It started as a murmur among Obama’s black supporters, and while it hasn’t grown to a roar yet, it may well be on it’s way. The “it” being a nagging feeling in the back of many minds that the full-on offensive of Senator Obama from Camp Clinton is grounded in oh-so-subtle racial overtones. From red 83 at DailyKos:
Now perhaps it is because I am bi-racial, or because I am only in my mid-thirties, that I tend to dismiss the ‘they are condescending to me, and think I am a boy’ line of thinking that goes on with some in the black community. I tend to dismiss 90% of racism as ignorance and just ignore it. But this feeling didn’t just come from nowhere, and it runs deep among people of color that have been disenfranchised for most of their lives. I expect that the ‘well oiled machine’ could have perhaps been a little more sensitive to such a key voting block. Especially when Hillary’s campaign depends on it. Does she not know this?
What I think matters now is, what those black voters that make up her lead over Obama think, and what will they think if she wins the nomination without them.
Are we going to let a prominent democratic leader marginalize the black vote without calling her out on it?
It’s interesting how those speaking of it in the blogosphere are coming to the conclusion almost grudgingly. In stark contrast to media-driven, right-wing stereotypes of the liberal set, Democrats of all stripes simply haven’t wanted to go “there.” Hence the frustration from many that’s percolating – that despite this feeling, they have been taken there against their will, through Clinton campaign-generated, repeated references to Obama’s youthful indiscretions with cocaine, his muslim heritage, and the expansive and escalating criticisms from Bill Clinton that smack of a who-does-he-think-he-is charge of uppitiness. Individually, these things are easily dismissed. All together, they’re hard to ignore.
One hopes that going this route will backfire on Clinton. That the Democratic primary voters will reflexively recoil once it starts being talked about. But I don’t think so, based on recent precedent. And that recent precedent, of course, was provided by Obama himself.
A quick reminder:
Surprise, surprise, surprise. Obama’s anti-gay religious right activist used the opportunity Obama gave him last night to preach his hate to thousands of African-Americans. That’s just great. And the white preacher who Obama picked to help explain to the audience that gays aren’t minions of Satan? CNN reports that he said nothing at all – just a short little prayer, then he left. As for Obama, he did a taped introduction in which he praised McClurkin, the religious right activist, as one of his favorites. That’s nice, because the way to help combat homophobia in the black community is to make sure the gay-basher is first endorsed by someone as high-ranking as Obama, who then chooses to say nothing about the gay-bashing.
It’s a pretty twisted irony, and one could almost entertain a bit of righteous satisfaction at the notion that Obama was being hoisted on his own petard, if not for the fact that its the entirety of the African American and GLBT communities being hoisted as well.
But the Obama/McClurkin affair that preceded Clinton’s sleazy strategy is illuminating in two ways. First, in a completely isolated way, in that it shows just how politically impotent gay and lesbian rights organizations still are in this culture. Remember, this is in the context of a Democratic Party primary, and yet the GLBT crowd could neither stop the event from occurring, or create any backlash against Obama after it turned into such an unapologetic hatefest. As far as we think we’ve all come, and however enlightened the Democratic left sees itself, the fact is that most of that Democratic population is straight and white, and at the end of the day, they just didn’t care. In fact, it was at about that point that Obama’s poll numbers began their steady rise. Through this one event, Obama has put back the effort of gays and lesbians to consolidate and exercise collective political power by many years, simply by revealing the perception that they had any real power in this sphere to be nothing more than perception. It’s still possible to deride and degrade that population without consequence to the majority of Americans.
Which brings us to the second way the Obama/McClurkin strategy is illuminating; what it shows us to expect from Clinton’s sleaze offensive:
Nothing.
Sure, African Americans over the years have consolidated political power on a scale the GLBT community hasn’t come near, but at the end of the day, I can’t help but believe that prejudice is prejudice and bigotry is bigotry. In the final analysis, I suspect we’ll see that Clinton can fan the flames of racism to political advantage (or at least, without political disadvantage) as easily as Obama fanned the flames of homophobia. The rules of the fanning are a little different, but its a reminder of how far our society has to go that the straight, white majority in the Democratic Party still has those buttons that are so easily, readily pushed. Clinton’s slide in the polls will not accelerate from this charge. In fact, it may even begin to level off.
Much as we all like to pat ourselves on the back, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
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