Letters to the Editor
jtanneru
Published Letters: 59 Editor's Choice: 1
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The Victim Card
[Read the article: Who's playing the race card?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Race is a big issue in this campaign, and Obama would be silly to ignore it. By now, everyone's seen the email smears, along with the unending coverage of scary black nationalists, and the claim that 98% of blacks will vote for Obama. The latest noise about rapper Ludacris underlines the importance of race in the campaign. The fact that Obama is the first African-American nominee of a major party automatically makes race an issue.
Obama could have been more careful about not conflating the "they" who will "try to scare you" with the McCain campaign, but is anyone ever that careful? If my crazy mother-in-law sends an email claiming that Obama got into college through Affirmative Action, does it really matter that my mother-in-law doesn't work for John McCain?
If KateTex and SaltonTheDog aren't paid by the McCain campaign to troll the Salon comment pages, does it really mean we can't call them shills for McCain? Aren't they ultimately part of the "they"?
My mother-in-law actually claimed to be unsure of who she supported for President, but opposes Obama because "there's something scary about him" (she's a real piece of work, that one). Should Obama ignore the racists who are actively campaigning against him because they are not employed by McCain's campaign?
Now that Obama has conflated McCain into a larger "they" who will "try to scare you," McCain accuses Obama of playing a race card. What McCain is really doing is accusing Obama of claiming a privileged victim status. He's accusing Obama of wanting a "pass" (as Joan might call it) from the voters because he belongs to a historically victimized group.
This accusation will resonate very strongly with conservatives, who make accusations like this all the time. It is a staple of the conservative movement, which has opposed affirmative action, trial lawyers, and welfare with the same accusation. Conservatives will take any opportunity to vilify the victim, for complex reasons that would be worthy of a discussion of their own. My theory about that can be summarized by saying that empathy for victims runs more toward an argument for a communitarian ideology and away from a libertarian ideology. You can turn to God or charity in your time of need, but conservatives do not believe in taking any sense of entitlement to the public square.
So, when McCain accuses Obama of playing the "race card", he is playing a card of his own. The victim card. He is saying that Obama wants you to overlook his lack of qualifications because you feel empathy for his membership in a historically victimized group.
The "race card" card is in the same deck as the rest of the McCain campaign, and might work if voters buy into the rest of his game. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are notable (as Joan says) for being vacuous, not for being white. McCain is trying to reinforce the idea that Obama is a lightweight. It's a smart strategy, because he clearly is not. Obama is a constitutional scholar. He has 300 foreign policy advisors. He was able to impress a collection of world leaders. He is eloquent and charismatic.
But the McCain camp wants you to believe that all he offers is charisma and victim status.
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@jebldmm
[Read the article: Who's playing the race card?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are making my point for me (without meaning to, I'm sure). Do you really imagine that people will vote for Obama because they feel sorry for him? If his "tolerance" of outrage on the part of his subordinates helped him at all in the primaries it was because Clinton's negative campaign changed peoples' opinion of Hillary, not because people held Obama to a lower standard.
And I'm not even sure it helped him all that much anyway. By the time Hillary really started to attack Obama (a tactic that helped her with the "white working class" demographic, by the way) she was too far behind to catch Obama. People I know who changed their opinion of Hillary did so because they didn't believe her tears in New Hampshire, not because Hillary went negative. Their argument against Hillary was much like your argument against Obama. They say Hillary wanted people to feel sorry for her.
Anyway. This "reverse discrimination" stuff doesn't scare me nearly as much as so many of the people who make the argument. I don't know anyone who was actually denied a job because of a racial set-aside, although I have met some people who claimed to have been. If John McCain loses this election, it will not be because the American people decide that a black President would be a good reparation for slavery and Jim Crow.
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Where's Obama?
[Read the article: McCain's Bush-ectomy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obama's been sitting on his hands since he came back from Europe and I don't understand why. He is in danger of making the same mistake Kerry made by taking August off and allowing his opponent to control the news cycle.
Obama needs to hit McCain hard and often with quotes of McCain supporting Bush's failed policies, votes where he supported Bush's failed policies, juxtapositions of flip-flops, quotes of him defending the president's mistakes.
Obama needs to make the case to the American people that Republicans are the problem, not just Bush. Voters will be unwilling to take a risk with Obama unless they are convinced that McCain is a continuation of Bush.
The clips are out there. The Obama campaign needs to start showing them on tv.
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Nonsense
[Read the article: I'm so bored with O-B-A-M-A]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The subjects of the poll are hearing "too much" about Obama because BOTH candidates are talking about Obama. As some posters here have already said, much of the coverage they are seeing is negative.
McCain is trying to define Obama, and so is Obama. Of course the public is feeling a little Obama overload.