“Activating And Motivating The Base”: Racism Plays A Big Part In Our Politics, Period
If you haven’t read it, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a fantastic essay on Barack Obama’s relationship to race and racism in the latest issue of The Atlantic. There’s too much to quote, but this paragraph captures the thesis:
In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard.
The power and symbolism of Obama’s election is compromised by the extent to which his presidency has been shaped by white expectations and white racism. Obama can’t show anger, he can’t propose policies tailored to African Americans and he can’t talk about race. In other words, he can’t remind white Americans that their president is a black man as much as anything else.
At the risk of sounding cynical, I expect that Coates will inspire howls of unfairness from the right. It’s almost forbidden to discuss the role racism has played in shaping opposition to Obama. Conservatives dismiss such concerns as “playing the race card”—and use it as an opportunity to accuse liberals of racism—while more neutral commentators note that Bill Clinton also faced a rabid conservative opposition. But as Coates points out, no one called Clinton a “food stamp president” or attacked his health care plan as “reparations.” Local lawmakers didn’t circulate racist jokes about the former Arkansas governor, and right-wing provocateurs didn’t accuse Clinton of fomenting an anti-white race war.
Of course, race isn’t the reason conservatives oppose Obama, but it shapes the nature of their opposition. The right wing would have exploded against Hillary Clinton as well. But they wouldn’t have waged a three-year campaign to discredit her citizenship.
With that said, I’m honestly amazed that—for many people—it’s beyond the pale to accuse a political party of exploiting racism for political gain. We’re only 47 years removed from the official end of Jim Crow and the routine assassination of black political leaders. This year’s college graduates are the children of men and women who remember—or experienced—the race riots of the late 1960s and 70s. The baby boomers—including the large majority of our lawmakers—were children when Emmett Till was murdered, teenagers when George Wallace promised to defend segregation in perpetuity, and adults when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed for his belief in the humanity of black people.
Five and a half million Americans are 85 or older. In the years they were born—assuming the oldest is 110 (several thousand Americans fit that bill)—1,413 African Americans were lynched. And that’s a rough estimate; the number is almost certainly higher. For nearly a third of our country’s history, this was a common occurence:
Interracial marriage was illegal in large swaths of the country when Barack Obama Sr. married Ann Dunham.
Mitt Romney was 31 when the Church of Latter Day Saints allowed African American priests, and repudiated early leader Brigham Young’s pronouncement that “The Lord had cursed Cain’s seed with blackness and prohibited them the Priesthood.”
Nancy Pelosi grew up in segregated Baltimore.
Mitch McConnell was sixteen when his high school admitted its first black students.
Of course there are politicians and political parties that capitalize on racism. Why wouldn’t they? The end of our state-sanctioned racial caste system is a recent event in our history; more recent than Medicare or Medicaid, more recent than the advent of computers, more recent than the interstate highway system, and more recent than Social Security. Taken in the broad terms of a nation’s life, we’re only a few weeks removed from the widespread acceptance of white supremacy.
Race remains a potent way to activate voters and motivate them to the polls—see Mitt Romney’s current campaign against Obama’s fictional attack on welfare. To believe otherwise—and to see this country as a place that’s moved past its history—is absurd.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August 23, 2012
“Far Too Mysterious”: So Mitt Romney, What Do You Really Believe?
Too much about the Republican candidate for the presidency is far too mysterious.
When Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things. A year ago he favored keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35 percent to 28 percent for the richest Americans.
All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr. Romney could win an Olympic medal in it (see “Mitt Romney’s chances: The changing man”). And that is a pity, because this newspaper finds much to like in the history of this uncharismatic but dogged man, from his obvious business acumen to the way he worked across the political aisle as governor to get health reform passed and the state budget deficit down. We share many of his views about the excessive growth of regulation and of the state in general in America, and the effect that this has on investment, productivity and growth. After four years of soaring oratory and intermittent reforms, why not bring in a more businesslike figure who might start fixing the problems with America’s finances?
Details, details
But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper. The convention offers Mr. Romney his best chance to say what he really believes.
There are some areas where Mr. Romney has shuffled to the right unnecessarily. In America’s culture wars he has followed the Republican trend of adopting ever more socially conservative positions. He says he will appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court and back the existing federal Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA). This goes down well with southern evangelicals, less so with independent voters: witness the furor over one (rapidly disowned) Republican’s ludicrous remarks about abortion and “legitimate rape” (see “The Todd Akin affair: Grenades and stilettos”). But the powers of the federal government are limited in this area; DOMA has not stopped a few states introducing gay marriage and many more recognizing gay civil partnerships.
The damage done to a Romney presidency by his courting of the isolationist right in the primaries could prove more substantial. He has threatened to label China as a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency. Even if it is unclear what would follow from that, risking a trade war with one of America’s largest trading partners when the recovery is so sickly seems especially mindless. Some of his anti-immigration policies won’t help, either. And his attempts to lure American Jews with near-racist talk about Arabs and belligerence against Iran could ill serve the interests of his country (and, for that matter, Israel’s).
Once again, it may be argued that this will not matter: previous presidents pandered to interest groups and embraced realpolitik in office. Besides, this election will be fought on the economy. This is where Manager Romney should be at his strongest. But he has yet to convince; sometimes, again, being needlessly extremist, more often evasive and vague.
In theory, Mr. Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions (indeed, “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex). Mr. Romney began by saying that he wanted to bring down the deficit; now he stresses lower tax rates. Both are admirable aims, but they could well be contradictory: So which is his primary objective? His running-mate, Paul Ryan, thinks the Republicans can lower tax rates without losing tax revenues, by closing loopholes. Again, a simpler tax system is a good idea, but no politician has yet dared to tackle the main exemptions. Unless Mr. Romney specifies which boondoggles to axe, this looks meaningless and risky.
On the spending side, Mr. Romney is promising both to slim Leviathan and to boost defense spending dramatically. So what is he going to cut? How is he going to trim the huge earned benefits programs? Which bits of Mr. Ryan’s scheme does he agree with? It is a little odd that the number two has a plan and his boss doesn’t. And it is all very well promising to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care plan and the equally gargantuan Dodd-Frank act on financial regulation, but what exactly will Mr. Romney replace them with—unless, of course, he thinks Wall Street was well-regulated before Lehman went bust?
Playing dumb is not an option
Mr. Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: The faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: Nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?
It is not too late for Mr. Romney to show America’s voters that he is a man who can lead his party rather than be led by it. But he has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.
By: The Economist, Business Insider Contributor, August 25, 2012
“A Shared Tribal Identy”: Romney’s Birther “Joke” Wasn’t A Joke
After weeks of false attacks on welfare, Romney has lost the benefit of the doubt.
This afternoon, while campaigning in Michigan, Mitt Romney made a little joke about President Obama’s birth certificate: http://youtu.be/cht3bitxknI
Here’s the text:
I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised. Where both of us were born … No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.
Here’s the Obama campaign’s response:
Throughout this campaign, Governor Romney has embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them. It’s one thing to give the stage in Tampa to Donald Trump, Sheriff Arpaio, and Kris Kobach. But Governor Romney’s decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America.
Naturally, Team Romney is trying to stop this from becoming a national story, and the campaign has offered a variety of excuses why Romney made the joke. My favorite comes from Romney advisor Kevin Madden. “The governor has always said, and has repeatedly said, he believes the president was born here in the United States,” Madden said. “He was only referencing that Michigan, where he is campaigning today, is the state where he himself was born and raised.”
Right.
Now, it’s unquestionably true that Mitt Romney isn’t a birther. He knows that President Obama was born in the United States and is fully eligible to serve as President of the United States.
But that isn’t an excuse, it’s an indictment.
Romney’s problem, throughout this campaign, has been his inability to seal the deal with skeptical conservatives. In the primaries, this forced him to take far-right positions on issues like abortion and immigration—he endorsed personhood amendments and “self-deportation”—and in the general election, it has led him to make a huge gamble by choosing Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan—whose plan for Medicare plan and views on reproductive rights are widely unpopular—as his running mate. If Romney were confident in his ability to win the GOP base, he would have gone with someone more moderate. But as it stands, he needed a conservative ideologue on the ticket to show his fealty to the movement.
The birther joke is further evidence that Romney is uncertain of his standing with the Republican base. It’s clear from the video that this was an intentional move to establish a shared tribal identity, and—judging from their laughter and obvious approval—that’s how it was understood by the largely white audience.
A plausible objection to this view is that Romney wasn’t trying to make a dogwhistle—that it was a harmless joke which went awry because of a bad delivery. Indeed, to push back against the emerging outrage, some journalists noted occasions when President Obama made birther jokes, while others set this as the other side of Obama’s snarky comments about Romney’s infamous incident with the family dog.
A few thoughts.
First, the video strongly suggests that this wasn’t a joke. Romney assumes a certain demeanor when he is joking in public—”ingratiating” is the word that comes to mind—and this had more in common with the Romney of debates and speeches: cool, controlled and confident.
But even if it was a joke, it’s important to understand the context. For the last month, Romney has devoted his campaign to falsely accuse Obama of gutting welfare’s work requirements (“You wouldn’t have to work, and wouldn’t have to train for a job”) This claim has been debunked by independent fact checkers, pundits, and major news organizations.
In each instance, analysts have noted the extent to which this attack is meant to play on racial fears and resentments. Romney’s welfare ads are meant to conjure images of “young bucks” and “welfare queens,” and are a callback to Newt Gingrich’s declaration of Obama as a “food stamp president.” Romney’s line on welfare is a mainstay of his stump speeches, and has been deployed whenever he’s addressing a crowd of working-class whites. Romney’s victory depends on winning a huge share of the white vote, to do so, he’s decided to play the politics of white resentment in the most explicit way possible.
If this were a stray remark, I would be willing to give Romney the benefit of the doubt. But given the background and context, I simply can’t believe that Romney made a mistake with his birther joke. It fits too well with everything else he’s done.
Between birtherism, the accusations of illegitimacy and the constant recourse to racialized attacks, it’s hard to deny that there’s something ugly lurking beneath right-wing opposition to Obama. Mitt Romney, who seeks to represent the 300 million people of this country, has decided to unleash it.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August 24, 2012
“Serious As A Snakebit”: The Ryan-Romney Flim-Flam Ticket
Let’s talk budget! Yes, the wonky wonderland of the federal budget, with page after page of numbers — what fun, eh?
No. Most people would prefer a root canal to a budget discussion (indeed, I’ve heard that some dentists use a recording of budget numbers to anesthetize their root-canal patients — everything from the neck up quickly goes numb). But Paul Ryan is different.
The GOP’s vice presidential nominee is touted as Mr. Budget, a guy who gets excited by running his fingers through fiscal things. That’s why the Washington cognoscenti have declared him to be “serious,” rather than just another political opportunist riding the right-wing wave of tea party ridiculousness.
Being branded as “serious” means never having to admit you’re a flim-flam man. Thus, the widely ballyhooed Ryan Budget is called “honest” and “responsible” by insiders who obviously haven’t run the numbers on it.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, however, has tallied Ryan’s budgetary giveaways to the rich and take-backs from the middle-class and the poor. Far from balancing the federal budget, as the self-proclaimed deficit hawk claims, the analysts found that Ryan’s plan increases the federal deficit. And not by a little, but by about $2.5 trillion! So, yes, he is serious — serious as a snakebite.
Then there was Ryan’s explosive admission recently that the budget plan of his presidential partner, Mitt Romney, is also a con game. Despite Romney’s repeated assertion that — by golly — his nifty plan will balance the federal budget in only eight years, Ryan confessed that they don’t really know that, because “we haven’t run the numbers on that specific plan.”
Say what? What? Hello — a budget is nothing but numbers — numbers that have, in fact, been run! Otherwise, it’s just a political hoax.
During his run in the presidential primaries this spring, when he was trolling for votes in the shallow waters of the Republican fringe, Romney embraced the Ryan budget, calling it a “bold and exciting effort” that is “very much needed.” And, hoping to glom onto Ryan’s “wow” appeal to the hyper-energized right wing, Romney brought Mr. Budget onboard for the fall run — with one interesting condition: The veep candidate has had to jettison his budget.
That document, which Ryan had rammed through the U.S. House in 2011, would have provided another gold mine for the one-percenters, with millionaires-and-up averaging around $300,000 a year in tax breaks. The rest of us would’ve gotten the shaft, including tax increases, privatization of Medicare, deep cuts in student aid and job training programs, and federal abandonment of food stamps and health care for the poor.
Yet Ryan is on the Republican presidential ticket specifically because his budget whackery has enthralled the GOP’s far right. Anti-government guru Grover Norquist, for example, has gushed that the six-term Wisconsin congress-critter would be the Dick Cheney of economic policy. Sheesh — that’s not a threat to be taken lightly!
But the very bauble that got him to the GOP’s No. 2 political slot turns out to be so widely and wildly unpopular with voters in the deeper waters of the general election that it’s already been trashed by the party’s No. 1. “I have my own budget plan,” Romney backpedaled the day after he knighted Sir Ryan, “and that’s the budget plan we’re going to run on.” Yes, the budget with no numbers.
That aside, it’s kind of strange (and a bit unsettling) to see a candidate for president straining to explain that he’s the one in charge, not the young ideologue. Romney even went on national TV to tell us that, while Ryan would certainly be among the people he asks for advice, “I have to make the final call in important decisions.” Sure, Mitt — you da man! But was he trying to convince us … or himself? Or Ryan?
Embarrassingly, at the staged event where Romney introduced his VP selectee, he bungled his line, presenting Ryan as “the next president of the United States.” Was that just another Romney gaffe? A Freudian slip? Or an eerie moment of candor?
After all, Romney has no unwavering principles or solid commitment to any policy except, “Elect me, and I’ll lower my taxes.” Republican leaders are now trying to downplay Ryan’s extremism, but if they were honest with voters, their bumper sticker would read: “Ryan-Romney in 2012.”
BY: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, August 22, 2012
“Romney Throws A Hail Mary Pass”: Mitt’s Final Capitulation To The Right Wing
In a move somewhat reminiscent of Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, Governor Mitt Romney has put up his own Hail Mary pass in the effort to turn around a presidential campaign in decline and in need of a new storyline.
Romney has found that fresh storyline by confounding the experts and choosing Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan to be the Republican nominee for Vice President —a choice that is causing both liberal and conservative pundits, along with partisans on both sides of the political divide, to awaken to a very happy Saturday morning.
Reports had been circulating for days that conservative groups were pushing hard for the Wisconsin Congressman to be added to the ticket, despite concerns that Ryan’s views on such key issues as Medicare could cause the GOP to hemorrhage voters in some important, swing states.
Certainly, states like Florida and Pennsylvania, with their large population of senior citizens, will now become more difficult for the GOP nominees.
For committed conservatives, Ryan represents the best expression of their beliefs, values and the direction in which they would like to see the country go.
The choice also reveals Governor Romney’s final capitulation to the right-wing of his party and erases any hope that the GOP presidential candidate will attempt to move towards the center in the final days of the campaign. It’s an ‘all-in’ bet on the part of the Romney campaign—an effort to re-define their top-of-the-ticket candidate by hitching to the star of a number two with credentials far better defined than the boss.
History shows that such an approach is a risky gambit, rarely resulting in capturing the ultimate prize.
While conservatives will widely applaud the selection, Democrats have also expressed glee over the possible nomination of Paul Ryan, believing that he would put a right-wing, extremist face on the GOP ticket—thereby handing the Obama campaign an opportunity to paint the GOP as dangerous to the American middle-class and the poor.
While Ryan’s selection is reminiscent of McCain’s decision to do something dramatic as he saw his own prospects dimming, Paul Ryan is, to be sure, no Sarah Palin. There is little chance that Katie Couric is going to trip up the knowledgeable and intellectual Ryan with questions about the Congressman’s reading habits as you will likely find no better informed candidate than Mr. Ryan when it comes to matters of domestic policy.
The controversy that will likely arise from Ryan’s literary choices will come not from whether he is sufficiently well read but rather the choices he makes in reading material.
Paul Ryan is a known—and until recently—an avowed devotee of author Ayn Rand, the Russian-American moral philosopher and confirmed atheist who viewed government compassion and assistance for the poor as evil and destructive. Indeed, Ms. Rand is considered by the Cato Institute as one of the founders of American Libertarianism.
Ryan’s devotion to Rand’s perspective on government has been expressed in the Congressman’s own political philosophy—a philosophy that has made him a hero with American conservatives and libertarians. His commitment to Rand’s ‘greed is good’ outlook on life played a starring role in Ryan’s “Road Map For America”—a budget that converts Medicare into a voucher system that would result in senior citizens taking on a much larger portion of their health care costs and takes a hatchet to the social safety-net system upon which our poorest citizens rely so that taxes for the wealthy can be cut on the way to Ryan’s promise of getting our financial affairs in order in the year 2035 (a generation away).
Speaking at an event honoring the author in 2005, Ryan said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” Ryan would also use that occasion to call Social Security a “collectivist system” that fails to allow the laborer in America to become a capitalist.
Adding spice to what is sure to be a liberal onslaught on the issue of Ryan’s philosophical underpinnings is the fact that, earlier this year, Ryan was forced to flip-flop on his commitment to the Rand view of what America should look like when the Catholic Church took issue with the impact Ryan’s budgetary plans would have on the poor.
This past April, despite Ryan’s long held practice of giving away Ayn Rand’s books as Christmas presents and strongly suggested that incoming staffers in his employ read “Atlas Shrugged” and despite his remarks in 2005, Ryan announced:
I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas, who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.
Governor Romney’s decision to put Ryan on the ticket reveals his campaign’s deep concern that the election may be slipping away. Polls this week show Romney losing ground to President Obama, placing his campaign in a position where they had to do something and do it quickly.
Not unlike the dynamic that ensued following the choice of Sarah Palin, the anointing of Paul Ryan likely means that that Governor Romney will be forced to take a step back in prominence as Congressman Ryan—a rock star in his party—steps up to take on the substantive issues that will now become the focus of the battle.
And we all know how that worked out.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributor, The Policy Page, Forbes, August 11, 2012
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