and
reinforce each other, often appealing as they do to the same base side
of human nature. It’s the kind of appeal in which the GOP has come to
specialize in since the days of Nixon.
As Shaw explains, one of the major racial personality stereotypes
focuses on "lust, particularly toward white women." Several of the
images, you’ll see, juxtapose Obama with a beautiful white woman in a
way that is slightly startling — just as the "Celebrity" ad did. People
familiar with racist-right appeals (particularly those common on the
white-supremacist right) are all too familiar with the connotation of
these juxtapositions: they are intended to appeal to the lingering white
fear of "miscegenation" and racial mixing generally. That, and not
simply our imaginings, is why so many people thought of the ugly
miscegenation-mongering of the anti-Harold Ford "Fancy" ad.
Shaw also notes that the "uppity" racial stereotype is being trotted
out increasingly as well, both by the right and by the media in general
(see, e.g., Dana Milbank) in regards to Obama, though the favored
version of it, I think, is that he’s "arrogant."
Responding to these kinds of appeals requires care. Calling them out
as overtly racist, as we’ve seen, walks into the political ambush that’s
being laid here. But at the same time, it’s foolish to pretend it isn’t
happening. It’s still possible, in fact, to turn this to Obama’s
advantage.
For now, calling out the dog-whistle components of the Republican
appeal (and the resultant media coverage) isn’t a viable option, because
McCain and Co. have seemingly immunized themselves for the time being.
What’s called for, in fact, is some reverse jujutsu — because, let’s
face it, the GOP strategy involves pushing a delicate line, and the best
response is to find ways to get them to push past it.
It should be possible, while laying low, to invite the Republicans
and their wingnut base to amp up the racial coding on issues where they
are far less prone to being careful — issues such as immigration, where
the nativist component largely holds sway. An aggressive effort by Obama
to talk about immigration almost certainly would bring out the worst in
the conservative movement — and make those "implicit" racial appeals in
the rest of their ads look a lot more explicit in the process.
Regardless of whether the Obama campaign ever figures this out, it’s
incumbent on those interested in seeing him elected to keep up the
pressure and call this nonsense out for what it is. Obama doesn’t have
to say it, but we can, and we will.
