Divided They Fell

For those who struggle with the question of what difference a black president may make to race relations, let me slip you a note: Racist campaigns are losing. If Barack Obama is elected on Tuesday, we will have plenty of time to debate whether his leadership makes it harder, easier or is neutral on deinstitutionalizing the widespread racism that still exists in our society.  But we should pause now to celebrate something that's never happened before.

It began with Hillary Clinton, whose bid for the Democratic nomination failed for many reasons. However, when desperation took hold, she and Bill resorted to an almost primordial racial reflex, asserting herself before other white people as their true friend and squandering decades of good will with the black community.

John McCain has no such good will. For all the media's talk of his honor and heroism, he has never been the maverick Republican who would rebuke his party's most vulgar racial politics.  His opposition to the MLK holiday in Arizona and reduction of affirmative action issues to "quotas" are two standard examples of where he stands.

But nothing represents his failed racism, if you will, like this campaign, which may go down--if we are lucky--as the Last Republican Campaign.  From the convention forward, he has tried all the tricks of Nixon's Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater's Willie Horton appeals and Karl Rove's culture war divisiveness. His vice presidential pick--the self-proclaimed redneck Sarah Palin--invites violence and racial invective at every campaign rally. Together, they recall the vicious mob mentality of a history we refuse to relive. Muslim, socialist, terrorist, community organizer, elitist--they have called Barack Obama everything short of the n-word.  Usually, it works.

Not this time. We are witnessing an amazing reversal, a coalescence, a recognition, maybe even some revelation.  Back in 1984, Jesse Jackson promised it would happen when he talked about the "artificial differences" that divide the interests of working-class whites from working-class blacks from working-class other people of color. Well, a prolonged, illegal war and a stolen presidency marked by lies and deceit will, after enough time it seems, awaken people to their interests. 

But nothing sharpens the mind like all-out financial calamity. And when that crisis comes with the peculiar character of this one--mortgage fraud on whole, mostly minority communities, Wall Street banks pimping the loans into extravagant vehicles for their own incredible profits and a resulting disparity between rich and poor unlike any other in history--the okey-doke about terrorists from Harvard won't get it.

I am not suggesting that Barack himself has had little to do with the public's awakening. He is consistently polling even with McCain or better among groups John Kerry and Al Gore had trouble holding--white men, Latinos, Jews and evangelical Christians. Clearly, there is something supremely special about the one they call "That One."

But the ones who call him that deserve more credit than they know. We can actually thank John McCain, Sarah Palin, campaign chief Steve Schmitt, campaign strategist Rick Davis and the rest of the Republican crew for mounting a campaign so miserably racist, so desperately mean-spirited and so thoroughly divisive that they emptied the bag of Republican campaign tricks for perhaps the last time.  If McCain '08 proves to be the colossal loser it's looking and sounding like, campaign strategists from either party will not likely risk their jobs on any of its methods again soon.

This is not how we imagined change would occur.  And we are still far off from our goals.  But it's time to celebrate the fact that some change has come.  That white voters in red and battleground states are rejecting the angry face of the familiar in favor of the steady conviction of a healer.  This is as much what I wish all my family who's not here could see. Not just Obama for all his calm strength and clarity. But the sight of sworn enemies throwing in the towels and skeptics overcoming their doubts.

Who is responsible for this new middle ground? Is it the unifiers or the dividers? It is a debate history must welcome.

(See also: How Right to Be So Wrong: Barack Obama and the Essential Surprise, by David Troutt.)