Race Excites the Base, Redux

I like Chuck Todd, but sometimes I think he misses the mark:

Let’s get something straight: Anytime race is THE topic du jour in the campaign, it’s a bad day for Obama. Period. There are a lot of voters out there who don’t want to have their vote judged through the prism of race. (If somehow a swing voter in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Michigan is made to feel that voting against Obama will make them a racist, they’ll be resentful.)

Attention to Obama’s race is unavoidable but Todd is stopping short of recognizing Obama’s ability to deal with it.

Clearly, the raison d’être of the McCain campaign is to breed lots of resentment, doubt, uncertainty and fear about Obama. Think about it: McCain can’t lose — if Obama (who really cannot afford to be seen as “the black candidate”) doesn’t fight back, he loses. If he does fight back with accusations of racism, he loses.

For this reason, I think the CW is exactly wrong. Under the present circumstances, people should be asking why McCain (and not Obama) isn’t 20 points ahead by now.

The reason Obama isn’t behind and is leading by 5-10 points instead is because he understands how to fight back:

“We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run,” Obama told supporters. “They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

If you’ve seen him deliver this line, you know he does it smooth and easy, flashing that killer smile with a retro ring-a-ding style that would have made the Rat Pack blush with envy.

In short, Obama wins by not sounding angry or aggrieved (translation: like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson).  Obama wins when he points out — with a smile and a joke — that the craven little coward behind the curtain is not the Great and Mighty Oz.

This, of course, infuriates McCain and his handlers which makes McCain look old. Very old. And angry and whiney. And sound like a loser. Most of all, McCain is diminished by Obama.

Now that is not to say McCain won’t get his requisite share of electoral votes. Fear moves voters and McCain’s handlers are very good at playing the fear card. Republicans know that emotions move voters. They’ve been at this game since the late 1940’s when Nixon rose to prominence with the Red Scare. He reached the threshhold of the Oval Office but fell short. Nixon then took some time off and then came to his senses in 1968 when he looked around and saw that “law and order” was the issue that could make him the leader of a white backlash. He simply had to vanquish George Wallace who was the candidate of racial resentment. Between them they snagged nearly 350 electoral votes and may have gotten more had Wallace not been revealed (by Humphrey) to be a Neanderthal knuckle-dragger in the closing weeks of the campaign.

After 1968, Nixon saw which way the South was moving (for Goldwater in 64 and Wallace in 68) and took his opportunity to grab it, once and for all, from the Democrats. The rest is history.

And now, McCain.

Given the electoral history of the past 40 years, it was only a matter of time before the Republicans settled into their familiar pattern of stoking racial fear and resentment with McCain going along for the ride.

But Obama knows that hope trumps fear. And Obama is very good at playing the hope card.