William Hogarth: Gin Lane
As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking,
and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.
–Charles Dickens, Hard Times
It is the morning after the morning after. Walls wobble like tattered sheets in a storm, your tongue sprouts hair, and your swollen head resembles an otherworldly alien. You don’t dare look in a mirror. But eventually you must.
I have touted the predictions that are right, so now it is time to also eat crow when they are wrong. Tuesday light in the lateness of the hour, I predicted Obama would narrowly win Texas. He narrowly lost it. I based my prediction on the high turnout of African American voters, whose precincts still had yet to be counted. They did not put Obama over the top. Not long after I went to bed, the networks called the race for Clinton.
What Went Wrong
So what went wrong? A review of the final exit polling data shows the reason. [A note to CNN: it would make things much easier if the data were in the same order for each state. Quite frankly the way it is now is just sloppy and inexcusable.] I had said that Obama would need to capture close to 90% of the African American vote to win. He only won 83%, a healthy margin, but not enough. In Georgia Obama won 88% of the African American vote, in Virginia 90%, and in Delaware 86%. A closer look at the Texas data shows the reason for the lower percentage: African American women only gave Obama 82% of their vote.
Demographically, this has become a gender and age conflict and one that may be difficult to repair. White women gave Clinton 60% of their vote. With women making up 57% of those voting in Texas, they provided Clinton with a cushion that was difficult to overcome. In both Texas and Ohio, Obama won the voters under 45; Clinton won those over.
Obama lost Texas or Ohio in part because he failed to turn out young voters. Clinton has consistently won with those over 65, which she did again in both states. In Texas 67% of those 65 and over voted for Clinton and made up 13% of those voting, compared with the meager 16% of those under 30 who voted. In Ohio, Clinton’s margin was even more lopsided–those over 65 comprised 14% of the vote with 70% of them going for Clinton while only 15% of those under 30 voted.
The Race Card
I’m going to hazard a theory for this that may get me in trouble, but I believe Clinton is winning these voters because of race. To back up this theory I cite studies that have been done of the racial attitudes of older Americans. The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding published a survey on racial understanding in 2005 that captured some of this. The most interesting response came to the question, “Hip Hop, as a cultural movement, has the power to bring diverse people together.” While 60% of those under 34 agreed, only 23% of those over 65 felt positive about Hip Hop. The Hip Hop Summit said this about the results of the survey:
The poll reveals a glaring finding that clearly demonstrates young people aged 18-34 are making up a Nu America and leading the country in bridging the cultural divide. In 4 out of 5 questions, this age group scored higher than the general population when it came to being sympathetic or sensitized to issues surrounding race and ethnic demographic changes.
The Summit also concluded:
Older Americans are in denial about ethnic changes and race attitudes in general.
Older Americans are unwilling to see the ramifications and realities of racism and discrimination.
This is not the only survey to focus on the racial attitudes of older Americans. In the 1999 book Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy, Martin Gilens observes:
Older respondents are less likely to view welfare recipients as undeserving but more likely to think that blacks are lazy. (p. 93)
A Pew Center study found the differences in racial attitudes by age so obvious they wrote:
The fact that younger Americans are more racially tolerant than their parents or grandparents is neither new nor revealing.
Racism and Turnout
If older Americans tend to be less tolerant, the $64 question that must be plaguing the Obama pollsters is whether this prejudice accounts for their higher turnout? It is an old truism that the elderly tend to vote in higher percentages than younger voters, but are they voting in higher percentages in 2008 than they have before?
In the 2006 Ohio Senate race, those over 65 made up 15% of all voters and in the Texas Senate race they made up 19% of all voters. In 2004, those over 65 composed only 12% of all Ohioans voting in the Presidential election and 58% of them voted for Bush. That same year voters over 65 comprised only 11% of the Texas total, narrowly voting for Bush by 52%
In other words, comparing the turnout of voters over 65 in the 2008 primary with previous elections fails to support the thesis that they are turning out in larger numbers than before. In fact, the voting patterns for all age groups in 2008 tend to follow those of previous years in Texas and Ohio. At least in those two states, the fabled Obama youth revolution failed to materialize.
My son, who is teaching in inner-city Washington voiced an interesting theory about that when I talked with him on the phone. He said it surprised him that he had not found more support for Obama among his younger African American students, but their explanations revealed a deep cynicism about America and the political process. It wasn’t that they didn’t like Obama; they just thought voting for him was a waste of time because white folks would never let him become President.
Implicit vs. Explicit Racial Appeals
In 2001 Tali Mendelberg wrote The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality, which has become the most recognized study about racial politics, mainly because Mendelberg provided data that racial politics is not dead but has merely put on a new set of clothes. Instead of coming in the overt garb of white robes carrying burning crosses and nooses, it now comes in a business suit that speaks in code.
What has become known as the Mendelberg model proposes that racial messages are most communicated most effectively when no one recognizes their meaning. (p. 4) Mendelberg noted:
Candidates can win by playing the race card only through implicit racial appeals. (p. 5)
Mendelberg cites welfare and crime as two issues that are often played for their implicit racial appeal. She also observes that implicit racial campaigns usually take place when a candidate faces a situation in which there is an advantage in mobilizing resentful white voters. Then comes a bombshell of a sentence, whose explosion echoes with what W.E.B. DuBois wrote a century ago:
Race is perhaps the central cleavage of American political life.(p.7)
Mendelberg’s study has since undergone further research by others. In a paper in the American Journal of Political Science, Gregory Huber and John Lapinski found that susceptibility to racial priming depends on factors such as class and education. They found the strongest priming effect took place among less-educated voters around the issue of–hold your breath here–government spending. Unfortunately this paper is available online only by subscription.
While I knew of the Mendelberg study, I had not seen Huber and Lapinski’s paper, but together they raise a host of questions about this campaign and Tuesday night’s results.
Race and the Tuesday Results
A key question lies at the center of this campaign–is Clinton’s “experience” tactic also an implicit racial appeal, Willie Horton in new clothes? Before I answer this, let me say that I do not believe either Hillary Clinton or her husband are racists. Their record on this is clear. When you inspire the friendship of someone like John Lewis, no one can call you a racist. In addition Clinton’s new campaign manager is an African American woman with a strong civil rights record. So unless some smoking gun surfaces, at this point the Clinton campaign cannot be accused of running a deliberate Willie Horton appeal.
But does the experience tactic itself play as an implicit racial appeal with certain groups, particularly those over-65 voters who have supported Clinton so strongly? The answer has to be a qualified “yes.” Remember this group thinks African Americans are “lazy.” When the Clinton Campaign circulates literature asking what has Obama done in his career, it cannot help but implicitly push that button.
Frankly if Clinton herself is no racist, some of her staffers have had no qualms about playing the race card. There have been several troubling racial incidents in the Clinton Campaign, the nastiest being the “Muslim Letter” that has been all over the Internet for some time. Perhaps the dirtiest trick since Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, the scurrilous charge has become so widely circulated that it appears as an automatic link when you type Obama into Google. While the origins of the letter itself are still obscure, a Clinton campaign staff member emailed it in the Iowa campaign, according to The Nation.
There also was the incident in which Billy Shaheen, the co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in New Hampshire, warned voters Obama might not be able to win in November because according to Shaheen Obama had used marijuana and cocaine. One of my favorite writers, Ari Berman, detailed a list of the Clinton campaign’s racial tactics in an excellent article in The Nation. Besides the incidents mentioned, Berman writes:
On December 13, Clinton’s top strategist, Mark Penn, appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and kept repeating the word “cocaine,” drawing a strong rebuke from Edwards strategist Joe Trippi and supporters of Obama.
“We’ve got to keep an eye on electability,” said a Clinton precinct captain in Cherokee, Iowa. “Is America ready for a black president?”
Then came the most recent incident when a Clinton campaign staff member circulated a photo of Obama in traditional African dress that also ended up all over the Internet.
The subject of the Muslim smear on Obama came up in an interview with Clinton that is now on YouTube. In a Sixty Minutes interview she was asked if she thought Obama was a Muslim, the coy look on her face says all you need to know.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7eAnx6Vxrs]
Amazingly few in the media or blogdom have asked the question, “Why is the Clinton campaign continually dogged by charges of playing the race card?” It is particularly interesting that these incidents have escalated during “must win” campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire and now in Ohio and Texas. So far staffers have taken all the hits for these despicable acts, but at some point when do you say it is the responsibility of Hillary Clinton to put a stop to this? At what point do have to conclude there are so many rotten apples that the entire campaign stinks? If Hillary Clinton wants to show she is not going negative or looking the other way when staff play the race card, she could start by firing Mark Penn.
Microtargeting Begs a Question
Mark Penn’s celebrated microtargeting begs that we take the question deeper. It would not take much for Penn to essentially do the same research I have done, then couple it with his sophisticated databases to craft an implicit message that plays the race card. In fact, if his microtargeting is working the way it is supposed to, he HAS to know the connection between race and older voters, race and blue collar voters, race and the less-educated. The fact he dropped the cocaine word last December suggests he knows exactly what he is doing.
But it is another finding of the race card studies that is more unsettling. Huber and Lapinski suggest that, at least with some voters, the Republican’s attacks on government spending have a racial resonance. If implicit appeals work, then the mere presence of an African American candidate along with this perennial GOP tactic could make the November election particularly nasty.
This also may also explain why exit polls among Democrats show some doubts about Obama’s chances in November and why Clinton supporters in particular seem adamant about not voting for Obama if he is nominated. Twenty-nine percent of Ohio voters and 28% of Texas voters–almost one third–said they would be satisfied only if Clinton wins. Only 23% and 24% respectively said the same thing about Obama.
The Rove Factor
George Bush won and held on to the Presidency by driving wedges between the American people, a tactic that came straight from Mr. Wedge himself, Karl Rove. A Rove campaign focused on turning out your base by appealing to their fears, often racial fears. The idea was to scare them into voting by painting some apocalyptic scenario of what would happen if the opponent wins.
Last month I termed Mark Penn a Karl Rove-wannabe. It appears now he is more than aptly filling that description. George Bush is in the White House because of a particularly nasty–and racially-charged–campaign Rove ran for him in South Carolina against John McCain. It appears Mark Penn has learned Rove’s lessons well, so much that 2008 is beginning to resemble that South Carolina campaign. Penn has managed to do something no one thought possible–in a year when it looked like the Democrats were going to walk through the White House door, Mark Penn has driven a wedge through the Democratic Party that would make Karl Rove proud.
It is important that the blame for split in the Party be placed where it belongs, for while Barack Obama has tried to run a positive campaign, Mark Penn and Hillary Clinton have revived the nastiness of the 1990s. Maybe that was inevitable, after all, that’s when Clinton received her “experience.” People also forget Bill Clinton has played the race card, most notably with his Sister Souljah remarks in the 1992 campaign.
Unfortunately the losers of Penn’s wedge politics and negative ads will be the American people and the Democratic Party. A Clinton-McCain battle with Mark Penn in the middle of it will tear this country apart. Amidst all the commentary on CNN election night someone–I forgot to write down the name–said Clinton is running a dangerous campaign that could split the Democratic Party and America like 1968. The only difference, he said, was there would not be riots outside the convention center. Don’t count on that.
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