Sunday, September 28, 2008
Opinion

Obama and the race card

The news media have been shamefully stoking the idea that the only way Barack Obama could possibly lose the presidential election is if American racists have their way...

By Jonah Goldberg

The news media have been shamefully stoking the idea that the only way Barack Obama could possibly lose the presidential election is if American racists have their way. Indeed, the fact that Obama isn't leading in polls by a wide margin "doesn't make sense ... unless it's race," says CNN's Jack Cafferty.

Slate's Jacob Weisberg says Obama is losing among older white voters because of the "color of his skin." Many journalists are so committed to the racism-explains-everything line they are labeling any effective anti-Obama ad as an attempt by John McCain to "viciously exacerbate" America's "race-fueled angst," in the words of one New York magazine writer. For example, a McCain ad noted that Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed former head of Fannie Mae who helped bring about the current Wall Street meltdown, advised the Obama campaign. Time magazine’s Karen Tumulty gasped that because Raines is black, McCain is playing the race card.
Obama's lack of experience, his doctrinaire liberalism, his record, his known associations with Weatherman radical William Ayers and the hate-mongering Rev. Jeremiah Wright: These cannot possibly be legitimate motivations to vote against Obama, in the view of the press. Racism is all there is.

Much of the argument for the centrality of race in this election hinges on the so-called Bradley effect. In 1982, Tom Bradley, Los Angeles' black mayor, was polling well among white voters in the race for California governor. Bradley lost, suggesting that large numbers of whites had lied to pollsters about their intention to vote for him.

I have no doubt that the Bradley effect is real. But the Bradley effect does not reflect racism; it captures voters' fear of appearing racist. Repeating over and over that voting against Obama is racist only makes non-racist people embarrassed to admit that they plan to vote for McCain.
Ironically, a new AP-Yahoo News poll claims that among the independents and Democrats Obama needs to win, specifically among Hillary Clinton's primary voters, racial prejudice is a significant factor. According to the pollsters' statistical modeling, support for Obama may be as much as 6 percentage points lower than it would be if there were no white racism.

I'm skeptical about those findings, as well as the overemphasis on race generally. But to the extent that race is a factor, here's the richest irony of all: Obama's problem is with precisely those voters the Democratic Party claims to fight for, working- and middle-class white folks. Of course, Democrats can't openly complain that their own vital constituency is racist. SP