Franklin Raines Meet Willie Horton

from NewsOne.com

LEFT OF BLACK:
The Financial Meltdown and John McCain’s Willie Horton
by Mark Anthony Neal

As his poll numbers have declined and the strengths he possesses on the issues of foreign policy take a back seat to the economic crisis, it’s no surprise that Senator John McCain has resorted to the time-tested strategy of fear-mongering. When not referring to Democratic opponent as “that one” and depicting him as the boogey-man who will come into your house late at night and steal the very air you breathe hasn’t been enough, the McCain campaign has created surrogates to make Barack Obama guilty by association.

The newest boogey-man on the block is Franklin Raines. And Senator Obama’s purported relationship with the former chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association), has been at the cornerstone of attempts by the McCain campaign to depict Obama as dangerous for the American economy.

Raines elevation to “boogey-man” follows a pattern we’ve witnessed where Senator Obama’s opponents use figures like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and former Weather Underground radical William Ayers to question his preparedness, his judgment and his integrity.

Why not? It worked for Republican nominee George Bush’s anti-crime presidential campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988, when a now-infamous television ad about a black felon named Willie Horton scared the living daylights out of white America.

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Race Card? John L. Jackson, Jr. Responds

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

Race Cards and the Race for the White House
by John L. Jackson, Jr.

McCain's camp went on the racial offensive this week, accusing Barack Obama of playing "the race card" in recent speeches and characterizing some of Obama's statements as "divisive, negative, shameful, and wrong."

The remarks in question pivot on Obama's claim that Republicans might attempt to engage in race-based and xenophobic fearmongering to win the election against him - that they might point out his foreign-sounding name and subtly remind voters how much he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on dollar bills" (a clear nod to his racial difference).

I've already commented on this kind of accusation before, when Dennis Miller went off on Obama for a similar statement back on June 20th.

Miller and McCain want to argue that Obama is calling McCain and the Republicans a bunch of racists and that unless Obama has explicit proof about some cabal of Republican strategists prodding people with explicit invocations of Obama's racial identity, he is disingenuously injecting race into the election for political gain.

I can see why they would make that case, but race was already a part of the election. It always is, even when a black candidate isn't running for office. So, invoking race explicitly isn't about introducing a foreign substance into the mix. It just recalibrates the nature of that inclusion.

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John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008), Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005), and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001).

Who You Calling Uppity?: A View on "Bitter-gate"

from Critical Noir @ Vibe.com

Obama Elitist? I'm Hearing Something Else
by Mark Anthony Neal

So in a recent conversation, Barack Obama tried a little too hard to make that connection between the disaffection of the white working class and the white poor, and their proclivity to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" as a way to make meaning of the diminishing returns of their lives. Guns and religion and "the other," the Senator from Illinois argued were the comfort foods of choice for many. The fact that Obama suggested that some folk in these communities might be tad bitter, should not in and of itself raise any eyebrows, but the speed and derision that the presumptive (I'm sick of this word) Republican nominee John McCain and New York Senator Hillary Clinton asserted that Obama's comments were "demeaning" and Obama, himself, out of touch, suggests that there is something else at play.

There's no small irony that two of the wealthiest members of the Senate would describe a former community organizer as out of touch. But McCain and Clinton's responses have nothing to do with the black and brown urban poor that Obama broke bread with in Illinois, but rather the white working poor and working class in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, where high-wage jobs are scarce and hope, increasingly even scarcer. I would argue that none of the candidates, including Senator Obama, are really in touch with what's happening in small town America.

For instance, look how middle-class Philadelphia suburbanites have suddenly become the charmed constituency in the forthcoming Pennsylvania primary. Indeed Senator McCain as recently as at three weeks ago argued vehemently that the Federal Government should not alleviate the financial woes of those in the very communities that Obama talked about, who are losing their homes in record numbers. Bitter? I bet more than few in those communities are bitter in response to the Federal Government's essential bailout of Bear Sterns.

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Is John McCain an Option? Two Views

If Limbaugh can register a protest vote for Hillary, why can't we look at the GOP?

Why Blacks Should Consider McCain
By William Jelani Cobb/TheRoot.com

The Clintons have thus far run one of the most underhanded and bitter political campaigns in recent history. And while there is no reason to suspect that they are racist, they are clearly willing to play upon the sympathies of whites who are--which is probably worse. This was evident by the twin "accidents" in which Clinton staff member Billy Shaheen and that pillar of the booty-shake community BET founder Bob Johnson attacked Sen. Obama for his youthful dalliances with drugs. Any lingering doubt about who they were playing to was erased when Bill Clinton essentially dismissed Obama's South Carolina victory by comparing it to Jesse Jackson's wins there in 1984 and 1988.

Apparently none of the high-profile black leaders who are backing Hillary Clinton have been able to prohibit the kind of cynical race hustling that marked the South Carolina primary. (This recalls the old saying that the problem is not that black leaders so often sell out, but that their asking price is so pitifully low.)

But in the wake of the Sister Souljah episode (not to mention Bill Clinton's stiff-arming of his black nominee for the Justice Department (Lani Guinier) and his short-lived Surgeon General (Jocelyn Elders) it must appear that there is nothing the black community won't forgive you for provided you show up at one of our churches and hum a spiritual every so often. As a matter of principle, no candidate, no matter how deep their alleged ties to the black community, should be allowed to race-bait a black politician and still receive the majority of our vote.

All this points to one clear – if unlikely – conclusion: if Hillary Clinton receives the Democratic Party nomination, African Americans should consider voting for John McCain. But before you fix your lips to call me a sellout consider this: Carter G. Woodson once remarked that any race that consistently gives its vote to one political party is asking to be taken advantage of.

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We don't have the luxury of a protest vote.

The McCain Option? Pul-eeze.
By Jack White /TheRoot.com

Feb. 8, 2008.

Memo to William Jelani Cobb.

Re: Your proposal that "if Hillary Clinton receives the Democratic Party nomination, African Americans should consider voting for John McCain."

Knee-grow, pul-eeeze!

Your column on The Root ranks as the most ridiculous political idea any Negro has put forth my since my brother-in-law decided to support Clarence Thomas on the grounds that, after all, he's a brother. So ridiculous, Dr. Cobb, that at first, I thought you were kidding… and I still hope that you were. But on the odd chance that you were serious—or that some people let themselves be swayed by your cockamamie idea—I thought I'd better inject some common sense back into the discussion.

The last thing black people need is to take your advice to emulate right-wing extremists like Anne Coulter, who claims she hates McCain so much she'd rather vote for Clinton. Even thinking about following that course is a self-destructive diversion. We've already wasted enough time this year on a Negrofied version of the medieval debate over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin: how many of us can buck-and-wing on the bi-racial chromosomes of Barack Obama? Now that we've finally got that settled and have thrown in behind the brother, there is absolutely no rationale for unearthing the age-old questions about our relationship with the Democratic Party. Way too much is at stake.

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