Melissa Harris-Perry, professor of political science at Tulane University, has an article in the October 10, 2011 edition of The Nation - Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama
Harris-Perry imagines a theory of racist Democratic voters who have yet to act but whose possible future behavior she argues will be based on holding President Obama to a higher standard than President Clinton. She draws selective and imprecise parallels without mentioning the dramatic disparity in economies. President Clinton's reelection occurred during expanding prosperity, economic abundance, budget surplus, low unemployment, high wage jobs, a booming tech bubble and generally bullish market. The 2012 elections will have as a backdrop a miserable and worsening economy, stalled GDP, a "hard slog" of high unemployment, market volatility, national debt, and bleak outlooks.
For some reason we're to believe that while race was not a factor in Obama's election, if he's not re-elected it will be because "White Liberals" have suddenly succumbed to a secret and looming intersection of racism and double standards.
Electoral racism...is the unwillingness of white Americans to vote for a black candidate regardless of the candidate’s qualifications, ideology or party....So far, Barack Obama has been involved in two elections that suggest that such racism is no longer operative. His re-election bid, however, may indicate that a more insidious form of racism has come to replace it.
No overt racism in the 2004 Illinois Senate race between Obama and Alan Keyes, two African-Americans, as measured by Harris-Perry's standard "roll off" votes but she imagines a more covert racism brewing.
One way to determine how many people felt this way is to measure the “roll-off.” In presidential election years, a small percentage vote for the president, but then “roll off” by not casting ballots for state and local offices. A substantial increase in roll-off—larger than usual numbers of voters who picked John Kerry or George Bush but declined to choose between Obama and Keyes—would have been a measure of the unwillingness of some to vote for any black candidate. I tested this in 2004 and found no increase, statistical or substantive, in roll-off in Illinois. Faced with two black candidates, white voters were willing to choose one of them.
2008, once again empirical data shows no racism as a factor for Democratic votes. In fact Obama got a higher percentage of white votes than either Kerry or Gore did. Liberals have not even been mentioned so far.
Yet, the title says Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama. Statement. Present tense. How measured? No more data available, no polling results, no trends, nevertheless, a leap over the cliff into predictions of future "Double Standard" and secret racism.
Still, electoral racism cannot be reduced solely to its most egregious, explicit form. It has proved more enduring and baffling than these results can capture. The 2012 election may be a test of another form of electoral racism: the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts.
What tendency? Doesn't that require some support?
The author pivots to arguable parallels between President Obama's performance on all but the economy to President Clinton's performance on all but the economy
The relevant comparison here is with the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Today many progressives complain that Obama’s healthcare reform was inadequate because it did not include a public option; but Clinton failed to pass any kind of meaningful healthcare reform whatsoever.
True. I complain about both.
Others argue that Obama has been slow to push for equal rights for gay Americans; but it was Clinton who established the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy Obama helped repeal.
Well, not really. Back then, before DADT, under no circumstances could lesbian or gay men serve in the military. Clinton campaigned to change that law and eliminate the ban and while doing so he directly cited a widely reported horrific case of the vicious murder of a serviceman,
U.S. Navy Radioman Third Class Allen R. Schindler, Jr., beaten to death for being gay.
Airman Apprentice Terry M. Helvey, who was a member of the ship's weather department (OA Division, Operations Department), stomped Schindler to death in a toilet in a park in Sasebo, Nagasaki. He was left lying on the bathroom floor until the Shore Patrol and the key witness to the incident carried out Schindler's body to the nearby Albuquerque Bridge. Schindler had "at least four fatal injuries to the head, chest, and abdomen,"[2] his head was crushed, ribs broken, and his penis cut, and he had "sneaker-tread marks stamped on his forehead and chest"[2] destroying "every organ in his body"[4] leaving behind a "nearly-unrecognizable corpse"[5] that was only identifiable by the tattoo on his arm.[...
"The Navy was less than forthcoming about the details of the killing, both to the news media and to the victim's family, especially his mother, Dorothy Hajdys."[7]
In the wake of Schindler's murder, the Navy denied that it had received any complaints of harassment and refused to speak publicly about the case or to release the Japanese police report on the murder.[3]
After Schindler's body was held by the key witness, the medical team from the Sasebo Base announced his death. The medical examiner compared Schindler's injuries to those sustained by a victim of a fatal horse trampling saying they were worse "than the damage to a person who’d been stomped by a horse; they were similar to what might be sustained in a high-speed car crash or a low-speed aircraft accident."[2]
At the wake in the family's home in Chicago, his mother and sister could only identify him by the tattoos on his arm as his face was disfigured.
I can't guess what infamous "white liberals" were thinking but a lot of Democrats were understandably uplifted that Clinton acknowledged this case and the horror of military abuses.
Right after his inauguration, as Clinton prepared to eliminate the ban on homosexuals in the military, Congress protested and, led by Democratic Senator Sam Nunn and General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, dramatically threatened to double down - either Powell's very conservative compromise or they will strengthen the ban.
President Obama accomplished what Clinton tried and failed to do. DADT, billed as a compassionate incremental step forward, was hardly better, and now finally it is gone. That's a good thing. But, double standard? Without some unexpected further explanation, history doesn't support that argument.
You can read and decide for yourself, but IMO Harris-Perry makes a few more parallels that are even less substantial and irrelevant to her stark reminder that
One president is white. The other is black.
In 1996 President Clinton was re-elected with increasing support - higher numbers of white and black support - amidst a booming bubbleicious US economy.
President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation.
This is a deep and provocative belief. Where did this come from? Why would voters who elected Obama suddenly become "disappointed" with his race? Not "
salvific"? Voters wanted redemption? Democratic voters didn't vote for
redemption, but change. No mention of increasing unemployment, no mention of the lack of foreclosure relief, the middle class burdens of mortgage and investment fraud, the continuation of paying tax breaks to Bush's have-mores. None of these factor in?
The thread Harris-Perry is meandering into here is very thin.
[Obama's] record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.
I suppose my wild guess is as good as Harris-Perry's, so FWIW it's that the economy will be the key standard, the same standard to which every other President is held. I'm no expert but by my observation, Democrats vote against right wing Republicans and Independents vote when they want change - especially in the economy. And the economy sucks, it's getting worse, and will be worse for election day in 2012.
The "professional left" demon had morphed into the "dispirited left" and the childish left and now we're seeing the maybe, possibly, secretly racist, white left. Sounds like professional anti-leftists CYA theories. Abstract to the point of irrelevancy.
President Obama was elected by a coalition of African Americans, white women, youth and LGBT, from lower and high income brackets, and maybe not a plurality but millions of plain old vanilla white male Democrats - liberals, progressives, and moderates. The same Democratic base that voted in 2008 and 2010 and who will vote to re-elect President Obama. If 2008's new first time voters and Independents show up as well, he'll win. Let's no mislead them into thinking our liberals are sitting this one out.
I'm not arguing that racism or double standards exist. But if they're looming as a factor decreasing "white liberal" votes in the 2012 re-election then somebody else needs to make that case because Melissa Harris-Perry didn't. Also, as the election gets closer, blaming white liberals will drift beyond tiresome, hollow and insulting to self-destructive.