Race Race: The Final Lap

As his campaign dances at the edge of the subject, John McCain shies away but it is the Obama campaign that is confronting the racial issue directly.

After John Lewis' blunderbuss approach backfired last weekend, it is AFL-CIO leaders who are encouraging "blunt face-to-face encounter(s) to deal with those who say they can't support the Democratic presidential nominee because of the color of his skin."

In Ohio, the president of a government workers' union tells a rally: "(I)t comes out like this: 'I can't vote for him because he is a black man. He's not one of us.' Well, sisters and brothers, when you hear that, you know what you ought to say? This is what I say: 'That is bullshit! That is total, absolute bullshit!'"

The AFL-CIO campaign will make 70 million phone calls to union households in key presidential and congressional battlegrounds and mail 25 million pieces to rebut rumors that Obama isn't a Christian, wasn't born in the United States or was sworn into the Senate with his hand on a Quran. (Mailings show Obama being sworn by Dick Cheney, his hand on a Bible.)

Meanwhile, McCain dithers about race, joining in the William Ayers attacks but dodging questions about hitting Obama with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as less fastidious conservatives like Tucker Carlson are urging him to do.

At tomorrow night's debate, the subject is sure to come up and both candidates will have a chance to drag it out into the open once and for all.

"Because He's Black"

With Hillary Clinton's chances fading, the issue of race is boiling to the surface, as it did in West Virginia and will again in Kentucky tomorrow.

Last night on PBS, Bill Moyers quoted one of last week's voters telling a BBC interviewer why Barack Obama can't win the White House: "Because he's black."

"There it was," Moyers pointed out, "no longer a whisper but out in public, on the record: Because he is black. The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in this election...We heard it all week and now the political world is asking: Could the candidate who has won more votes, more states and more delegates lose in November and could the reason be race?"

Ugly as the question is, it will be asked and answered between now and November, but what it says about America, regardless of whether Obama wins or loses, is something we all need to know.

How deep does the prejudice go? As he loses two border states, Obama drew 75,000 people in Oregon yesterday, a huge crowd that brings back visual memories of Martin Luther King in Washington over 40 years ago making his "I have a dream" speech.

The New York Times reports Obama's reaction: “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

"It is 'fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd' of his campaign, he told the audience."

Obama is living out King's dream this year, but how will it end? In a replay of yesterday's heartening spectacle or as a nightmare in the darkest part of the American heart silently voting its fears and prejudices in the solitude of ballot boxes in November?

The Wright Reason

If tonight's Indiana and North Carolina results keep Hillary Clinton's hopes alive, as they may well do, much of the blame will be heaped on Jeremiah Wright's outrageous performance of a week ago.

But Obama's inability to win over blue-collar white voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania predated that, and the nagging question is how much the Wright blight is an excuse rather than a reason for rejecting him. With all the hope Obama has aroused in younger and better-educated voters, how much counterbalancing fear has he been unable to quell in less secure segments of the electorate?

No amount of shirt-sleeved stumping in coffee shops, at gas stations and in union halls may be enough to dispel the sense of his "otherness" to voters who feel their security threatened by foreign competition and other outside forces. Will they trust their familiarity with the Clintons over the promises of an African-American not as well-known to them and with shady associations to boot.

If Obama falls short tonight, it may signify more than the embarrassment brought on by his former pastor and his tenuous ties to a former Weatherman.

As David Brook points out, the "contrast between combat and composure defines the Democratic race. The implicit Clinton argument is that politics is an inherently nasty business...You’d better elect a leader who can intimidate...

"Obama’s campaign grows out of the longstanding reform tradition. His implicit argument is that politics doesn’t have to be this way. Dishonesty and brutality aren’t inevitable; they’re what gets in the way."

The underlying irony is that voters' fears may be drawing them to Clinton's combativeness rather than Obama's promises of peaceful progress. If that turns out to be the case, it will be a sad reflection of what we failed to learn from the Bush years.

The Code-Word Campaign

How many Americans will not vote for Barack Obama because of his race? Never mind all the smoke screens about his elitism, "inexperience," and "associations" with Jeremiah Wright and a Weatherman of the 1970s, the bedrock fact is that, among voters supporting Hillary Clinton--white blue-collar workers, older people and the less-educated--are some who would never cast a ballot for an African-American.

In primary after primary, she has won these demographic groups by huge margins that defy explanation by differences between the candidates on issues that matter to them. If anything, Obama's history of organizing and empowering the poor in Chicago should give him an edge.

No polls will quantify such prejudice, because those who harbor it won't talk to strangers about their politically incorrect feelings and the talking heads on TV are constrained, not only by the lack of evidence but their own self-consciousness about discussing it directly.

In the New York Times yesterday, Adam Nagourney finally asked the questions: "Why has he been unable to win over enough working-class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination? Lurking behind that question is another: Is the Democratic Party hesitating about race as it moves to the brink of nominating an African-American to be president?"

The answers were evasive. “Race is intertwined with a broader notion that he is not one of us,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, which has studied voter attitudes toward Obama. “They react negatively to people who are seen as different.”

A senior strategist for Hillary Clinton said that, while race may have had a role in Obama’s Pennsylvania loss, his big problem was his image of "being out of touch."

Different, out of touch, naïve, elitist, a bad bowler--take your choice of rationalizations, but it would be healthier for the body politic if, for the rest of the primaries and in the general election, the question of race was openly and directly addressed.

That won't change die-hard racists, but it might force some voters to open their minds and examine their prejudices. Whether Obama wins or loses, that would be good for America.