PrintAugust 13, 2008
Sneak Preview of Obama's Next Flip Flop
Will Obama's next flip flop be on affirmative action?
If liberal Peter Beinart has his way - and if some hints from Obama himself prove to pan out - it may very well be that we will see Obama abandon his long-held belief in race based affirmative action and substitute instead a "class based" model:
If liberal Peter Beinart has his way - and if some hints from Obama himself prove to pan out - it may very well be that we will see Obama abandon his long-held belief in race based affirmative action and substitute instead a "class based" model:
Obama can't make race go away by ignoring it, especially because the GOP and the media won't. He needs to acknowledge their fears and do something dramatic to assuage them. Paradoxically, his best shot at deracializing the campaign is to explicitly make race an issue.
He can do that with a high-profile speech -- and maybe a TV ad -- calling for the replacement of race-based preferences with class-based ones. That would confront head-on white fears that an Obama administration would favor minorities at whites' expense. It would be a sharper, more dramatic, way of making the point that Obama has made ever since he took the national stage (but which some whites still refuse to believe): that he represents not racial division but national unity.
Funny way for Obama to respresent "national unity" when he pulls the race card out at the drop of a hat to tar his opponents with charges of bigotry. But no matter. Ed Lasky points out the reasons for this strategy:
He is weak among seniors-so he proposes seniors stop paying income taxes. He is weak among whites partly because they view him as an African-American who will support race-based affirmative action. Solution: a major policy shift to support class-based (not raced-base) affirmative action.
This would , of course, be a complete reversal from the cause he has supported his entire professional life. But once he is past November, such a campaign reversal will go into the dustbin of history.
Beinart is wrong-race is not the only card John McCain has and it is far from the only, let alone the major, reason Americans do not support Barack Obama. He is merely buying into the race-based canard Obama's campaign is promoting.
Indeed he is. Beinart dismisses the thought that people don't trust Obama for a wide variety of reasons - not the least of which is his lack of experience, his pandering for votes, and a mushy headed view of our enemies.
In Beinart's world, those questions don't matter because people who don't want to vote for Obama are, at heart, racists. Any other consideration is just an excuse.
Great way to win friends and influence people, Peter.
