Race and the race
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The political Left is beside itself trying to comprehend how John McCain remains competitive with Barack Obama in the race for the presidency. Three-fourths of the electorate thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction; Democratic Party registration is up, while Republican affiliation has plummeted; and President Bush’s approval ratings have languished for years. How can McCain still be in it?
A growing number of liberals have jumped to a troubling conclusion: It must be racism. But though race was always going to play a role in the first presidential election with an African-American nominee, how much of a factor it will be, who will be affected, and how, aren’t as clear as some suggest.
As Obama’s campaign sputtered in September, his surrogates began blaming racial bigotry with growing frequency. Campaigning for Obama in Iowa, Democratic Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius explained Obama’s deteriorating lead by asking, “Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?” Jonathan Freedland of Britain’s Guardian newspaper said that if Obama loses, the world will conclude that America is racist (a bold assertion given the dearth of minorities in leadership positions in European governments). And James Carville recently insisted to Politico that “If Obama loses a close race, it is almost inevitable that [racism] will be a very big part of the interpretation of the race.”
I have more confidence in the American people than that. First, many pundits disregard, or at least undervalue, the share of voters who will vote for Obama because of his race. This group includes not only moderate and conservative blacks who otherwise might have voted for McCain but also (and more significantly) blacks who otherwise would not have voted at all. It also includes whites across the political spectrum who will vote for Obama at least in part because they wish to place the legacy of slavery and racism behind us. Indeed, six percent of white voters indicated as much in a recent AP-Yahoo! Poll.
Also, while charges of racial bigotry are often aimed at Republicans, racism is a non-partisan sickness. Consider 2001, when the Democratic head of the Maryland State Senate called Republican Michael Steele an “Uncle Tom,” or when Steele was pelted with Oreo cookies at an event at an all black school while running for U.S. Senate. Other black conservatives, including Clarence Thomas, J.C. Watts, Ward Connerly and Ken Blackwell, also have been targets of racially-tinged attacks.
The AP-Yahoo! poll estimated that racism could cost Obama up to six percentage points on Election Day. Interestingly, it was not Republicans but Democrats and Independents who were most likely to reject Obama because of his race, while most Republicans rejected him based on his political ideas. Overall, one-third of white Democrats held negative views about blacks.
What’s especially striking about those who confuse correlation (a black candidate who does poorly) with causation (a candidate who does poorly because he’s black) is that they often see race as the sole reason for a candidacy’s demise. Writing in Slate, Jacob Weisberg concluded that, “…racism is the only reason McCain might beat [Obama].” And Peter Beinart has written in the Washington Post that race will be central because “McCain needs it to be. He simply doesn’t have many other cards to play.”
That line of attack has become more prominent lately. Last week, Democratic Rep. John Lewis compared McCain and Palin to segregationist Gov. George Wallace, and a PBS correspondent told a Michigan audience that the Republican candidates’ focus on Obama’s “pseudo controversies” conceal racism.
Never mind that Obama has a tissue-thin resume, that he repeatedly voted against laws to protect babies born alive after botched abortions or that he has ties to unrepentant terrorists and radical pastors. And never mind that Obama compiled the most liberal voting record in the Senate last year and is running one of the most liberal campaigns in modern American history. The media elites seem unable to imagine that Obama’s extreme liberalism might trouble voters in a country that remains fundamentally conservative. This is the same party that has lost five of the last seven elections by serially nominating liberal presidential candidates.
In the end, what ought to matter most is not a candidate’s race but his or her political ideology. Ideology explains why most blacks (who tend to be Democrats) vote for Democratic candidates, even against black Republican opponents. Ideology explains why so many aging feminists attacked Feminist for Life Sarah Palin and why John F. Kerry, a dissident Catholic, lost the Catholic vote in 2004.
The prospect of a black president after hundreds of years of discrimination is a powerful and welcome development. But America will show it has truly gotten past racial prejudice only when race neither helps nor hinders any political candidate. As Obama himself told a black audience in 2006 while campaigning for Maryland Senator Ben Cardin against Michael Steele, “You don’t vote for somebody because of what they look like. You vote for somebody because of what they stand for.”
Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families.
source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14526.html
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