Prometheus 6

Patterson's piece, in my opinion, reveals the extent of the unease and angst among the black professional class caused by Hillary Clinton and her supporters (e.g., Geraldine Ferraro) relentless personal and negative attacks on Obama. I think they are beginning to view the overt attacks against him as also being covertly coded attacks against them too.

This seemed a little weird to me. Patterson puts the charge out there, and then at the very end of the piece he qualifies it, not quite taking it all back, but really diluting his criticism.

Since you linked to this, I'm curious what you think of the 3a.m. ad. Was it race-baiting or just ordinary fearmongering?

Just fear mongering. I think PATTERSON is race baiting, possibly for Mrs. Bill. Her current dogwhistle strategy is to make white folks sick to fuggin' death of hearing about race.

I agree with you about Hillary's strategy but I don't think she is clever or powerful enough to rope in Patterson to go along with her. I believe that her strategy is genuinely upsetting to the niggerati class. Patterson has enough Ivy League cred on the right to call her on it without being hit over the head as being a stand-in for Rev. Jesse or Br. Al.

That's interesting, because after reading Patterson I was open to the possibility that the Clintons were race baiting this time. My thinking is that most of the other examples that they were accused of were pretty clumsy. This one, on the other hand, was subtle enough that they could get away with it. If one were going to race bait, that would be the way to do it.

I don't think she is clever or powerful enough to rope in Patterson to go along with her.

I think she's wealthy enough. Then again, I have class issues too... 

Here's the thing about race baiting...everyone sees it. It requires no subtlety.

Case in point: Is Ferraro race baiting? 

A tenured professor at Harvard who holds an endowed chair, especially one with Patterson's cachet, doesn't need anything from Hillary Clinton. She can't do anything for him that he and Harvard can't do. His wife is also a tenured professor at Harvard. They ain't hurting and Patterson is not greedy.

The "3 a.m." ad reminds Patterson of "Birth of a Nation"?

You could make the case that the ad isn't fair to Mr. Obama--but "Birth of a Nation"?!? That's getting pretty crazy. I think P6 is correct to question which side he's really working for.

Of course, Patterson's not alone. People on Hillary's team have been getting all wound up for a while. Taylor Marsh (yeah, I know) is claiming that Mr. Obama is using coded racial appeals when he uses the word "hoodwinked." Why? Because one time Malcolm X said "hoodwinked" in a speech!! That's even crazier. And I don't need to mention Ms. Ferraro here--let's just include her by reference.

I'm not tired of hearing about race. I'm tired of hearing about crazy.

This is Patterson's response to Wilentz's response to him. 

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4c26314d-48f2-474e-9a4b-7db1f0504a58  

I hadn't even seen Wilentz's response, so your link really helped me get caught up.

Both these gentlemen are having trouble reasoning well. Wilentz can't tell the difference between the press and the Obama campaign. Mr. (Dr.?) Patterson wants to make the "3 a.m." ad about domestic threats, but to do that, he has to forget that the whole ad was about who is answering the phone at the White House.

The best opportunity for the Democrats in 20 years is turning into a disaster.

Ubstu34 - thanks for linking Patterson's response. It confirms my view that Patterson and his black academic colleagues are extremely annoyed and bothered by the Clinton campaign's willingness to inject negative racial symbols etc. into this race. This is a very disquieting development from their point of view regardless of whether they support Obama or not. They suspect that when the dust settles from this shootout that much of the so-called goodwill they were seeing on the racial front will become "like smoke from a cigarette or dreams that you soon forget - fading away." 

Wilentz is a man of the word.

But dayum...

Few scholars have written more optimistically than I have been, in this and other journals, about the progress America has made in overcoming its racist past. This is why I too am depressed. About what the Clintons are doing. And about the fact that so otherwise smart a person as Sean Wilentz, with such wide knowledge of the role of race in the rise and long history of American democracy and the perverse use of images in the psychological denigration, terrorization and exclusion of blacks, could be so blind to this crude resurrection of our nation's greatest shame.

I said before that is Billary succeeds her tactics will become the standard means of opposing Black candidates for anything. I actually thought Prof. Patterson too deeply ensconced in the mainstream bosum to notice.

I still think Mrs Bill Clinton was invoking the foreign policy heebee-jeebies, though. It just never occurred to me it might heat up some smoldering race embers.

Like others hear, I didn't see strong racial overtones in the "3:00 AM" ad, but to see Wilentz again take the opportunity to criticize those who have race issues with the Clinton is telling.  Maybe the ad does prick at people's racial fears whether it was intentionally designed to do so or not.  Joe, for instance, has not seen any race-baiting thus far but is convinced that the Clintons could be playing the race card this time.        

Well here's another instance of our host being a step ahead of the emerging conversation.

We have reached the point where anything and everything put out by either campaign is going to be weighed in the context of race.

Now here's the interesting question (the one that P6 posed waaay back a long time ago): Who gains from this?

And as he has also said, if Hillary wins the negative repercussions will reverberate far into the future.  If Obama wins, however, and is compelled to enforce a selective post-racial mandate, I don't see much good coming out of this either.    

The posiibility of a post racial mandate is shot ta hell by now.

Lol.... good point

I said before that is Billary succeeds her tactics will become the standard means of opposing Black candidates for anything.

I need some clarification. As far as I'm concerned Hilary's tactics differ from those of almost all her predecessors in two ways. First she uses proxies rather than ads (I don't think Patterson's read is accurate) or public statements. Bush used ads. Bill Clinton used public statements. The second is that it is intra-party, as opposed to inter-party. The only national example I have of someone else doing this sort of thing within the party is her husband.

These two differences DO make the use of her tactics novel. But they have a long history. We know what their effects are if they go unchallenged by the opposition. P6 you think this is a totally new phenomenon that gives people access to a totally different set of options? If you believe this, why?

I see her making open race based attacks acceptable again.

But they've always been acceptable. I knew we'd turned a page when they didn't sway that much of the vote in the Harold Ford election....but the amount that ad DID sway cost Ford the Senate seat. The only difference I see is that perhaps we're heading into a phase where this will become an increasing component in Democratic elections, as black candidates are no longer relegated to serving black congressional districts or as mayors of black cities. Ferraro and Steinem both explicitly argued that Obama was getting a pass because he was a black man. But the other stuff--WHILE EXPLICIT TO THOSE OF US WITH EYES TO SEE--was implicit. Drug use? Not Muslim "as far as I know"? 

The only way the Democrats could follow on to her strategy would be to begin wholesale evictions of resident Negroes. The math is incontrovertable. Hillary is having serious flashbacks to her Goldwater days. Those were heady days for a young woman with political aspirations. What with all that Fannie Lou Hamer business going on with the Democrats, there was no better place to be a young, white woman than side by side by Barry Goldwater. This is a deep, heart felt yearning we're all witnessing here. Comically embarrassing.

"And you knew who you were then. Girls were girls and men were men..."

"King and chief probably had a big beef; 'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.

Joe, for instance, has not seen any race-baiting thus far..

Just to be clear, I did see race-baiting before, but where I saw it, it was at least a step removed from the Clintons, and was disavowed by them. I'm not looking to reopen that debate, but I wanted to clarify that.

hm. on second read given t3's insightful comment let me take a step back and flesh out the "always been acceptable" remark.

the use of implicit racial campaign appeals has almost always been used successfully in garnering white votes. what has changed is the number of white votes these appeals affect. what has also changed is the former willingness of (white) media folks to either act as if what we saw wasn't what we saw, or to say that WE'RE the ones with gunk in our eyes.

she is going backwards. regardless of obama's politics (which i find more and more conservative by the minute), the fact that he can bring together so many people to vote for him without using the same technocratic deracialized strategy of folks like detroit's dennis archer or dc's anthony williams is saying something. the question is how far she'll go backward before she destroys the party infrastructure. i don't think the superdelegates will let it continue. as bonior said...if obama isn't the candidate after leading the popular vote AND the delegate count there is something really really wrong.

(add a few "reallys" to that, because there is already something really really wrong.) 

It just never occurred to me it might heat up some smoldering race embers.

The first time I saw the ad I thought that a large part of its subtext was built on racial fears. There were no black children or black people in the ad. I am fairly certain that black parents worry about the safety of their children as much as any other group of parents. If the ad had shown black children I might have interpreted it differently but their absence caused me to wonder and speculate as to why their absence was so complete. In addition, when I found out the ad was only shown in Texas my feelings about its racial subtext was reinforced. 

the use of implicit racial campaign appeals has almost always been used successfully in garnering white votes.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign has made it explicit, even to those without eyes to see. 

I disagree, but am basing my belief NOT on a reading of moderate-conservative democratic blogs, NOR on listening/viewing the news outside of olbermann. I've seen more whites critique her at the elite level, however this means MORE people can see...not that everyone sees.

James Moore who writes for the Texas Monthly and is the author of "Bush's Brain" offered this candid analysis of Hillary's Color-coded alerts

"As Karl Rove has proven and as Orlando Patterson pointed out in the New York Times, campaigns and their messages are often more about image than substance. Was it an oversight or a design that the children sleeping safely in that 3 a.m. ad were white? Isn't everyone in politics astute enough to know these days that everyone who needs protecting isn't white? When Bush was running for president, Rove never let him be photographed without a rainbow coalition of children. Are we supposed to believe that Hillary's minders didn't see the racism implicit in her phone call ad?"

"Where you from??  You sexy thing!"   

"King and chief probably had a big beef; 'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.

I've seen more whites critique her at the elite level, however this means MORE people can see...not that everyone sees.

True...elites are, by definition, a minority.