Concerning the Cards
I think Yglesias is right when he says that the attacks McCain has launched on Obama – that he’s insubstantial and flighty (like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears) – are quite similar to standard GOP attacks on Democratic candidates (wind surfer! looks silly in a tank!). He’s also right to say that whether or not these ads have some sort of racial subtext (again, debatable) is a self defeating response. As excited as many Americans are about have a black president, they are not particularly excited about having their subconsciouses explored for hidden racial bias.
I think we can all speak from experience that the first reaction to being called a racist, especially in the type of “you’re not openly a racist, but you have implicit biases and stereotypes embedded in how you see black people” that people are imputing on these McCain ads, is to get defensive. For Rick Davis, the next move is to get self righteous and start accusing Obama of “playing the race card.” Now, the truth of these accusations, by either camp, don’t really matter. What matters is that the McCain campaign is able to effectively get the meme out there that Obama is trying to guilt people into voting for him and will also try to bracket off any criticism as racially biased. This really doesn’t work well for Obama. All the people who are likely to believe that McCain’s ads have insidious racial subtext are voting for him anyway, and everyone else really doesn’t want to vote for a black candidate that reminds the voting public that he’s black.
I think the Obama campaign gets this, and we’re probably unlikely to see even the slightest hint of them “playing the race card” for a good long while. Now, if they could be a bit more agressive with pointing out that all of McCain’s economic policies stand to benefit filthy rich people like him, that McCain seems to have no problem lying about his opponent and that he has policies no one agrees with, I’m pretty sure we’d all be better of.
