Race Poker

By now you know the story. During a public appearance last Wednesday, Senator Obama suggested that GOP operatives looking for a weakness might try to exploit unease about his race. Hours later the McCain campaign, sensing weakness, successfully exploited unease regarding Senator Obama's race. Column inches being what they are, I won't go into a detailed examination of the way McCain boxed Obama in, but there is a great summary of the basic idea here.

The statement that John McCain has run a campaign completely free of racial hijinks is premised upon the ludicrous idea that a campaign extends only as far as its press releases, position papers, and public appearances. This assertion is demonstrably false.

The hatchet men of the twenty-first century know ads like Celeb are just the public face of a successful smear campaign, artfully crafted and subtly wrought distillations of the all-important Message. But because Celeb uses subliminal symbols and imagery to make its crude point, this sort of mildly suggestive messaging has natural limits. Sure, a few people might see Britney Spears next to Obama and have a little flash of anger in their miscegenist hearts, but most people cackle when it's suggested to them that there is anything racial about such a spot.

The real heavy lifting is left to gems like this. And this and this and this. This is the real workspace of the GOP operative, where votes are gathered, electorates divided, and elections decided. Here the smear isn't communicated by the almost unnoticeable juxtaposition of Obama with a nubile young blond, but by putting vile, racist slogans in his mouth and thoughts in his head. While the 30-second spots ask questions like, “Is He Ready?” in order to chip at people's perceptions, these mysteriously sourceless emails directly proclaim that the candidate is unfit to lead, and then flesh out the idea with a slew of baseless and factually inaccurate claims.

Sure, you might swing a few hundredths of a percent with a multi-million dollar ad campaign proclaiming “Obama is Effete,” but where you really start to move numbers is with a ten-sentence free email titled “Obama is Muslim.” Here is the shady realm of the “push poll,” the mysterious calls in the middle of the night asking you to support Obama's dream of using tax dollars from hard working Americans to fund slavery reparations for welfare queens.

McCain is more than familiar with this kind of whisper campaign; he was buried by one in South Carolina eight years ago. His willingness to employ the same kinds of tactics against his current opponent tells us two things. First, McCain wants this victory in the "worst way," the way he claims he didn't in 2000. And second, the demise of the Rovian hyper-organization that has defined the GOP in recent years has been greatly exaggerated. We're in for a fun few months.