Obama playing the race card
Everyone seems to have their knickers in a twist over the fact that Barack Obama pointed out that he doesn’t look like the old white dudes on US currency. Shockingly, this simple observation, having come from the mouth of a politician like Obama, is actually true (and painfully obvious).
Despite the obviousness of what is essentially a non-problematic statement, the McCain camp accuses Obama of “playing the race card,” which, when boiled down to its simplest terms, means that they believe he is guilty of pointing out that there are people other than white people in the United States. Whiteness, of course, works best when it is more or less the taken-for-granted norm with unspoken power. When someone points out that it exists, or that it wields a particular set of powered relations, well then that person is guilty of “playing the race card,” which is patently ridiculous.
Beyond all of that, it seems clear to me that this is yet another instance of professional Republican politicking. By putting out the notion that Obama is playing the race card, the McCain campaign is actually sending a signal to those white voters who are uncomfortable with the notion of a black man being president. The message is simple (and simplistic): it says, “Watch out, insecure white people. Here’s another one of those uppity blacks complaining that they have nothing, when they’re stealing our jobs with affirmative action.” With the economy more or less in the shitter these days, the twin hatreds of racism (towards blacks) and xenophobia (towards “illegals”) will redouble themselves to provide a convenient narrative for white failure and a new set of fears, which will almost certainly be played expertly by the Republican party.
Even if Obama somehow wins (I think the odds are significantly slimmer than they appear on paper because of covert racism that does not come out in polls) he’ll be hamstrung by a horrendous deficit left to him by GWB. He’ll face either a crippled government, or the prospect of raising taxes to pay for the things he’s proposing. This leads to an ugly self-fulfilling prophecy in which the Republicans will be proven right when they say that Democrats are “tax and spend liberals,” and that government is grossly inefficient at providing services. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that Republicans generally hire smarter (and more evil) strategists than the Democrats.
