Obama must confront McCain and turn the tables on him because of his campaign’s use of Atwater/Rovian, racially-coded attacks.
The McCain campaign has used them throughout the general campaign and they are becoming more brazen and more obvious and more vicious.
The latest example is the ad that features an image of a slack-jawed, Steppin Fetchit-like Obama with the word, “disrespectful” splattered next to him. The ad explicitly states that Obama has been “disrespctful” towards Palin. “Disrespectful” like a slave is disrespectful to his mistress.
Everyone – except apparently supposedly sharp pundits – understands what this image is supposed to evoke.
When one factors in the reality of two Republican members of Congress either calling Obama “uppity” or using that term, it is clear what is going on.
The subtext of the entire McCain campaign is now clear: Obama is an unqualified, uppity nigger who just doesn’t know his place. And he’s been disrespectful to both white men and white women by virtue of having the temerity to contest this election. Palin and McCain, as good, hardworking white Americans, like most of “us”, should not even need to bother with this shiftless lightweight ingrate.
Obama has decided that he should not even touch the issues that McCain’s ads bring forward, out of fear of “bringing race” into the campaign.
In fact, the McCain campaign has set this line of attack up, and immunized themselves, by attacking Obama, previously, for “playing the race card”. By accusing him of “playing the race card” and by shamelessly lying and exploiting the issue, McCain has sent this message: don’t even think about raising any complaints about our handling of race in this contest or else we will go nuclear on you. And, with the help of our media enablers, we will turn the issue around so that it actually buries you.
And so Obama has shied away from any further discussion of race and its impact on the campaign.
I believe this is a fatally flawed response.
The only way that these attacks work is if people refuse to confront and defuse them. While I understand Obama’s hesitancy, I believe that a failure to openly and aggressively confront the issue and condemn McCain for bringing them forward will sink his campaign.
What is clear is this: McCain will stop at nothing…NOTHING to win the race. He has already essentially accused Obama of being a child molester. He has already presented ads that attempt to feminize and emasculate Obama. He has already presented an ad that shows an image of Obama, teeth bared and mouth open, immediately after showing images of powerful wolves on the hunt for the helpless white maiden, Sarah Palin. He has already presented Obama as a Steppin Fetchit lookalike. I absolutely believe that the McCain campaign will soon present ads that even more explicitly present Obama as a kind of rapist, a ravager of white women. (I think the “wolves” ad was designed to conjure up images, subliminally, of animalistic sexual ravaging.) The very explicit ads will come soon. I think they are trying to discern just how far they can go with the ads and still have plausible deniability when confronted by the media on the not-so-hidden messages.
So, ignoring the ads and the racially coded attacks is not going to stop them from coming fast and furious. By ignoring the attacks, it simply allows McCain the chance to run the entire gamut of possible attacks, with no negative consequence for his despicable tactic. And suffering no negative consequence, the ads will get bolder and more explicit. And more damaging. These attacks and the images they evoke are so powerfully enmeshed in the subconsciousnesses of the American populace that they could eventually eat away at his electoral base, like a cancer.
No, Obama must confront this tactic and he must do it quickly. And he must make McCain pay for the fact that he would sink this low.
He should bring together a rapid response team, comprised of Blue Dog Democrats and African-Americans.
Presenting a team of black politicians would be totally ineffective. That response team would immediately be met with skepticism and cries of, “What are you talking about?…” and “You’re imagining things!”.
A group of white, mainly southern politicians saying that they detect racially coded messages in the ads is an entirely different matter. Those politicians can authoritatively speak to the fact that they recognize the subtle messages in the ads. Those politicians can say, yes, we understand exactly what that ad is trying to say…
A team of mainly southern, white politicans, shoulder-to-shoulder with black politicians would be a powerful image and a powerful team with which to push back.
Anytime one of those ads emerged, the team – or segments of the team – could assemble and point out the racially coded message embedded in the ad and attack McCain for attempting to divide the country.
The only way that these attacks gain any traction is when people are silent and do not openly discuss the issues raised. Exposing the hidden messages, and attacking McCain for attempting to pollute the body politic with that slime, is the only way to handle these vile tactics.
