Democratic voters in recent days have been dismayed to see Hillary Clinton, and her defender husband, the former president, in petty and dishonest battles with their political rival, Barack Obama. Being so critical of the Rovian tactics of the past two elections, we wanted our nominating process to be civilized and uplifting.
At first, we were thrilled to see our diverse field of candidates, especially when you compared it to the typical Republican field of all white males. We thought the problem we would have, when it came our turn to choose, was that there were too many good choices. Almost all of the candidates, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich who was always really the conscience of the group rather than a serious contender, were saying the same things and so our task was difficult. How could we decide which of these great candidates we wanted as our standard bearer when all of them were so good?
We would have to consider things other than their policy positions, which were all pretty much the same. Did we want to go with a former first lady and elect the first woman? Or might electing an inspiring and charismatic African American be the way to go? Did we want to be the generation to elect the first black president? How about a Latino who had much foreign policy experience and knew how to conduct tough negotiations around the world, or a former vice presidential nominee who would finally do something to help the forgotten people in the country?
We thought our dilemma was the best of all dilemmas.
We were wrong.
Because once the field narrowed, and the battle was between two firsts – the first woman and the first African American – it got emotional and ugly. And part of the reason it got ugly was that there was so much at stake, part was because the Clintons felt the nomination by all rights belonged to Hillary and should be easy to secure, and part it was because the specters of racism and misogyny were right below the surface, causing the candidates and their staffs, as well as the media and voters, to overreact and cater to their worst instincts.
Some may think these "overreactions" were deliberate, designed to turn voters against the other candidate, and perhaps they were. Campaigns have become highly calculated and staged psychological events, with advisors who know how to manipulate the emotions of the electorate so that we never really know what we need to know about whom we are electing. It could be said that Bush's entire 2000 campaign was an exercise in deception, with Bush pledging to be a humble, compassionate conservative who would be a "uniter." These, of course, were all words tested in focus groups and had no relation to the actual candidate Bush. It was the campaign tactics, not the candidate, that came out victorious in the 2000 election, and look what we got: eight years of hell.
The unfortuante reality is that the people are easily fooled by candidates who mislead them and appeal to some of their worst instincts. In this sense, a campaign is like a nationwide Rorschach test. The voters see what they want to see, only in this case it is also what the campaign carefully leads them to see. In recent days, the Clinton campaign has capitalized on two issues they knew would resonate with African American voters. Hillary inserted the words "slum lord" into the debate, and made sure she connected them to Obama, whose defense would take much more time than a debate or 30 second commercial could provide. She also took advantage of Obama's unfortunate reference to Ronald Reagan, who is hated in the African American community, and said that Obama praised his ideas (which he didn’t). Again, how does one explain that in 30 seconds? And once the lie is out there, it's impossible to take it back. As Winston Churchill once said "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Churchill did not know it, of course, but he was actually summing up current American campaign strategy.
For seven long years, we Democrats have been waiting for an opportunity to finally take back the White House. With George W. Bush's unpopularity, this seemed the year. Having the 2000 election stolen was devastating, because it led to a terrible and unnecessary war and tax cuts that have bankrupted the treasury. Losing in 2004 was damaging in other ways. Not only did the war continue, but the Supreme Court got two new ultraconservative members who are busy undoing many progressive reforms and laws. Losing in 2008 would be unthinkable. The Supreme Court could be lost for decades, war would continue indefinitely, poverty will deepen and more Americans will lose health insurance, and the corporate takeover of this country, with the further destruction of the middle class, might very well be completed.
Yet the candidates bicker and play games with the voters because, while they may have good ideas and may all make acceptable presidents, what they want most is to win. I am disgusted with them, of course, and with their tactics. I am mostly disgusted with the Clintons, because I think they are the ones who are the most manipulative and the most dishonest. I also don't think a former president should be out there attacking reporters as well as his wife's opponent, getting red in the face, and defending his wife, especially when he treated her so abysmally in a very public way eight years ago, and even more so because she should be showing us she is strong enough to do this on her own.
But I also blame the voters. Candidates continue attacking each other in dishonest and personal ways because they know it works with voters who are far less attentive to all the facts, and far more gullible than they should be, or perhaps, like the Rorschach test, they see what they want to see. For example, in a story on CNN yesterday, a voter in South Carolina said everyone she talks to brings up the "fact" that "Obama is a Muslim." Now anyone who has paid a modicum of attention to his campaign or the news knows that this is untrue, that Obama is in fact a Christian whose membership in a Chicago church is controversial because its minister has praised Louis Farrakhan. This story has been out for quite some time, yet there are still a large number of people who believe an internet smear that says Obama is a Muslim. Why do they believe it?
One answer, of course, is that they retain racist attitudes, but cannot express that in public, as it is not considered acceptable. So they latch onto something negative they hear about the black candidate and use that to reject him. It is still okay in this country to reject Muslims, so they believe that falsehood about Obama. And his having a Muslim sounding last name that rhymes with "Osama," and a middle name that is the same as that of the deceased Iraqi dictator, makes the smear easy to apply.
How sad that we live in a country where people can be fooled by candidates and opponents of candidates because they hear what they want to hear. How tragic that Obama's main opponent, a distinguished and capable woman, a woman who has always fought for civil rights for minorities, and whose white husband was once dubbed "the first black president," would attack the man who could REALLY become the first black president because she so desperately wants to be the first woman president. How sad that what once made me and so many Democrats proud to be a member of the Democratic Party now has us feeling helpless to stop the internal bickering of two highly qualified candidates who could each make history this November, but instead may send voters running to the party that has spent the last eight years running the country off a cliff.
Karl Rove couldn't have planned it any better.
