As electoral race nears, media dissects race as a voting issue

After appearing on Brendan McLaughlin's political show Flashpoint a few weeks ago to talk about race and the presidential election, I decided to whip up a column based on some of the ideas I floated there.

That column is running Sunday in our perspective section, but I'm offering a preview hre, because it seem a lot of news outlets are talking a lot about how race is going to affect the presidential election.

First, the buzz was worrisome, wondering if race wasn't the reason why Barack Obama wasn't blowing away his Republican opponent in an election year where the bad news keeps piling up for the GOP and John McCain keeps stumbling over himself in his campaign.

Now some pollsters are saying racists may not like Obama, but they care more about other issues. Or that people are voting for Obama because they like the idea of voting for a black man (I'm particularly tickled by people who criticize Obama oters on this point, but then insist they aren ot opposing Obama simply because he's black. Can you have that issue both ways?)

Since nobody really seems to know what they're talking about, here's my particularly uninformed theories on why race may not be such a big issue for Obama atfer all.

The Do the Right Thing effect - I named this for the moment in Spike Lee's legendary film where he confronts a racist pizzeria operator with the observation that the guy makes awful comments about black people but loves Prince, Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson. To see it, click here.

"It's different," John Turturro's Pino Frangione insists. "Magic, Eddie, Prince are not niggers...They're not really black. They're black but they're not really black. They're more than black. To me, it's different."

And that's a dynamic no one can measure. It's been my experience as the occasional object of racism that there are some folks who don't like the collectino of stereotypes they think represent the average black person, but feel differently about specific black people they feel they know, especially celebrities.

It's something people of color face every day: you're a symbol to the world until you get famous enough that you're not.

The Reverse Bradley Effect - Okay, this one is a little less likely, I admit. But the Bradley effect is a dynamic named for Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, a black politician who went into a tough election for governor doing well in the polls but lost when the votes were counted, leading some to assume peopel lied to poll-takers for fear of being labelled racist.

But twenty years later, the script has flipped. We are, after all, in an election season where Republicans and even Democrats like Geraldine Ferraro insist Obama is getting widespread support mostly because of his race. (Can anyone imagine, even a year ago, someone making Ferraro's claim that a black presidential candidate named Barack Hussein Obama was "lucky" to have his racial background, with a straight face?)

So maybe there are some folks planning to vote for Obama who don't want to admit it.

Already, we see conservatives such as Peggy Noonan and David Brooks saying much harsher things about GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in semi-private settings than they do in their newspaper columns and on TV. Christopher buckley has to resign from the National Review, the magazine his dad William F. founded, after writing a column endorsing Obama for a web site.

What if some conservatives, turned off by John McCain's campaign but fearful of blowback, make a similar choice in the voting booth?

The George Wallace Effect -- Like Hillary Clinton before him, Republican John McCain has tried to reference Obama's difference without mentioning race, emphasizing his loose connections to "domestic terrorist" William Ayers and repeatedly asking "Who is the real Barack Obama?" as if two years on the campaign trail hadn't provided a few answers.

But McCain is discovering what Clinton also learned the hard way -- such attacks embolden supporters who really are racist, making others who are uneasy about Obama feel as if they are falling in league with bigots. Watch here as McCain is forced to rebuke a supporter who seems to be regurgitating the 9/11-tinged fears the GOP has been stoking for months, sticking up for Obama as a solid family man (as the Daily Show noted wryly last night: Why didn't McCain explain that many Arabs are trustworthy people, too?).

It's yet another irony in one of history's most bizarre elections: The black candidate can't really talk about race without being accused of race baiting, and the Republican candidate can't indulge in the typical GOP-style coded race baiting because everyone knows what he's doing.

If you dare, click here to see David Alan Grier's sidesplitting take on it all, prepared for his hilarious nwew Comedy Central show Chocolate News debuting at 10:30 tonight.

Comments

[Lin Young]

It was the best debate of the series - but that isn't saying much. I was a participant in more interesting and pertinent exchanges on debate team in high school. The candidates strayed from deeply discussing anything important in these three presidential debates and generally did a bang-up job of avoiding substance.

As far as Grier's Comedy Central Chocolate News. His characterization of the white option wasn't much of a stretch. LOL. And to answer his question, yeah, I think the Republicans did lose their minds to nominate a moose-hunting woman with a knocked-up teenage baby mama daughter.

Too funny, except there is really nothing funny about it.

Since when did it become acceptable to choose someone as the vice presidential candidate of a major political party who was an absolute joke.

And all this comes on top of America bullying much of the world, then America bungling its economy and financial markets - dragging the rest of the world down with it. And now we are weeks away from an election that could place an aging idiot into the White House accompanied by a vindictive woman who is ignorant of world affairs - and who used her office as Alaska's governor to try to punish her ex-brother in-law - a heart-beat away from heading this nation.

If someone had written the story of the McCain, Palin candidacy as a play, it would fall under the category of absurdist drama.

[Eric Deggans]

i think, my good doctor, you are a little too dismissive of the personal politics involved in admitting to yourself or someone else that you don't support a candidate just because of his race.

I think all this talk about Obama being a Muslim, or a non-citizen or a secret radical is based on a curious possiblity: that a number of white voters are both uneasy about Obama's race and unable to admit it.

We have seen such tactics before. in the debate on illegal immigration, domestic terrorism and more. Most Americans are not comfortable with overt race prejudice, but still harbor race-based fears and uncertainties that politicians seek to exploit indirectly.

And because so many people know how awful it sounds to admit race affects their worldview, a certain amount of denial emerges to help disguise the whole process. Fascinating.

[DoctorDoom]

Eric,

First the Bradley effect should be debunked once and for all. Mervin Fields made this up as an excuse for his poll's crappy results, which showed a far greater lead for Bradley than any other poll at the time. An overly restrictive gun control measure was on the ballot that year that also served to rally the anti-Bradley forces (a supporter of said measure). The funniest thing is the idea that anyone really gives a rat's butt about what a pollster might think about you if you don't say you are voting for the minority candidate.

If anything the Bradley effect can be measured the other way, I am more inclined to say I am leaning toward the black candidate because I think it would be great to have a black President/Governor etc. However, when I look at his policies, I am turned off and therefore won't vote for him. Isn't that just as likely as the original ridiculous Bradley effect theory?

Secondly this idea that McCain or anyone needs to make a veiled reference to Obama's race is en face ridiculous. It is a fact Obama is a black man. Everyone knows this. If you are a racist - you base your vote solely upon the race of the candidate - McCain does not have to do anything to appeal to you. You know Obama is black, ergo you will not vote for him. No persuasion need be done.

The argument being put forth is the same one that has been made in the past 2 elections. John Kerry is not one of you - he is an elite Ivy League snob; Al Gore is an out of touch man who thinks he is better than you. The difference is, the hypersensitive Obamites can now cry this is racism. Ridiculous.

[RagsTTIger]

The latest racial political comment:

John Murtha, the senile Congressman, buddy of Pelossi and the instigator of the unfounded press attacks on the USMC for Haditha (for which he never apologized and is being sued)is at it again.

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Dem Murtha: Western PA ‘Racist’ but Obama Still Wins State
by Fin Gomez

In an interview with The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a long serving congressional lawmaker for Western Pennsylvania, opined on the 2008 PA political landscape.

“There’s no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area,” said Mr. Murtha, whose district stretches from Johnstown to Washington County. “The older population is more hesitant.”

“I think Obama is going to win, but I don’t think it’s going to be a runaway,” he said. “I think he wins Pennsylvania.”

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It appears to me that it has been the Obama campaign that has injected racism into the election process.

Obama's preemptive strikes, "they are going to say ..." only fans the flames of the uninformed. No racial statements have ever been presented by the McCain campaign. Further, it was McCain who disavowed a Tennessee splinter group, telling them to knock it off for their attacks. It was McCain who came to Obama's defense at a town hall meeting telling the crowd that negative rhetoric was unacceptable.

Conversely Obama has never rebuked his followers for their relentless gutter attacks on Gov Palin. The most recent being the wearing of T-shirts calling Palin the C-word. A class act no? The Obama campaign has attacked McCain, because he was a veteran with war injuries. One has to wonder what is in the minds on the Obama campaign to facilitate such garbage. They stand back and claim "it wasn't me." Every time I hear that refrain I associate it with TV's Urkle, "did I do that?" An empty response to the obvious.

Geraldine Ferraro stated the obvious and for that was pilloried. See Real Clear Politics, March 14th, 2008, Playing by Obama's Rules, from which the following statement is quoted, "The attack on Ferraro comes out of a conscious strategy of the Obama campaign -- to seek immunity from attack by smearing any and all attackers as having racist motives."

Now the electoral process is again muddied by the Voter Fraud issues, primarily related to ACORN, in the swing states. There still an issue as to whether veteran's stationed abroad are even having their votes counted. Now that is the ultimate irony. Those who fight to protect our freedoms, are hampered in making their own vote.

It really is a pipe dream to believe that two candidates can engage on a level playing field, devoid of media intervention, discussing issues, approaches and philosophies. Now the media has, in too many cases, fostered a political agenda. Their job should be to present the news without bias. They should let the viewers/readers/listeners make up their own mind. Leave the Spin Room to the after debaters club. Let the people judge for themselves. Don't tell them how to think. The old ethics from Journalism 101 have gone out the window.

Americans have an innate sense of fairness. Let them use it.

[Bill]

Okay okay okay ... but why aren't you blogging about the debate tonight? What did you think of Schieffer? Helloooooo, media writer ...