Innoculation
by digby
“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”
Here’s their evidence, from Obama’s town hall meeting in Springfield yesterday:
So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.
The Obama campaign won’t make that mistake again, I’m sure. And I’m sure many people are happy to know that race will be off the table and McCain can dogwhistle his way in to office without any push back from anyone. Excellent work.
Keep in mind that this is just fine, however:
McCain pounded the Democratic presidential hopeful for opposing an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq — known as the “surge” — which has been credited with helping stabilize the country.
”When we adopted the surge, we were losing the war in Iraq, and I stood up and said I would rather lose a campaign than lose a war,” McCain told reporters.
”Apparently Sen. Obama, who does not understand what’s happening in Iraq or fails to acknowledge the success in Iraq, would rather lose a war than lose a campaign.”
Playing the unpatriotic traitor card is a-ok. Unless, of course, you say that being a POW doesn’t automatically qualify you to be president, in which case you are an unpatriotic traitor.
Good to know the rules are being laid down clearly so we know what is and isn’t allowed in this campaign. Republicans can say anything and Democrats have to pretend it isn’t happening. Some things never change.
And anyway, Obama can always dance on the head of pin:
Stipulating that McCain isn’t race-baiting doesn’t mean that Obama ought to refrain from recognizing that some people who might be inspired by his message might also be a little wary, a little prejudiced in the way that most of us are, a little confused about what this unusual guy is all about.
McCain isn’t race baiting. And campaign operations chief Steve Schmidt has told his communications staff that he will fire any campaign operative on sight who even thinks of trying to exploit racial prejudice. Democrats might be skeptical of this, but there’s no evidence to say otherwise.
Right. If Steve Schmidt says it, it must be true. And we’re all a “little confused about what this unusual guy is all about.”
Mum’s the word on the racism thing. Nothing more will be said on the subject. It doesn’t exist in this campaign. But the good news is that we do have permission to push back on the “Democrats are fags” stuff, which apparently has just been noticed by the members of the press:
Now, I didn’t go to a four year college NOT to assimilate some lessons about the semiotics of about gender and language. CBS News National Correspondent Dean Reynolds noted yesterday that the McCain campaign accused Obama of reacting to McCain’s aggressiveness “with a mix of fussiness and hysteria.” Strike me down for noticing, and I usually hate to even think in these terms, but those words have gendered meanings. Reynolds:
It reminded those of us in the political press corps of the “Breck Girl” tag the Republicans stuck on John Edwards, or their slam against John Kerry: “He looks French.”
Republican campaigns frequently take this “wimp factor” tack — even against fellow Republicans. Remember Alexander Haig’s critical riposte to then Vice President George H.W. Bush during a debate in 1988. “George,” said Haig, “we didn’t hear a wimp out of you.”
It appears that in the latest rip on Obama’s “fussiness and hysteria,” the party of Larry Craig and Mark Foley seems to be trying to woo not only the male vote, but the “manly men” substrata therein.
Apparently the “Al Gore is practically lactating” line went right over their little heads.
But it’s great that the mainstream media have finally noticed this so that they can pretend they are sensitive to the semiotics in gender and language after they trashed Clinton for months. Better late than never, I guess. And it’s really convenient that they can do this without having to acknowledge that Obama is the first African American nominee and might just be subject to some acial-ray edjudicepray. (That could never happen in America!)
Update: The campaign responds.
“Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they’re using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he’ll continue to talk about.”
.