Polls and Race-Bait Fallout

1) From a new Rasmussen Poll out yesterday:
30% of Conservative Democrats Say They’ll Vote for McCain

Gallup had the race tied.

2) Obama is finally asked about the charge of race-baiting.

The Tampa Bay News and St. Petersburg Times interviewed Obama and he had this to say:

“I was in union, Missouri which is 98 percent white - a rural, conservative. and what I said was what I think everybody knows, which is that I don’t look like I came out of central casting when it comes to presidential candidates.
——————–

‘There was nobody there who thought at all that I was trying to inject race in this.

Nobody? Hmmmm. Seems like all the discussion on the ‘net, on tv and radio might just suggest otherwise.

Read the rest ->

3) Jennifer Rubin, at Commentary, seems to think we’ve reached a tipping point in race-baiting politics, at least as practiced by the Obama campaign.

One of the downsides of living in the bubble of the MSM and the warm embrace of most of the punditocracy is that you think everyone buys what you are selling, or at the very least is too polite to mention that you are making a fool of yourself. When the McCain camp called Barack Obama out for playing the race card, I imagine the Obama camp was stunned. But by the end of the day on Thursday it became apparent that Obama’s gambit was failing, and creating far more problems than the Obama team anticipated.

Obama’s Bill Burton tried to take back the race card. (But whoops– not in sufficient time to prevent the New York Times from looking foolish. Yes, yes you have to get up very early in the day to do that.) When The New Republic calls Obama’s move a “blunder” and the Hardball panel unanimously calls out Obama, it’s time to fold your hand.

After saying that playing the victim isn’t working and all the policy shifts have left a bad taste in voters’ mouths, Jennifer attempts to analyze what is going on:

Why isn’t it working? What’s wrong? You can imagine Hillary Clinton and her supporters banging their heads on their desks and emailing one another (”We told them!” “No one believed us!”) Time it appears has not been Obama’s friend. It has given more and more people time to think and discover that there may not be much behind the grand rhetoric. Others have figured out the degree to which Obama has concealed, evaded and fudged in setting out his political views. What does he believe? It’s unnerving to know so little and to realize he is perhaps the least forthright candidate in recent memory.

But she ends by saying the McCain campaign shouldn’t be too happy just yet.

3) Ward Connerly reminds us of Obama’s statements regarding affirmative action. Connerly, as you may know, has long been working to prohibit preferences through a consitituational amendment, and McCain recently came out in favor of Connerly’s position. During a campaign stop at the journalists of color convention, Obama expressed his “disappointment” in McCain’s position and mentioned Connerly by name. The following is part of Connerly’s response at TNR.

Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment. Just a few days ago, Obama suggested he was ready to support class-based instead of race-based affirmative action: “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life. We are becoming a more diverse culture, and it’s something that has to be acknowledged.”

I concur, but I might define “properly structured” differently than Obama does. What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.

If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”

Agree or not with Connerly, it does seem Obama has said different things about preferences. Where he will actually fall is anyone’s guess, but it’s good to remember the famous “race speech” was a necessary one in response to the Rev. Wright fiasco.

4) Saturday’s NYT isn’t at all sure Obama even realizes he’s injecting race into the campaign. After making the statement to FL papers mentioned above, the NYT apparently decided to figure out whether or not Obama meant to race-bait. It called his response to McCain’s charge “muted.”

The muted response should not be taken, even campaign insiders acknowledged, to reflect high-mindedness; the Obama campaign can wield a rhetorical gutting knife. There simply was no percentage for the first black major-party presidential candidate in the nation’s history to draw too much attention to his race, much less get into a shooting war with the Republicans over the combustible issue.

“For our part, there is no stake in abetting that strategy,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The best we could do is call this and move on.”

The paper does go on to say that Obama:

. . .tends to back into his attacks. So he cues up Mr. McCain as “an honorable man”
and a “war hero,” before skewering him as lacking in ideas.

But what about Obama’s race-baiting during speeches? Well, that’s not it at all.

Still, the candidate has the peculiar habit of rehearsing his faults for listeners, apparently in an effort to inoculate himself against attacks. And that could be how Mr. Obama got himself tangled up in race.

Got tangled up? Well, then the NYT goes on to say how this SHOULD have worked and how Obama bungled it.

The candidate and Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, traveled this week around the Republican precincts of rural Missouri. Ms. McCaskill tried to set minds at ease by recalling an “old Ozark habit” of saying “they say,” as in, they say he’s too young, they say he’s not the right color.

So far, so politically artful; she never specified Republicans, much less Mr. McCain.

But when Mr. Obama traveled this rhetorical ground, he tripped. “So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Mr. Obama said. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.”

Even some Republicans are not convinced that Mr. Obama intended to accuse Mr. McCain of racism, as there’s no percentage for him. Mr. McCain talks of himself as experienced but never, ever, old; Mr. Obama talks of change but charily of his status as a historic first.

So, the race-baiting is really inartful bungling by a super-smart AA of a line a typical white person could deliver without a problem. Interesting. Do you buy this? I don’t. If this were the first time Obama tried this line, I’d be more inclined to agree with the NYT. However, this “funny name” , “looks different” refrain is an old one, as HRC supporters can attest.

Perhaps this strategy is finally played out and the campaign knows it and is kicking it under the bus. Or perhaps this story is just notice that we can expect “inartful bungling” of race issues from Obama until. . . Until when???

6) Paired with the above NYT article is a column by Bob Herbert. A screed against the McCain “celebrity ad,” for Herbert it’s all about race.

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

One of the most nauseating aspects of all this race-baiting is that it is so hypocritical coming from the Obama camp. After all, it was THAT campaign that not-so-subtly suggested that HRC had “ups and downs” when she would “periodically” lash out - a misogynist attack among several against her.

Not so? Well, I call bs on that. If you can discern subtle racial attacks in every person opposing you, then you damn well know when you engage in it yourself. Seems to me if putting a picture of a vacuous celebrity next to Obama is offensive, so should a wink-wink finger scratch on the face where the audience screams in approval. So should a statement about how to beat a female candidate in a post-OJ era.

Once again, a playground aphorism is the best : He who smelt it, dealt it.