Last weekend I wrote a diary , "Why Obama Lies About Race", which sought to provide a context for Obama's denial of the racism that Jimmy Carter had heroically spoken out about. I'll be writing a followup later this weekend. But before doing that, I want to address the issue of fallacious reasoning which appeared to influence a number of the critical responses, particularly those from one self-identified black commentator. illlaw , whose argument was deeply rooted in the genetic fallacy. As I'll explain in this diary, most, if not all fallacies can be thought of as stemming from intellectual laziness, most commonly from employing a valid heuristic--a rule-of-thumb or first approximation--as an iron-clad rule,.and not checking to see if the rule of thumb is valid in this particular case. (Of course, they can also result from deliberate deception. But the deception works because there are more innocent reasons that we are susceptible.) In this diary, I want to do 4 things: (1) give some examples fleshing out this characterization, (2) show how it applies to the genetic fallacy, (3) show how the valid heuristic vs. the genetic fallacy apply generally to issues involving identity politics, and (4) show they apply to this particular case. The fallacious reasoning here was not nearly as overwhelming and unvarnished as I have seen it many times before. Nor was it laced with invective. But in a sense that makes it all the more opportune an occasion to get a handle on what's going on here.
First, let's take a few of the best-known fallacies and show how my characterization applies. Let's begin with the so-called "rooster fallacy," also known as post hoc, ergo proctor hoc (after the thing, therefore because of the thing.) It's called the rooster fallacy because one can imagine a rooster engaging in it: the rooster crows, the Sun rises, the rooster takes credit for the new day. There's an obvious valid heuristic here: in our universe, causes generally precede effects,.and quite often noticeably so. So it you want to know what caused something, start by looking at what happened just before it. That's a valid heuristic. But, of course, one thing can precede another very regularly without being the cause of what follows. They can both have a common cause, but one result can show up before the other. That's why it's only a valid heuristic, and why it's a fallacy to simply assume that the causal relationship is simply established by order.
This weekend sees the 40th Anniversary celebration of the founding of the Young Lords, as noted on Democracy Now! on Friday. Inspired by the example of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords defined the militant/visionary cutting edge of Puerto Rican activism in the late 60s and 70s.
As explained on the program, there is celebration taking place tomorrow in NYC:
AMY GOODMAN: Well, this Sunday, members of the Young Lords are planning to come together to mark the fortieth anniversary of the group's founding. The event will take place at the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem, the same church on East 111th Street that the group took over in late 1969 to house free breakfast and clothing programs, health services, a daycare center, a liberation school and community dinners. The occupation ended in January 1970, when police raided the church, arresting 105 members of the Young Lords.
Attendees on Sunday will include Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez, who served as the first Minister of Education for the Young Lords.
Co-host Juan Gonzales was the first Minister of Education, and he described the group thus in the introduction to the Democracy Now! segment:
The group called for self-determination for all Puerto Ricans; for independence for the island of Puerto Rico; community control of institutions and land; freedom for all political prisoners; and the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, Puerto Rico and other areas. The Young Lords would also play a pivotal role in spreading awareness of Puerto Rican culture and history. While the group disintegrated in the mid-1970s, its impact is still felt today.
What's remarkable about the Young Lords was the degree to which they combined radical, confrontational actions with a respectful and dignified manner, and practical demands for things that should have already been done years before. (Remind you of anything recently?)
LUIS GARDEN ACOSTA:... a sort of a myth grew about us being the polite revolutionaries, because we would actually, "Excuse me, we're about to hijack your truck. Everyone, be safe now." So, but almost in every instance, whenever we did anything, people would actually come out and say, "You know, they're absolutely right. Someone should take a stand." So I think that differentiated the Young Lords from a lot of different groups.
Not coincidentally, a lot of the work they did was all about securing medical care for a community that utterly neglected as a matter of course. (Remind you of anything recently? We're all Puerto Rican now, eh?)
The 2006 and 2008 national exit polls show an overall pro-Democratic margin within 1% of each other. However, they reach this margin in very different ways. Specifically, Obama heavily under-performed 2006 Democrats among white voters, losing that group by 12% compared to only a 4% Democratic defeat two years ago. However, he won the campaign anyway, and did so with a margin nearly identical to 2006.
How did he do so? In the extended entry, I discuss the long awaited rise to power of the pluralist coalition.
"She's Dynamite!" Or so thought Morton C. Blackwell, President Ronald Reagan's liaison to the conservative movement, even though he couldn't get closer than four feet from Sarah Palin at a Virginia fundraising dinner. Whatever has got into the right wing base of the Republican party, it's pretty fundamental, and they are not alone in seeing Palin as the future of the party, win or lose
Governor Palin sees herself this way too.
The shocked silence of the McCain spokesman was a result of this segment of an interview recorded on ABC.
VARGAS: But the point being that you haven't been so bruised by some of the double standard, the sexism on the campaign trail, to say, "I've had it. I'm going back to Alaska."
PALIN: Absolutely not. I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken, that ... that would ... bring this whole ... I'm not doin' this for naught.
As far as I know this is unprecedented - an et tu Brute moment as the VP choice stabs the man who chose her in the back.
Palin is explosive all right. For the Republican party she's a volatile mixture of glitz, folksy charm, utter ruthlessness and willing ignorance.
But it's the 'sexism' part of that exchange I want to focus on, and what this means for the prematurely announced death of identity politics.
The increasingly virulent tone at McCain-Palin rallies has led to a growing realization within big media that a sizable portion of the Republican base are angry bigots. See The Washington Post, The Politico, and The New York Times for recent reports of this nature. My question is: why did it take so long for these outlets to finally make this realization?
As I have written for three and a half years now, the conservative cultural supremacist message is so not-subtle that non-whites and non-Christians vote for Democrats at collective 3-1 rates. Mass demographic voting patterns of that sort do not take hold unless there is a very clear, long-term message in the most prominent political narratives in our country. In our country, the conservative backlash message has been clear: we are out to stop those freaky different people from taking power in America. Consider the latest ad from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell:
McCain strategy: win election by exploiting Democratic primary divisions and crass gender politics
My take: This will fail. McCain is ignorantly falling for the same conventional wisdom as so many in the media - but his assumptions are false, false, false.
The CW narrative goes like this: "Obama and Clinton had a nasty primary fight, and lots of white Democratic women ('PUMAs' and their sympathizers) are skittish of Obama as a result. Even if Clinton's speech this week began to reassure these women, they can still be peeled off, by appealing to McCain's incredible Maverickosity so that they ignore their Democratic Party instincts, and by appealing to their desire to elect a woman to executive federal office, an opportunity they were denied by Obama's defeat of Clinton." Sounds scary, right?
Too bad my good friend Mr. Actual Polling Results tells me a different story.
(full analysis, reader poll, and additional McCain strategies and rebuttals below the fold!)
Obama has released his second attack ad on McCain in two days. Like the first one, this is still probably inadequate when it comes to driving the debate and establishing the elite narrative. Unlike the first one, it has a promising new avenue that could do just that, if used more boldly:
The part I find intriguing is the very first line: "John McCain: he's been in Washington for 26 years." The rest of the piece is pretty much the same litany of small-bore policies listed over rising music that we have come to expect from Democratic campaign ads over the past decade or two. While the latter won't do anything to change the debate or the narrative, which is really what a successful attack does, the first bit has potential. Here's why:
It's not entirely rational: In order to grab pundit and media attention, sometimes the straightforward, deductive arguments need to be left behind in favor of something more vague, more emotional, and more identity-based. The "been in Washington for 26 years" line attacks McCain as a long-term Washington insider, and hints, but does not state, a wide range of other attacks. These include cynicism, connection to special interests, connection to Bush and the Republican Party, and even possibly to McCain's age.
It will probably piss McCain off: In order to change the narrative, you need to get your opponent to personally respond to your attack. Given that McCain has been itching for Obama to attack him based on age, this line of attack his probably implies that just enough, without actually saying anything, in order to get an age-based identity backlash from McCain. If played correctly, such a backlash has the potential to change the narrative by creating a discussion about whether McCain has been in Washington, D.C., too long in order to make any significant changes. And, as I noted above, having this debate would bring along implications about McCain's cynicism, connection to special interests, connection to Bush and Republicans, and even to his age.
It is specific to McCain: While the attack connects to long-standing Democratic attacks on Republicans, like connections to large corporations, it is also specific to McCain. He has been in Washington too long, he is too old, etc. This is why it is a superior attack to "they" will try to scare you about me. It connects to regular anti-Republican narratives, but it is specific to McCain's identity.
Overall, I don't think that this attack is exploited well enough in this ad, but it has potential. If used with the proper level of rhetoric, the "McCain has been in D.C." for too long, could change the narrative, and start directing the balance of attacks toward McCain. It is also probably something that Obama personally believes about McCain, so I imagine we will see more of it. It is better than the "McCain is a flip-flopper" attack, which doesn't make any sense if you want to tie McCain to Bush. It is better than "McCain is a rich dude with $500 shoes and eight homes" attack, which is basically a responsive attack to the charge that Obama is elitist and doesn't change the narrative. It is more in the vein of "McCain is too tied to large corporations" attack, but it takes a less rational, more emotional, more identity-based approach. And that is what you need to do if you want to change the narrative.
The McCain campaign has just played an entire campaign's worth of identity politics in a single ad. At the beginning of this latest bit of respectful campaigning, Obama is compared to Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears:
Let's do a quick rundown of the identity politics at work in such a comparison:
Obama is a girly-man. The ad only compares Obama to female celebrities, which is a direct shot at Obama's "manliness."
Obama will sleep with your white daughters: Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears are known for their sexuality as much as anything else. That must go for Barack Obama, too. And the history of attacking African-Americans in association with white women is such a positive one.
Obama is too young: For a campaign that is hyper-sensitive to attacks on McCain's age, they certainly have no problem attacking Obama's age. Which is what comparing Obama to Spears and Hilton is.
Obama is a Hollywood liberal: This is also a run of the mill attack on Obama as a Hollywood, liberal elite, in line with decades of conservative backlash narratives.
This is really atrocious stuff, and trying to bring out all of the worst aspects of America in order to win an election. At this point, the McCain campaign is just hitting Obama with whatever it can think of, and seeing if Obama will respond. It works, too, as they get tons of free press out of it. Given that political attacks take on their own life, the best response for Obama is probably to start making attacks of his own.
I want to recycle something I wrote in a comment to an earlier diary today. I want to try and set a different tone. And I want to give people something to think about. I wasn't just saying it to be cute, either. It has always been the way I see politics.
Some have called me a "race traitor" for it, others have called me a "self-hating Jew." But I prefer being called a xenophile (also a Xena-phile, but that's a topic for a different diary):
I want to be perfectly clear here. Given two candidates who are virtually the same on the issues, I will always vote for the one who's not like me if they are from a lower-status group. I will vote for the woman, not the man. I will vote for the black, not the white. I will vote for the gay, not the straight. I will vote for the Moslem, not the Jew. I will vote for disabled, not the able-bodied. I will vote for the immigrant, not the native-born.
But that is assuming that all other things are basically equal. Because I don't vote for candidates. I vote for the issues and the people they serve.
Identity politics has become a defining force in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. From New Hampshire to Nevada to South Carolina, some uncomfortable questions have been raised: Do whites tell pollsters they support Sen. Barack Obama but privately change their vote based on his race? Do Latinos overtly oppose Obama for the same reason? Do women vote for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton under the sympathetic impression that her male competitors and members of the media attack her too harshly? Although it's difficult to conclusively settle any of these issues, it's equally clear that identity politics will continue to vex domestic politics for years to come. But the impact of identity will be felt far beyond the pollsters, pundits,and prognosticators. The unique identity of the next president could have a significant effect on U.S. foreign policy.
The generational split between Clinton/McCain and Obama, between boomers and post-boomers alarms me -- and I have five decades under my belt. There are too many boomers.
Here's my thesis.
1) There is an evolutionary, physiological basis for identity-based politics.
2) We use policy arguments to affirm and rationalize our identity biases.
3) We are a small minority who understand and feel the fierce urgency of now: impending overshoot and collapse. (Are Humans Smarter Than Yeast?)
3) Unless the Clinton/McCain pair trips, boomers will deliver to us in the presidency another eight years of more of the same.
4) That is really unfortunate.
