"I’m human," Clinton tells us, and it’s "news to some people." We’re not told why this is so, but apparently its common knowledge that more is expected of her. What exactly the double standard here is we are not told. But if we connect all of the dots in her campaign’s narrative of victim-hood, we’re meant to interpret it in the following way: She is a woman, and Obama is black; but she is where she is because of experience, and he is where he is "because he is black"; while Obama’s blackness is working for him, her womanhood is working against her. And that’s unfair.
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Because one bit of identity politics has been pitted against another, it is especially petty and nasty, as competing victim-hoods always are. That’s why we see such a willingness to embrace right-wing talking points in the enforcement of that privileged victim-hood: Clinton surrogates have jumped on Rev. Wright’s supposed anti-Americanism in a way that they — and most progressives — never would otherwise. This is not to say that the legacy of post-9/11 Democratic cowardice hasn’t helped incubate such mindless nationalism in all quarters.
But who would have guessed that some weird political chemistry would bind pro-Hillary gender consciousness and right-wing nationalism into a single molecule?
Here’s the glue: in Rev. Wright, we have a nexus of the volatile issues of race and patriotism. He is, so to speak, the catalyst that allows a progression from a manufactured opposition of race and gender (as competing presidential identities) to an implied correlation between race and patriotism. Woman or Black Man; if Black Man, then Black Anti-Americanism; therefore, Woman.
Let’s look at how this catalyst works in more detail.
The Clinton campaign seems to believe not only that her current predicament is unfair, but this unfairness is compounded by the contrast between Obama’s supposed post-racial, unifying campaign style, and her unabashed appeal to women and the "historic" opportunity to have a female president. The strategic consequence of this sentiment is the seizing on any opportunity to show that Obama’s campaign is not post-racial at all: that he is not only relying on white guilt and black identification, but also "playing the race card" when he sees fit. Of course, you can go further, and with Rev. Wright Clinton supporters found an opporunity to do just this: not only is Obama not post-racial willing to manipulate race to his advantage, but he secretly embodies the worst excesses of the black community — paranoia, anger, anti-white racism, and a corresponding anti-Americanism. These excesses then become the substance of her current predicament — her glass ceiling: the only way to turn voters back to her special status as a woman is to undo white guilt by connecting Obama to a particular kind of blackness that most Americans can be counted on to fear. That these associations are more common on the right is excused by the fact it is merely a tool to making Americans see a stark contrast between her legitimate identity-claim and Obama’s bogus claim to transcend identity politics.
There is a lesson to be learned from the failure of these tactics: to live by identity politics is to die by it. It can be used indiscriminately by the left, the right, or any political actor in order to vie for power. At bottom it relies on an emphasis on divisions (by race, gender, or other qualities) that can be used for good or ill.
And so this little chemistry experiment can also blow up in your face.
Clinton’s campaign was not helped by her emphasis on her sex or her victim-hood. So the nasty spectacle of her campaign’s prolonged death throws may be just another sign of the times — of this election season’s transcendence of identity politics.