Washington Post Plays Divide and Conquer With Democrats over Race Issue [View All]

[McCamy Taylor]

The RNC must be sweating. Maybe they were listening when Barack Obama gave his unity speech after the North Carolina Primary. Maybe they read all of the heart warming reconciliation threads at places like Democratic Underground. Could they have heard Hillary Clinton promise for the umpteenth time that she will work her heart out campaigning for the Democratic nominee---whoever it might be---this fall to defeat John McCain? Did they hear the talk of a unity ticket?

Everyone knows that the Washington Post is controlled by NeoCon's. Bush-Cheney enablers. That newspaper, which, under Katherine Graham broke the Watergate story, is now a pathetic rag which brought us such atrocities as The Good Lie and "Pelosi Knew " and an editorial about how The Iran NIE could not be trusted because the CIA destroyed a torture tape ( just as I had predicted that they would when Mark Mazzetti of the NYTs broke the torture tape story a few days before in the middle of the Iran NIE controversy in order to discredit the CIA).

Everyone, please go to the front page of the WaPo and look at two article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

If someone knows how to do a screen capture, I would appreciate it if you could link this page, because I know that it will change tomorrow. And this page is designed the offend both Obama and Clinton supporters. On the right hand column, under "Campaign 2008" we have "How the Mighty Have Fallen".
On the left hand side, in much smaller letters, we have "Alan Abramowitz: Obama's Race Problem"

I. First "How the Mighty Have Fallen"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/09/AR2008050902638.html?hpid=topnews

The real title once you click the link is "Black Community is Increasingly Protective of Obama" by Darryl Fears.

In black America, oh, how the mighty have fallen.Bill Clinton is no longer revered as the "first black president." Tavis Smiley's rapid-fire commentaries on a popular radio show have been silenced. And the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., self-described defender of the black church, has been derided by many on the Web as an old man who needs to "step off."

They all landed in the black community's doghouse after being viewed as endangering Sen. Barack Obama's chances of being elected president. And the community's desire to protect the first African American ever to be in this position may only grow with his win in North Carolina and his close loss in Indiana this week.

snip

it has not taken much for other public figures to move from icon to pariah.

Now, the article by Fears taken by itself is not particularly worrisome. It is a piece about pressures within the African-American community to support Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. The Irish-American community has seen the same pressures in the past when Irish-American candidates have run. So have Latino communities. So have women. However, the way that the Post chose to frame the article---the fear mongering headline on the front page How the Mighty Have Fallen with its imagery of someone actively conspiring to take out powerful liberal political figures and Democrats to make way for Obama just because he is Black---there is a big difference between "Mighty have fallen" and "Black community is protective". The first is a violent image. The second is a benign, even loving image. The first implies civil war. The second implies reconciliation, harmony.

Nothing is done without a reason when it comes to setting the type on a major newspaper's front page. Someone chose that headline deliberately.

II. "Obama's Race Problem "

Now on to the second article. This one is a major media atrocity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/09/AR2008050901417.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

"Obama's Race Problem" becomes "In these Primary Numbers, Warnings for the Fall" by Alan Abramowitz

Alan Abramowitz is full of shit. Since he is a political science professor, he knows that association is not causality, but he allows the reader to assume that it is. For those who have never heard the phrase "association is not causality before" an example would be if you did a study of policemen by height and shoe size and found that tall policemen have big feet. You might conclude that all men who wear big shoes grow tall. However, we know that this is not the case. Men who grow tall also grow big feet, and so they need big shoes. A study of clowns by height and shoe size would reveal no correlation---all clowns wear big shoes, whether or not they are tall.

Abramowitz writes that 1)Clinton gets more of the white rural vote, those who lack a college education, and the female vote. He writes that about 2)15% more whites who lack college degrees believe that Blacks could do better if they tried harder and do not believe that history is to blame for the present situation of African-Americans in the US. He also mentions 3)separate data that about half of Clinton's recent voters have indicated a reluctance to vote for Obama in the fall, but he does not give data about why they are reluctant, i.e it is on racial grounds? Class grounds? . He also mentions that 4)half of voters mention that Wright was a factor in their vote---but does not say how it was a factor, i.e did Obama's strong denunciation of Wright change their view of him? He mentions that 5)this same group of voters who are choosing Clinton failed to vote for Kerry in 2004.

The problem with this article is that Abramowitz devotes most of it to number 2 and number 1. He leaves these numbers on the page as if suggesting to the reader that they are the cause that Clinton is drawing a larger percent of the white rural, undereducated and female vote. Rather than voting for Sen. Clinton, Abramowitz would have us believe that all these voters are turning out to vote against Obama. And the reader is supposed to believe that the second set of numbers explains why about half of Clinton's voters have indicated a reluctance to vote for Obama in the fall. We are meant to assume that a belief that Blacks need to try harder translates into a view that a successful best selling author, Harvard graduate and Senator from Illinois is not fit to run the country. This seems like a bit of a logical stretch.

Keep in mind that voters choose their own political party. The Republican Party openly courts those who are bigoted against Latino immigrants,Muslims,gays, women's reproductive freedom and Blacks. Therefore, the Democratic Party tends to have people who are turned off by the Republican Party's divisive tactics. Democrats are a coalition of gays, women, Latinos, Blacks, union members, liberals and the working class who feel that they have been ignored under the present corporate system. Our vulnerability is our diversity. The GOP seeks to divide us whenever it can. Our strength is our solidarity.

It is just as likely that Clinton's Democratic supporters are seeing in Obama what they saw in Kerry---a candidate who who spent a lot of time appealing to college educated, urban and affluent Democrats but not so much on the rural and less affluent voters. A candidate who is extremely successful and bright and therefore may seem detached from the suffering of the laboring class. Clinton, who was vilified all through the 1990s---and who is being attacked again by the MSM---reminds the American lower class of its own plight as society's eternal victim.

Abramowitz does not cite any evidence to tell which of these two possibilities is correct, however his article insists that Obama has a "race problem"---

Democrats must hope that disapproval of Bush could lead working-class voters to begrudgingly approve of a black presidential candidate.

---as if he must try harder to act "white", when in fact he may have a "class" problem and need to act more like "everyman".

What is the net result of this article? It makes Obama supporters hopping mad. They read it as scientific proof that Hillary is nothing but a race baiting bitch and her voters are nothing but George Wallace Dixiecrats that someone brought out of deep freeze so that they could vote on a Segregation Now, Segregation Forever ticket in 2008 in order to destroy the possibility of an African-American becoming president.

The working class Democrats who are being labeled as racists for not voting for Obama will not read this article but they will hear the ugly talk that it will engender. And they will feel even more shit upon than before. Just like the Oakeys in The Grapes of Wrath they will wonder if anyone in this country gives a damn about them and their rising medical debt and the fact that their kids won't be able to go to college either.

And the RNC will laugh its ass off. That is how divide and conquer works.