I'm All In
Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 11:02:45 AM PDT
I never thought I would get here. I was once a (very minor and short-term) Clinton White House aide, I thought I was sophisticated and pragmatic and realistic about politics. I consider myself a staunch and devout Democrat with ideals, but a practical one. My position has been that I would have been ecstatic with any of the top three Democrats. Although I have supported Obama since he got in, I have watched all the heat on this site with some coolness, confident that after the dust settled we would have a fantastic ticket to win on in November. Until just this last week I have been playing my chips carefully, reserving my energy for the big game. But I am finally done. Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton have gone a step too far. I'm all in.
There is no topic more potentially destructive of community than race. This is not about which "ism" is worse. Sexism is alive and well and may well be more pervasive and more accepted. But there are women in every community and most families, so the "us v. them" of gender is more personal, more intimate, and very powerful, but almost never degenerates into entire communities sharing and reinforcing their resentments of "the other".
Moreover, the situation is not symmetrical. The gender card in politics doesn't hurt Clinton the same way the race card hurts Obama. Again, it's not that there is more racism than sexism. Yes, there are many people, men and women, who may not vote for Hillary Clinton because either explicitly or unconsciously they don't think women can be effective leaders. But this is balanced by the fact that many women are proud of her, identify strongly with her struggles, and long to see her break the barriers that they face themselves. Sympathetic women are a majority of the electorate, especially the Democratic primary electorate. Although I'm a man, I would put myself in the category of admirers and supporters of Hillary Clinton in this respect.
Similarly, there are many people who will not vote for Obama because either explicitly or unconsciously they don't think a Black man is competent to lead America. This is balanced somewhat by the strong identification and support that Obama gets from the African American community, and perhaps even more important is the support that he gets from non-Blacks. My support for Obama has never been colorblind. I am not Black, but I identify with his struggles and I yearn to see him break the barriers.
But this is where the symmetry breaks down. African Americans are a minority. Except in a handful of Southern states, and only on the Democratic side of the ledger, racial polarization deals Obama a losing hand in the long run. There is no state full of men whose resentment of feminism Obama can exploit and thereby win delegates. But in rural and suburban and even urban neighborhoods (given the segregated nature of our cities) across the country and especially in Pennsylvania, there are communities in which racial resentment can be exploited by Clinton.
If this were any other issue, you wouldn't blame Clinton for exploiting a wedge issue. That's part of what politics is about--finding those currents that differentiate you from your opponents in ways that advantage you demographically. But this is a deep, festering wound of an issue that the Republicans have been cynically exploiting against us for generations.
So it doesn't matter whether the specific facts that Ferraro stated were true. Yes, Obama gets some advantage (and some disadvantage) because of his race. If it were about the facts we could have a long civilized discussion about the complexity of race and racial identity in America. What matters is that the tone and the context make it clear that she is stoking white resentment against Blacks. "He wouldn't be where he is if he were White"--she might just as well have said "Hillary would have this nomination--but they had to give it to a Black man--because of racial quotas." And i could get over a momentary slip by a surrogate, but Ferraro's aggressive follow-up puts this WAY over the top. "They ALWAYS call you a racist. They call EVERY White person a racist. They attack you because you're White." (Paraphrasing.) The "they" is ostensibly the Obama campaign, but it's really THOSE BLACKS. This is a line of attack that will turn voters against Obama (and toward McCain) permanently.
Hillary Clinton's campaign has allowed this to fester and build for a week. The damage is done. She has apparently apologized to some Black newspaper editors, but that's not the only community she has harmed. It's all of us. She needs to apologize to me.
Race is what makes America the most pathetically unequal and hypercapitalist country in the world. I'm convinced that racial resentment trains us not to empathize with the poor. Our rationalizations about racial inequality being about merit create a rhetorical icebreaker, a psychological echo, an emotional resonance, perhaps even a neural pathway towards thinking that all inequality is about merit and that markets are always efficient and fair.
I am about as loyal and partisan a Democrat as you get. I worked in the national office of the Dukakis campaign, and then for Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. No Johnny-come-lately, inexperienced, weakly committed Democrat, I. But I've finally found a Democrat that I am currently unwilling to support. It's Hillary Clinton.
Yes, I know how important the next Supreme Court nominations are, the continuing tragedy of Republican environmental and economic and foreign policies, the idiotic waste of life in misbegotten wars. But most of these are long-term problems, and improvement will be incremental. The Republicans will be incrementally worse, but at least we would know who we were dealing with. I'd rather we had an enemy for President than a traitor.
This is all Obama's fault, really. He made me hope. he made me think that it might be possible to get through an election feeling inspired rather than depressed. When Al Gore lost, when John Kerry lost, my emotional distance was intact. This year, rather than the small steps I've grown used to accepting, I started to dream of great leaps forward, if not in policy then at least in the national morale and imagination. My intellectual walls have come down. This year, I care. Hillary is threatening a great leap backwards. I am in tears.
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