When “Just Words” Are All You’ve Got
By Bud White on May 30, 2008 at 4:39 PM in Appalachia, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Current Affairs, Electability, Electoral College, Elitism, Media, Media Bias, Popular Vote, Presidential Candidates, White People
by Bud White and Medusa
In 2001, Gene Lyons and Joe Conason, both respected journalists of the center-left, co-authored The Hunting of the President, a frightening look at the Right’s conspiracy to destroy the Clintons. However, it is more frightening still to realize that the neo-liberals are putting to use the same tactics to destroy Hillary. The RFK assassination “issue” comes to mind as a particularly ugly example.
Ironically, Lyons and Conason exemplify the split within the Democratic Party. Conason suggests that Hillary Clinton is channeling George Wallace (an analogy used here first but accurately applied to Obama), and he “worries” about this harming Hillary’s reputation. On the other hand, Lyons chronicles how Obama encourages the press corps’ anti-Hillary biases, and he warns of a split in the Democratic coalition.
In their book, Lyons and Conason show how the Washington press corps were accomplices in the Right’s plan to destroy the Clintons. Perhaps having learned from that analysis, now Conason uses the same straw man techniques to question Hillary’s motives. For example, when Hillary stated that Obama is having trouble winning the votes of blue-collar whites, Conason interprets her comments with this broadside:
What she should not ignore, however, is the damage that her increasingly reckless behavior is inflicting on her reputation and that of her husband — especially when she starts to sound like a reincarnation of the late George Wallace.
What Conason doesn’t address is that Obama does have a problem winning the votes of blue-collar whites. Conason is using the same rhetorical trick as Keith Olbermann and Markos Moulitsas, the trick where accusations of racism are treated the same as real racism.
However, as the Times pointed out the day after Hillary trounced Obama in West Virginia, she beat him because of her economic message, not because of racism:
Nearly two-thirds of West Virginia voters said that the economy was the most important issue facing the country, and they backed Mrs. Clinton by a margin of 2 to 1. About 9 in 10 voters say they were affected by the current economic slowdown, including nearly half who said they were affected a great deal. Mrs. Clinton was supported by about three-quarters of those most affected.
Obama bloggers screamed “racism” at the incredible rejection of Obama by West Virginia voters. However, as Paul Lukasiak shows, Obama once lead Hillary among white men by 4.6% but now trails her by 12.9%. It’s not Obama’s skin color which matters; that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the information the public has received about Obama, his associates, and the way he has conducted his campaign. For instance, the Obama campaign’s suggestion that Hillary is waiting for something unthinkable to happen to Obama.
Avoiding the pathos invoked by Conason, Lyons writes that low-income whites are attracted to Hillary because of her populist, patriotic message:
Every available poll shows that economics, health care and national security motivate such voters, not bigotry. Academic leftists have daydreamed about a winning coalition of African Americans and latte-sipping idealists since forever, but it’s never worked before, and there’s no reason to believe it can work [now].
Conason continues his rhetorical tricks of smearing the Clintons by praising the Clintons’ past stands on racial issues, and then bemoaning that:
the Clintons probably understand the essential evil of racism better than most white politicians. They have certainly done more than most of today’s white politicians to combat that evil. That is why, as they contemplate the conclusion of this campaign, they deserve better from themselves than to encourage doubt about their decency and character.
Juxtaposed to Conason’s straw man argument, Lyons calls out the media for their obvious bias:
But it’s not merely patronizing for the Washington media to have taken sides, it’s dangerous. By declaring an extremely close contest over, and by repeatedly questioning the motives, even the sanity, of Clinton and her supporters, they’ve led Democrats to ignore a big chunk of political reality.
The reality of which Lyons writes is the divisions which have arisen in this primary that constitute a culture war. During the rise of the evangelical movement, the culture wars involved the strictures of Christian Right versus the secular mainstream. Similar to that culture war, the one that is dividing the Democratic Party is based on differing values: the race-baiting ideology of the neo-liberals, including accusing the Clintons of racism against all contrary evidence, accompanied by sweeping allegations of racism directed at anyone not supporting Obama, versus the more progressive positions proposed by Hillary such as advocating solutions for our economic woes, universal health care, a livable wage, and being strong on national security issues.
To put it differently, in order to promote their far-left (but less progressive) agenda, Obama and his operatives participate in willful misinterpretation for the sake of accusation and slander, tools employed by the far Right and the media in the 1990s. They employ an intentional knee-jerk reaction to find fault and blame Hillary Clinton not because she’s wrong but in order to further their own agenda, primarily the acquisition of power and the expelling of blue-collar whites from the Party. Contrast this with Hillary’s supporters’ ongoing questions about Obama: we want to know who he is, what he has accomplished, and why someone would vote for him.
This is especially important because Obama has received fewer votes than Hillary and he is the weaker Democratic candidate, yet it appears that he is being forced onto Democrats even though they have soured to his candidacy. Anglachel describes the culture war in this campaign in these terms:
The actual political battle being fought this electoral year is whether or not the Democratic Party is willing to abandon its elitist politics of resentment against its own working class core and take that part of the population back from the Republicans…
If the anti-Clinton wing persists in the politics of demonization to the detriment of the party, they will be the ones left at the station as the Republicans drive off with the majority of the voters.
Conason and Lyons, once coauthors and now on opposite sides in this new culture war, epitomize this distinction: one fishes for blame and the other hunts for answers
by Ronald Scott
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