Race In The Race

Well, maybe it's good to deal with this now and then get back on track. On a day when a huge racial voting disparity gave Barack Obama a convincing victory in the Mississippi Democratic primary, http://www.newsweek.com/id/121444 Geraldine Ferraro brought back a favorite 80's hit of hers, "Black Men Don't Deserve It." And once again, the issue of race jumped up in our faces.

Even for a candidate who has tried to transcend race as an issue in this campaign, Obama's people felt compelled to "push back" (campaign parlance for respond firmly) against what they see is a pattern of surrogate rock throwing. They accused the Clinton campaign of hypocrisy for a bland disavowal of Ferraro's remarks, (Hillary only said that she "disagreed" with Ferraro's comments) and they demanded that Clinton fire Ferraro from the campaign. She is on the finance committee.

So what exactly did the 1984 Vice Presidential nominee say? This: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. If he was a woman [of any race] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Wow. But then, instead of retracting, she said yesterday: "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white, how's that?" And then, in another interview, she said this: "What I find offensive is every time somebody says something about the [Obama] campaign, you're accused of being racist..." Okaaaay.

So where do we begin to analyze this? First, let's give Obama the first word. He handled it quite well in an interview with Matt Lauer. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23589533#23589533
Then, I guess we should point out that Geraldine Ferraro has always shadow projected her affirmative action guilt onto black men. In 1988 she said exactly the same thing about Jesse Jackson "If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race." I say shadow projected because by every account the only reason she was selected by Walter Mondale to serve as VP was because she was a woman. And even she's acknowledged this. She was not an influential member of Congress at the time, she wasn't going to deliver a state that Mondale wasn't going to win anyway (New York). It was a political stunt to energize his doomed campaign. So, we can dismiss Ms. Ferraro's comments as perrenial rantings that have no merit.

And they have no merit because she's historically and categorically wrong. With one male African-American state governor and only three African-American U.S. Senators elected in, can we say it together, the history of our nation, black folks have not had much of an advantage in politics. Roger Simon of Politico said last night on Hardball, that if Barack Obama wasn't black, he'd be JFK. On top of that, Obama has done the arduous work to run a successful Presidential campaign. He's raised tons of money, he's assembled a first class organization and he's delivered a potent message. His success is the simple product of hard work, not skin color.

James Carville, on CNN last night, railed against the over-sensitivity of the campaigns. He said you can't always control surrogates who pop off. To his credit, he believes that Samantha Power should not have resigned for her "monster" comment about Hillary. He may be right. But once again, Hillary is the one who raised the bar on all of this. She demanded, in a debate, that Obama 'denounce' and 'reject' Louis Farrakhan's stated support for Obama. And Obama complied. Now, understand that Farrakhan wasn't on Obama's campaign staff, hadn't provided material help of any kind and certainly hadn't said anything as patently rascist as Geraldine Ferraro in this primary race. So, it's fair that Obama's David Axlerod points out Hillary's hypocrisy.

But the Obama campaign also knows this: Ferraro's comments will touch a chord in countless white minds across this country. Especially the last comment, which bemoans reflexive political correctness. They remember Bill Clinton's famous 'Sister Souljah' moment when he publically repudiated her anti-white comments. They remember that secretly, whites everywhere said,"Oh good, he's not going to be held hostage to the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party." And so the Obama folks see an intentional pattern of subliminal race baiting that started with Bob Kerrey's comments about Obama's middle name, Billy Shaheen's cocaine references, (which, by the way, resulted in his resignation from the Clinton campaign) and on and on. They're rightly worried because the next big contest comes in a state that James Carville once described as 'Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, with Alabama in between'. It's a state prone to racial polarization between working class whites who are competing for jobs with working class blacks. Very much like, let's say it together, Ohio.

Now, will all this benefit Hillary? Yes and no. It will help her with those working class whites in Pennsylvania. It will hurt her against the charge that Obama made again in his Today Show interview that she's politics as usual. And that her style of politics is the problem in Washington. It will also hurt because she is now having to respond to negatives about her campaign, instead of driving an agenda that highlights negatives about the Obama campaign.

Will this help Democrats? Absolutely not. Especially when it lets John McCain issue a memorandum to his people saying that he will not tolerate attack politics. http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0308/McCain_topper_to_allies_Stay_on_message.html Which is why it's hard for even Democrats to dislike John McCain. Disagree with him on issues if you want, but he stands for right and wrong. And he will take heat from right wing nuts on this memo. They'll want him to go in for the kill on a personal level and he just won't do it. Americans of any political stripe like that.

And in the long run, this discussion on race doesn't help America anymore. There is a candidate out there who as worked very hard to remove race from the equation. And his success demonstrates how eager Americans are to move beyond this issue. People like Geraldine Ferraro and Steve King (a Congressman who said on Monday that Obama's middle name, Hussein, does matter, and that radical Islamists will be 'dancing in the streets' if Obama wins) are a fringe element.

And it distracts us from what's really important. I'm devoting a post on this instead of examining a new Department of Defense report stating unequivocally that Al Qaeda and Iraq had absolutely no connection before we invaded Iraq. Or Adm. Fallon's resignation as Centcom commander in the Middle East. Or talking about the Fed's $200 billion dollar credit gambit, which spiked the market up 400 points. Or the National Academy of Sciences new recommendations about global warming. So I'll have to let you see my Wall Street Journal morning briefing so you can check out some of those stories. http://us.f829.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=5106_29928046_85539_1665_19778_0_35255_52882_1862159558&Idx=0&YY=87810&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=&head=&box=Inbox
In the end, let's hope this dies down. And let's hope the Clintons take a tougher stance on this kind of surrogate rock throwing. It just doesn't move us forward.

Let's hear your thoughts on whether you think this is an intentional pattern by the Clinton campaign or just unfortunate surrogate ramblings. Click on 'comments' below, bypass the Google sign up and hit the nickname or anonymous buttons.