Largely buried amid last night's post-debate chat on CNN were two comments about the McCain-Palin attempts to play the race card -- to remind people that, uh, their opponent is black -- to which I thought greater attention might have been paid.
(And it might. I'm on holiday, and so am able to feed my neuroses only sporadically.)
David Gergen nodded toward Obama's rising poll numbers, and suggested the Bradley effect might yet cause Obama to lose, or at least to lose key states. Paul Begala picked up that thought a few moments later and suggested that if that were the case there would be hell to pay.
If you will jump a few more paragraphs with me, I should like to explore two separate possibilities, neither of them appealing.
First, and let me get my tinfoil hat on straight before I type this, IF they (ahem, the Republicans) mean to steal this election in whole or in discrete parts, the potential of the Bradley effect -- of white voters refusing to vote for Obama purely and instinctively because of his race, though they tell pollsters otherwise -- potentially gives them cover to do so. Especially in the battleground Appalachian precincts where Clinton pounded Obama, in places like West Virginia, rural Ohio, rural Pennsylvania, and even Michigan (and since I'm vacationing in Michigan this week, I'm not at all sure that McCain has given up on this place; not based on the ad buys I'm seeing, and not based on the yard signs, whatever they may portend.)
Incidentally, it doesn't matter of the Bradley effect is real; it matters only that it is believed to be a legitimate concern and can be sold as an explanation for hijacking the will of the people.
Second, and this point is not linked to the first item, and is valid (or invalid) irrespective of my paranoia...if Barack Obama has a wide lead on election day and somehow loses, by Bradley effect or chicanery or...fill in the blank...I fear we will have utterly and perhaps finally broken faith with our African-American friends and neighbors.
You think the Rodney King riot was bad in LA? The riots after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death? Watts, all of that? Imagine that same fury intensified by national events and fanned by this here internet thing we all have come to depend upon. I mean, I'll be furious, but I'm a middle-aged white guy. (And so please forgive any presumption as I type hurriedly in a strange motel room.)
Plus or minus the immediate repercussions in the streets, I cannot imagine the African-American community buying the notion of democracy in this country again -- for generations -- if this election is believed to have been stolen. AIDs as a government experiment, crack as a CIA project? Crackpot? Well...(as a side note, I would hope that meth and Oxy epidemics would give less credence to those conspiracy theories, but...).
Now...it's been a hard couple of weeks to watch the news, to fear the decay of our civilization and the decline of American prestige. So my paranoia is not as well modulated as I might wish it to be.
That said...I don't believe either of these two outcomes are likely, only that they suddenly seem possible. I raise this straw man in part because I wish to remind at least myself that this isn't over until it's over, and not to become complacent with today's poll numbers and last night's modestly successful public event. But I worry that they are possible. Voter fraud and voter suppression have been themes for months here. Here is simply one more reason to fear an enemy who increasingly proves himself (and herself) to be utterly untrustworthy. Amoral. And dangerous when cornered.