The Election Paradox

I’ve been looking for a way to address the “Obama-Clinton-McCain Paradoxes “ for some time now, without really even knowing that was what they were, and unable to come up with the words that would allow me to address them without seeming like a racist or an anti-Islamic nutcase. Well, fortunately I don’t have to search for the words now, because someone who is no doubt much smarter and obviously a better writer than me, has done so.  (My take on this is after this long quote if you are interested.)

Part of the problem with discussing race, Obama’s middle name, his wife’s astounding proclamations, and all the rest is perhaps remembering that there are two different constituencies, his base and the country, that require an Obama two-step.

No doubt having a middle name like Hussein was ‘cool’ at Columbia and Harvard where it might solidify one’s ethnic or exotic fides. By the same token, a well-paid, Ivy-League-educated African-American woman like Michelle Obama, of course, had considerable success in lecturing upscale elite liberal audiences on their sloth, or cynicism, or why one should not heretofore have pride in the United States, or why America was a mean place. And a bumper-sticker African-American identify was advantageous in the Ivy League for Obama, and essential for success in local districted Chicago politics.

But once one slowly metamorphosizes from a state politician to a liberal Illinois Senator to the purported Democratic nominee, then all of those self-embraced identities that deliberately emphasize, rather than play down, race and culture can become polarizing to a wider constituency — and must be as muffled by the candidate as they are emphasized by his opportunistic opponents.

So now we are in this silly situation, in which at one time Obama was happy enough to remind some that his middle name was Hussein and now it is a slur for other less well-intentioned to do so; in which his wife’s browbeating of America was salve to guilty liberals and now it is considered illiberal to question her assumptions; in which a candidate who rose to prominence as a “black” candidate and garners majority margins of 90% among African-American against a very liberal female opponent insists that he has transcended race and to suggest otherwise is, well, racist.   (Note: I shortened this quote because it took up too much room.  Click here to read the rest before you read my comments below.)

Everywhere I look I see politicians, political pundits, and MSM talking heads saying that this election is not about race, even when startling facts like 91% of blacks voting for Obama and 73% of whites voting for Hillary in the Mississippi primary stare them in the face. Yes, it’s Mississippi with all the stereotypical old-South racism holdovers but still, that is a remarkable fact that, in my mind anyway, simply cannot be ignored.

This election is certainly not all about race.  Especially since Obama is picking up plenty of white votes along the way, but when so many blacks are voting for an inexperienced Obama, even when matched against a more experienced (relatively so, anyway) woman who is married to a man who has been called the “First Black President,” and who has supported blacks from day one (if you believe the Democratic Party really supports blacks - I don’t), then it seems to me that, to many (most?) blacks at least, this is very much about race.

And frankly, those who say otherwise are either incredibly naive or are just being incredibly disingenuous.

But what is interesting to me is not that many (again most?) blacks are inclined to vote for a black man just because he is black - the first one ever to be a viable candidate for the highest office in our land at that.  Or that some whites will vote against him just because he is black.

That’s not exactly surprising.

After all, racism lives in people of every color. 

No, what’s interesting to me is how the candidates are dealing with it - especially Hillary and a Democratic Party that has driven the 18-wheeler of identity politics across our national political landscape for decades and are now being run over by it.

It’s incredibly amusing to see all these charges of racism and racism-baiting going on between these two and their minions.

Laugh out loud amusing sometimes even.

And it’s good, in my view anyway, that Hillary is dealing with this problem now so McCain will hopefully be able to avoid it later.   Not that it will go away.  If Obama is the nominee you can bet every time McCain attacks his policies it will somehow be turned into an attack on his race - if not by Obama then certainly by those who support him and deal in that kind of stuff.  Or his being the son of a Muslim.  Or probably both.  (This will also be the case if he is elected.  You can bet that any attack on his policies as president by Republicans will be cast in some racial way.)

So to sum up.  Race is a factor here.  As is racism. Either real racism or alleged racism or fake racism or whatever, but it’s there, and how the candidates deal with it, and more importantly, how the American people deal with it is what’s going to be most interesting of all.

UPDATE:

Naww, it’s not about race. Not at all.

UPDATE - March 13, 2008:

If Hillary’s going to apologize for comments made by her husband and Geraldine Ferraro, when is Obama going to apologize for his preacher’s comments? I mean really apologize and not just say that he just doesn’t agree with everything he says.  Why won’t he leave that church? That is certainly what he and his supporters would demand of Hillary, or McCain. This is a double-standard and one that is working for him so far.

Yep, this contest is about race, maybe more than I thought. And Obama is winning it in more ways than one.

Memory Is The Second Thing To Go

So on my way out to lunch I stop by the restroom before I hit the elevator.  After my brief stop, I get on the elevator and a woman I know from around the building gets on with me.  We smile at each other, say hello, and start the trip down when she laughs and says, “Oops, you better zip-up, the horse is going to run out of the barn.”   I look down, and naturally embarrassed, zip-up my fly and reply, “Eh, at my age the horse doesn’t run out unless the barn is on fire.”