(Cross-Posted at dailyKos)
Sean Wilentz created a big teapot in a tempest around here with his New Republic piece Race Man, in which he blames Barack Obama for all of the racial division in the Democratic primaries. This article has become a rallying point for many Clinton supporters in advancing this claim, partially because no one else has taken up the cry. At the time I, and many others, pointed out that it was poorly documented, relied on argument by assertion and circular logic, and in no way proved its point. Since that, the article has largely fallen into obscurity except among people who occasionally trot it out along with other tired charges.
But now Wilentz is back, with a much more succinct and updated version of the same attack, Obama was the first to play the race card. The New Republic piece at least had the virtue of being poorly circulated outside the blogosphere, but this piece ups the ante by reaching for wide circulation in a state with an upcoming primary.
The piece itself is, if anything, more poorly constructed than the New Republic article. But it is clearly well written; Wilentz has put the words together well to promote the agenda he's promoting, and someone reading with an uncritical eye may be tempted to believe some of his assertions. Thus, this diary: to point a critical eye at Wilentz' Philadelphia Inquirer piece and point out the numerous problems therein.
On the issue of who has played the race card, Wilentz is betraying his role as a loyal Clinton supporter (which he is, openly) and throwing everything else to the winds. He's got great credentials, though -- intimidating ones: a well-respected Professor of History at Princeton. And I, a relatively-anonymous blogger, am going to take on his analysis?
Well... yes. I am. I don't believe the quality of either piece lives up to that standard that I would expect from a Princeton professor in the first place. In the second, I think to some extent his problems stem precisely from being a professor of History.
The core of Wilentz argument is this:
Obama's supporters and operatives, including his chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, seized on accurate and historically noncontroversial statements and supplied a supposedly covert racist subtext that they then claimed the calculating Clinton campaign had inserted.
If one accepts this without challenge then of course the battle is lost. Wilentz presents it as a statement of fact, does not present any argument for the reasonableness of the standard here, and seldom even discusses whether the remarks in question even meet his standard.
But let's examine the standard Wilentz creates here: that "accurate and historically noncontroversial statements" is a meaningful standard to apply to statements in determining if they have a racist subtext. This is especially important because Wilentz never again examines subtext on the part of the Clinton campaign (including surrogates, backers, etc), but merely assumes that there was not any subject. This standard betrays his biases as a Professor of History. When discussed among professors, or perhaps even between a Princeton professor and his students, one can perhaps assume there is no subject in making an accurate statement that his historically noncontroversial, because good faith on both sides is implied. But we're not discussing professorial statements here, we're discussing political statements.
Here are several examples of statements that are "accurate and historically noncontroversial". Please note up front that I think all three are inappropriate and have severely negative connotations, and do not subscribe to any of them -- but that's entirely the point here. Also, I'm bringing in sexism for purposes of illustration, since it may help people who are more sensitive to those connotations spot the problem with Wilentz' standard.
All three are accurate, in a broad sense of accuracy. Surely no one believes that Hillary Clinton could have moved to New York, a state with which she had no ties, and win a Senate seat with no prior history of elective office, were she not a nationally known figure due to her years in the White House. Such a statement on its face does not denigrate Hillary Clinton; it is merely a historically accurate observation. But I can't imagine any Clinton supporter not being outraged at the connotations of such a statement (rightfully so). The word "only" is stealthily hiding right before "because" in that sentence, and even without writing it a lot of people will hear it just as if it were there.
The second two are even less controversial. They're both carefully phrased as historical facts, accurate and in no way controversial as matters of history. Yet if a Clinton supporter uttered the second, or an Obama supporter uttered the third, there would be massive uprising within the opposing camp, and again rightfully so. In both statements, there is an implied inference of "the good old days", there is an implied inference of who might be uppity, or which woman should be getting herself to a kitchen.
The fact that a statement is "accurate and historically noncontroversial" does not prevent them from having a covert racist (or sexist) subtext, does not prevent them from acting as race-baiting remarks aimed as the racist voter, does not prevent them from being offensive. Wilentz presents it here to create for himself a very convenient rug under which to sweep anything that might be legitimately offensive. But it's an extremely poor standard, and must be rejected in order to have any real discussion of the injection of race into the campaigns.
Getting into the meat of the argument, Wilentz presents Shaneen thus:
In December, Bill Shaheen, a Clinton campaign co-chair in New Hampshire, wondered aloud whether Obama's admitted youthful abuse of cocaine might hurt him in the general election. Obama's strategists insisted that Shaheen's mere mention of cocaine was suggestive and inappropriate[...]
The context is key here. Merely questioning Obama's drug use as a possible issue is clearly fine. But questioning Obama as a possible drug dealer? Would that question have been raised about GWB had he admitted to using cocaine? Was there any rumormongering about Bill Clinton selling the marijuana that he "never inhaled"? Can anyone point out an example of a white politician who admitted to the use of drugs in earlier years, but then reformed, being painted by a supporter of the opposing candidate in a primary as a possible drug dealer?
Whether or not this was a racist statement, whether or not Shaheen intended to infer that AA's are more likely to be drug dealers, more likely to be perceived as drug dealers, etc., will never be known. But there is no question that it could be legitimately perceived as a race-based attack. On its face it is a far more offensive attack than, say, Samantha Power's "monster" comment; "monster" is a very poorly defined term that means many things to many people. "Drug dealer" and an implication of drug pusher is another thing altogether.
Wilentz then very briefly attacks "pundits partial to Obama", which is really irrelevant to which campaign played the race card when. I will note, as briefly as he did, that there's no firm evidence either way as to what NH voters did or did not do, except that exit polling very clearly differed greatly from the election results.
Wilentz then moves on to Jesse Jackson, Jr:
Next morning, Obama's national co-chair, Jesse Jackson Jr., cast false and vicious aspersions about Hillary Clinton's famous emotional moment in New Hampshire as a measure of her deep racial insensitivity. "Her appearance brought her to tears," said Jackson, "not Hurricane Katrina."
Here, in my opinion, is where Wilentz is correct, rather like the proverbial stopped clock that is right twice a day. I believe that Jesse Jackson, Jr was and is very upset with the government response to Katrina; however, he was out of line in linking Clinton's NH tears to her supposed lack of tears after New Orleans.
But then we get to the MLK/LBJ flap. Wilentz frames it thus:
Obama's backers, including members of his official campaign staff, then played what might be called "the race-baiter card." Hillary Clinton, in crediting both Lyndon Johnson as well as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Civil Rights Act in 1964, had supposedly denigrated King, and by extension Obama.
Here we have a supreme example of completely avoiding any context and presenting only a part of the story. As presented by Wilentz, this can be slid under the "accurate and historically noncontroversial" rug. But there are a number of problems with this.
First, it ignores the context of the remarks. Hillary Clinton wasn't giving a lecture on the relationship between LBJ and MLK, she was presenting a campaign argument. What was the nature of her campaign argument? That Obama was "just words" and she was action. Her oft-stated meaning behind "just words" prior to this speech was that "just words" was the opposite of action, was meaningless puffery that got nothing done, would and could accomplish nothing. By using the MLK/LBJ connection in this particular context, she linked MLK to being "just words", not in the historically accurate context of being movement leader, swayer of public opinion, builder of consensus, but in the 2008 Clinton campaign context of being a windbag who couldn't get anything done if he wanted to.
Second, it's not accurate; LBJ himself noted that without MLK's "just words" there would have been no movement, no legislation, no civil rights. One can argue that they were necessary partners, but Clinton wasn't doing that. She was advancing her "just words" argument, which denies the very importance of movements in creating change.
It boggles the mind of many that Hillary Clinton could possibly not have known that, in making a "just words" attack on Obama, that implying MLK was a speaker of "just words" and LBJ was the hero for implementing change would be offensive to many. It's simply patently unbelievable. She's far too smart to have, for a second, believed that AA's wouldn't see this as a denigration of Dr. King and his legacy. She could've chosen some other great speaker, one with limited political accomplishments, to use in that argument, but in choosing Dr. King, she either was mind-bogglingly unaware of the context in which her words would be heard, so arrogant that she believe it wouldn't matter, very snidely playing to the white racist vote, believing (correctly) that she had already largely lost the AA vote, or putting a statement out there that she knew would draw outraged responses for the purpose of later claiming that her opponent had played the race card.
Could anyone possibly have been surprised that the AA community was outraged? Could it possibly have come as a surprise? About one minute of even vague thought on the matter from anyone who knew the least bit about the reverence that Dr. King is held in by the AA community would've told just about anyone that this is exceedingly dangerous ground into which to venture, and that perhaps a different analogy would be a far better idea.
I'm skimming over both Bill Clinton's remarks in SC and the "traditional garb" flap, because they're neither clearly in either category. For Bill Clinton's remarks, one can argue with some reasonability that those are accurate and historically accurate, or one can believe them to be a put-down. For the "traditional garb" flab, at worst the Obama campaign did a far more mild version of what the Clinton campaign did in running TV ads denouncing Obama over NAFTAgate -- advancing an argument that seemed potentially true at the time, but was later proven to be false. In both cases, the Obama campaign's reaction can at least be understood as reacting to a legitimately perceived pattern of subtle race-baiting attacks on the Clinton campaign's fault, whether such attacks were intentional or merely accidental.
Wilentz then goes on to Ferraro:
Finally, David Axelrod trumpeted Geraldine Ferraro's awkward remarks in an obscure California newspaper as part of the Clinton campaign's "insidious pattern" of divisiveness.
It's also a stretch to attribute them to merely an "obscure California newspaper". Her remarks were first made before a local group. When that failed to attract any attention, she then took them to the newspaper; the author of the newspaper article made it clear that she jumped into those remarks out of the flow of the article and was very insistent that they be included. Nor did they end there; once the controversy exploded she repeated them again and again, going so far as to taking them onto right-wing talk radio.
The rug here isn't at all adequate to Wilentz' task for it. Ferraro's remarks are not "awkward"; she said what she meant and meant what she said. They're not solely in an obscure California newspaper; that was merely their launching point. It would be far more fair to characterize Rev. Wright's sermons as having been "awkward remarks on an obscure website" than it is to use such a description for Ferraro's remarks. Rev. Wright never took his sermons to the mass media in an attempt to gain distribution for them, after all.
Wilentz also betrays a baffling inability to either count or read, in mentioning that Obama linked Wright to Ferraro "three times" in his speech. Ferraro is mentioned one time, and the context is to absolve her of being a racist in her heart. He then repeats, without context, Obama's comments about his grandmother, without making it clear that Obama was saying that "typical white people" are not racists, and that when they cause interracial offense it is not from racism or bigotry but from lack of information and non-racist habit.
He then makes a last foray into the "tone-deafness" of the Obama campaign in recent days. Thus, we're supposed to believe that a campaign that has so very cleverly played the race card in such a way that they are to blame for all the racial divisiveness, no matter that they didn't make any of the remarks that are controversial, no matter that they didn't start Ferraro on her mission, no matter that they have been entirely gracious to both Ferraro and Clinton on the issue -- that this so very clever campaign has suddenly and unaccountably gone entirely tone-deaf on race for no reason whatsoever.
It is also worthwhile to note that, besides attempting to sweep inconvenient things like facts, evidence, and context under the rug, Wilentz also ignores the race-baiting attacks aimed at Obama for his use of common idiom in speaking to groups in Mississippi, ignores the race-baiting of Clinton surrogates such as Bob Kerrey, Ed Rendell, and Adelfa Callejo, ignores the pattern of Clinton phonebankers who have claimed Obama to be a Muslim (mine you, on this point I don't blame Clinton or her campaign in any way, except perhaps poor training -- but for the Obama campaign to be upset by it is entirely understandable).
It also ignores the blatant race-baiting by Clinton surrogates in Texas, where on repeated occasions statements were made that "Obama has the problem that he happens to be Black", "When blacks had the numbers, they didn't do anything to support us [Latinos]", and that "the Hispanic voter [...] has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates". These statements were defended by the campaign as being "historical statements" (rather similar to Wilentz smokescreen). In fact, these are not historical statements. There are numerous examples of AA politicians in Texas who have run very strongly with Latino voters, and there are numerous examples of AA politicians who have very well served their Latino constituents. Is the Obama campaign also to be held accountable for these instances of race-baiting?
Making it clear once again: I'm not arguing that Hillary Clinton is a racist, nor that her campaign is collectively racist. I do believe that it's clear that some examples of racist language and race-baiting have come out of her campaign, and that there are many more examples of language which invites legitimate response from the Obama campaign than there are examples in which the response was overblown.
Attempting to just sweep every triggering Clinton-affiliated statement under the rug of "accurate and historically noncontroversial" totally ignores context and meaning, inference and smear, and justifiable displeasure and outrage; further ignoring the history of some remarks makes them seem far less offensive than they were; and ignoring a great number of incidents paints the picture that all of those that might perhaps be swept under the rug are the sum total of the incidents that exists. Just as Wilentz overestimates Ferraro's representation in Obama's speech, he also undercounts the number of incidents, and ignores many that are entirely indefensible.
Wilentz's argument is only sensible if you believe the premise -- if, as Wilentz argues, Obama is always the player of the race card. If you even grant for the purposes of argument that Obama isn't always the bad guy, that context matters, or even that an argument may not have been intended as racist or race-baiting but might be legitimately perceived that way by a listener sensitive to those things, the entire argument collapses like the rickety house of cards that it is.
While it's very much arguable which campaign was the first to use the race card, Wilentz is not the person to look to when making those arguments. His entirely one-sided and context-free explication of the events do no service to any real understanding of who did what when, and his attempts to sweep everything under a convenient rug may serve the interests of his candidate, but they do truth and logic no service at all.
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