headland

The political problem with Barack Obama's characterization of small-town Pennsylvanians is not that he finds them to be bitter. The problem is that he sees them as self-deceived:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

On Sunday night, Obama tried to put a positive spin on 'cling':

"Scripture talks about clinging to what’s good," he says. "This is something I’ve talked about before, I’ve talked about in my own life. Which is that religion is a bulwark, it’s a foundation, when things aren’t going well."

("Clinging in a good way," Ben Smith, Politico).

The obvious follow-up question -- not posed to Senator Obama -- was to ask why, if he meant to say something positive about religion, he included racism and xenophobia as lumped within the tight grip of those under-employed, allegedly bitter and frustrated individuals, stuck in the backwaters of the Keystone State. Mickey Kaus ("What's the Matter with Obama? The Four Sins of "Cling", Slate) identifies this lumping as one of four distinct problems with Obama's "cling" gaffe. The other three problems Kaus cites are the accusation of racism, the contradiction with his own alleged -- though dubiously sincere -- positions on trade and guns, and the condescension of seeing the views of those in small towns as a mere byproduct of economic stagnation.

Within this alleged problem of condescension lies a deeper problem. To see individuals as clinging to their religious and political beliefs as a result of economic circumstance is to deny them the perspective one takes on one's own beliefs. For it is to see other individuals as coming to their views, not as the result of reason, but as a mere effect of external and contingent factors. That is a perspective no one can transparently adopt toward one's own positions and views.

So, fundamentally, the problem is not that Obama does not see his own views from a similar perspective. No one could. It is not elitist to think that one has come by one's own positions for good reason. To see one's own commitments in a less flattering light is to have abandoned them already.

Instead, the problem Obama faces with this clinging charge is that it is, at base, deeply alienating. Sympathetic downscale voters can concede that they are bitter and politically disconnected. They cannot, however, join Obama and say that they are self-deceived. They cannot say that they hold to their views only because they are reacting to their economic misfortune. Obama can say that when these voters are brought back to prosperity they will see things in a different light. Yet, this is not a case he can make to these voters themselves.

There is irony here. For in the same breath in which Obama separates himself from racism and xenophobia, he puts distance between himself and white working class Rustbelters, when he talks behind their back -- and supposedly off-the-record -- in upscale San Francisco.

Immanuel Kant saw the fundamental respect all members of humanity deserve as deriving from their capacity to respond to reason. It is a lesson that Obama may still need to learn.

Labels: Barack Obama, bitter, cling, elections, free trade, gaffe, Immanuel Kant, immigration, Mickey Kaus, Pennsylvania, primaries, racism, rationality, religion, respect, self-deception, xenophobia

Bob Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment television and a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter, made the following remark yesterday:

"To me, as an African American, I am frankly insulted the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood; I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book when they have been involved," Johnson said.

The Richmond Democrat had this response to Johnson's remarks:

Clinton's campaign has been pursuing a fairly obvious strategy of having surrogates attack Obama while the campaign itself denies any involvement. As Josh Marshall wrote:

We seem to be at the point where there are now two credible possibilities. One is that the Clinton campaign is intentionally pursuing a strategy of using surrogates to hit Obama with racially-charged language or with charges that while not directly tied to race nonetheless play to stereotypes about black men. The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.[1]

There has been an entire string of these "gaffes" from Clinton surrogates. What we have here is a deliberately planned campaign of smear.

Yesterday, Clinton surrogate Bob Johnson implied that Barack Obama's time as a community organizer was actually spent dealing drugs, then, hours later, backed away from those comments and denied any such implication. Marshall reacted to these theatrics.

Now, the clear logic of this statement is that the Clintons were fighting the good fight back when Obama was just off goofing off. Being a community organizer is like the epitome of engaged involvement in community issues. So Johnson's statement literally makes no sense if it's a reference to Obama's time as a community organizer.

The Richmond Democrat points to another instance of "not-so-subtle" exploitation of racism by the Clinton camp

[Sergio Bendixer, Clinton pollster] was also frank about the fact that the Clintons, long beloved in the black community, are now dependent on a less edifying political dynamic: “The Hispanic voter—and I want to say this very carefully—has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.”

("The Political Scene: Minority Reports, Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker.

Today, Hillary Clinton insisted: "I do not think either of us want to inject race or gender in this campaign." Yet, plainly that is precisely what she and her campaign are doing. In the case of the Hispanic voter, the appeal to racism is of the dog-whistle variety: intended only to be heard by the groups harboring negative attitudes toward a black candidate.

Yet, how can such exploitation of racism work for liberals who take no small pride in their self-perceived abhorrence of racism? I would suggest that for such an audience, Hillary's camp exploits a higher-order racism. Liberal Democrats would not countenance the idea that Obama's race should count as a reason not to vote for him. They are quite ready, however, to believe that it is a reason that counts for others, the benighted racists. That fact can then be exploited as a second-order reason for those who could never be moved by a more crude, first-order appeal to racism. A similar dynamic is apparent in having Bob Johnson make reference to Obama's admitted youthful drug use. While this was unacceptable for Bill Shaheen, and resulted in his dismissal from the campaign, there is no similar response to Bill Johnson's remark. Here, the liberal attitude can be this: it is fine for a black man to criticize Obama for his drug use, but since that behavior fits into a racial stereotype, it is not all right for a white man to do the same. Thus, the Clinton campaign, by finding a prominent African-American supporter, can continue to have the drug issue raised in public by using a black surrogate.

In several ways, Hillary's campaign is exploiting a higher-order or meta-racism into this primary campaign.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bob Johnson, Hillary Clinton, racism