Josh Marshall (TalkingPointsMemo) recently wrote an outstanding diary called Road Map detailing how the RepubliCons will use/are using racism to try to win the presidential campaign.
Marshall’s diary is a must-read for anyone who wants to see McSame lose in November. We need to learn how this works and how to fight it. The RepubliCons have been using racism to win votes for more than 40 years, and they are pros. In short, the core of the McCain strategy is to
drill a handful of key adjectives into the public mind about Barack Obama: Muslim, anti-American, BLACK, terrorist, Arab. Maybe a little hustler and shifty thrown in, but we'll have to see. The details and specific arguments are sort of beside the point.
How can we fight back?
Drew Westen outlines effective strategies in his 2007 book The Political Brain. Westen, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, explains how the brain works. His research shows that "when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins." Our emotions decide how we vote. (Yes, even with us liberals.) Westen explains that the majority of white Americans do not want to discriminate. However, messages reach us every day, messages that are under the level of our consciousness, and those messages work on our subconscious brains.
Racist messages, like the repeated use of Obama’s middle name as if it were a dirty word, "activate two networks simultaneously: a conscious one about the ugliness of racism, and a unconscious one associated with negative feelings toward people of color and foreigners." (In this case, of course, they are linking Obama to Saddam Hussein.) Americans in general may KNOW that there is no connection between Obama and Saddam. However, the RepubliCons are also activating a second network, the unconscious network mentioned above.
The messages say that "he isn’t like us." "he is different than us."
Westen outlines three principles about how to respond to these types of actions (page 223). Since I can’t copy him, go read the book!
After rereading this chapter, I am guessing that Barack and Michelle and everyone in the Obama campaign have read this book. I am really and truly hoping that perhaps they have hired Westen as a consultant. I don’t know this, I just pulled this out of thin air. However, when I see how rapidly his campaign responds to attacks, and how they respond, I am guessing the Westen would give them an A+.
This really gives me hope.
As I mentioned earlier, Westen says that research shows that the majority of white Americans do not want to discriminate against African Americans. However, all of us (I am white), no matter how liberal, have prejudices that are buried within us. We may never admit it, we may never act on them, and we are probably not even completely aware of all of them, but if you grew up in the U.S., they are there.
The RepubliCons will work on the subconscious brain, and they know how to do it, they are experts. They have been doing this for at least the last 40 years. They will keep most of these racist messages below the level of consciousness. McSame will stay above the fray, and he will let others do his dirty work. Then he will turn around the next day, and he will be shocked (SHOCKED I tell you) about what so-and-so said!
One recent example of how the Obama campaign is doing things right is when Michelle Obama was recently talking about how the R’s are using "the fear bomb" by using her husband’s middle name repeatedly like it is a dirty word.
If Obama gets the nomination, then his campaign needs to continue to bring these messages to the conscious level, and expose them for what they are.
They are doing everything right! (IMHO)