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Dave Zweifel's Plain Talk: Race not a factor? Think again

Dave Zweifel  —  8/27/2008 5:20 am

I was struck with just how much race could be a determining factor in this fall's presidential campaign during none other than a Major League Baseball game the other day.

While the crowd awaited the singing of the national anthem, two guys in the row behind me were discussing the Barack Obama versus John McCain contest.

"I'm a longtime Democrat," one fan told the other. "But I don't think I'm going to vote for a black man."

That brought a rejoinder from his friend, who, I'm glad to report, told him that was a "really ridiculous" thing to say.

Indeed, it may have been ridiculous, but there continues to be a concern that this worried-about-blacks Democrat is far from alone.

Charles M. Blow, the "visual" op-ed columnist for the Saturday New York Times, put together an interesting graphic recently in which he concluded that racism will be a major factor in November's vote. Blow, an African-American himself, wrote:

"According to a July New York Times/CBS News poll, when whites were asked whether they would be willing to vote for a black candidate, 5 percent confessed they would not. That's not so bad. Right? But wait. The pollsters then rephrased the question to get a more accurate portrait of the sentiment. They asked the same whites if most of the people they knew would vote for a black candidate. Nineteen percent said that those they knew would not. Depending on how many people they know and how well they know them, this universe of voters could be substantial. That's bad."

In other words, that baseball fan behind me might not admit to a pollster that he wouldn't vote for a black man, but he would confide his true feelings to his friend.

Other commentators attribute the puzzling disparity between Americans' views on major issues -- a sizable majority gives GOP stands a thumbs down -- and Obama's neck-and-neck poll numbers with McCain to a lingering racial fear.

U.S. News columnist Kenneth Walsh says many white working-class Americans, "worried about competition for their jobs and anxious about the future, seem to harbor vague fears that Obama will side too much with fellow African-Americans in setting policy."

What's more startling is the extent to which many in McCain's camp are going in an attempt to capitalize on these sentiments.

We saw that a couple of weeks ago when McCain himself accused Obama of "playing the race card" when Obama said the Republicans were trying to scare the electorate by saying "he doesn't look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and five-dollar bills."

Suddenly, it became a huge issue, fanned as usual by the national media and 24-hour cable, that Obama was insinuating that he was being singled out because he is black.

This all was engineered by the same operatives who were behind the blatantly racist Willie Horton ads in the 1988 presidential campaign and produced the racially charged TV ads that sent black candidates Harvey Gantt in North Carolina and Harold Ford in Tennessee down to defeat in 1996 and 2006 in races they were expected to win.

A black man might understandably worry that Karl Rove and the other below-the-belt political strategists will do anything to inject the race issue when the chips are down.

We're already seeing that as new attack books and accompanying whisper campaigns insinuate Obama will favor his race and, despite his denials, is really a closet Muslim.

Even here in Wisconsin we have the leadership of the state Republican Party "studying" how newly installed Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman beat incumbent Louis Butler, an African-American, earlier this year by appealing to blue-collar voters with a subtle racial message.

As Charles Blow concluded:

"Think racism isn't a major factor in this election? Think again."

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com

Dave Zweifel  —  8/27/2008 5:20 am