Defining America: The politics of hope versus fear
Defining
America:
The
politics of hope versus fear
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
By
the time you read this column (filed Sunday Nov. 2 for publication on
Thursday Nov. 6), everyone will know whether the polls were right and
Barack Obama won the election.
I
have already cast my ballot and it would come as no surprise to
anyone who knows me or has ever read this column that I voted for
Barack Obama. If I were a religious person, I would be praying for an
Obama victory.
Obama
should win in a landslide, and for many good reasons. All the polls
show him leading, some by a very large margin. With the help of many
others in his party including John McCain, George W. Bush has done to
the Republican brand what Chinese toy manufacturers have done to
their industry. And, Barack Obama is a political leader the likes of
which this country has not seen since the days of Abraham Lincoln.
But
I also know that polls have been wrong before; in 2004 even the exit
polls were wrong. I also fear that there is more covert racism in
this country than almost anyone is willing to admit in polite
conversation, much less to pollsters or the mainstream media. And,
since no black has ever been this close to the presidency, nobody has
any real evidence for the existence and extent of the “Bradley
effect” in a contest of such magnitude.1
So
the fact is that anything can happen. I am as optimistic and excited
as anyone about the prospect of an Obama presidency. As a
sociologist, I have a decent respect for the polling process. But I
also know its shortcomings. And, while I am not a cynic or an
elitist, I confess that I am also a fan of that great American gadfly
H.L. Mencken. Mencken wrote: “No one in this world has ever lost
money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the
plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” So,
who will be proven right, Gallup or Mencken? Are all the polls and
pundits underestimating the racism of the American people? I
sincerely hope not. We will soon find out.
THE
TWO SCENARIOS
Hope
Over Fear
Barack
Obama wins the popular vote and the Electoral College
Joy,
celebration, incredulity, excitement, and relief for a huge number of
Americans — female and male, black and white, rich, middle class and
poor, Latino and Anglo, gay and straight — who have been energized
by Obama and/or repulsed by the Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin priorities,
policies, and proposals.
For
the black community, among older African Americans who endured the
Jim Crow era, their dreams, their dignity, and their franchise so
long deferred and denied, can an outsider even imagine the feelings
that an Obama victory will evoke? In Virginia, a pivotal state long
dominated by Republicans but very much in play in 2008, the Fairfax
County Times,
a northern Virginia weekly, reported:
“When
African American parents told their children that they could do
anything, be anything, they knew, in their hearts, that was not
wholly true. That all changed, many believe, with Democrat Obama’s
candidacy for president.
“‘I
never felt as an African American that I — or my children — could
be a full part of the American dream,’ said now retired business
woman Ellen Graves of Reston.”
What
a party! Inspired and mobilized by Obama and his promise of change,
rebels with a cause, legions of young Americans of all races,
ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations no doubt will exult and
revel. After the celebration is over, after the head clears, they
will come away with a sense of empowerment.
What
about Latinos? If Obama wins, it means he received the lion share of
the Latino vote in some key states such as Virginia, Nevada,
Colorado, and New Mexico, and among the non-Cuban Latinos in Florida.
Should Obama win, his success among Latinos will be a major part of
the story. In 2004, George W. Bush received 40 percent of the Latino
vote. John McCain, despite the fact that he once co-sponsored (with
Ted Kennedy) a relatively good comprehensive immigration reform law,
will be lucky to receive half that percentage.
The
reasons are not hard to fathom. They start with the draconian
immigration laws and policies favored by the Republican rank-and-file
and the overwhelming majority of Republican politicians at every
level, from Capitol Hill to city hall. Rhetorically, the escalating
GOP-led war is aimed only at illegal immigrants; in reality, few
Latinos miss the fact that it is aimed at all of us. McCain initially
rebutted the cries xenophobic chorus but, faced with the certain loss
of the nomination, McCain “got the message” and ended up opposing
his own creature, a comprehensive immigration reform bill with a path
to legal status for undocumented immigrants.
Latinos
have a long memory; we hate turncoats. When the chips were down,
McCain did not have our back. His betrayal — and the ferocity of the
Republican attack against immigrants from ugly words to an uglier
wall to terrifying raids on workplaces and homes — spells disaster
for the GOP among the Latino electorate.
Michael
Gerson, a former Bush speech writer, and one of the more insightful
Republican analysts, got it exactly right in his Septemberv19, 2007
Washington
Post
column (“Division Problem”):
“It
is a strange spectacle. Conservatives are intent in building a more
appealing, post-Bush Republican Party. But their most obvious change
so far is to reverse remarkable Republican gains among one of the
fastest-growing groups of American voters. The renovators seem more
like the wrecking crew….
“…I
have never seen an issue where the short-term interests of Republican
presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds
with the long-term interests of the party itself….
“…There
is a moral hazard as well. Surfing on a wave of voter resentment is
easier than rowing on the calmer waters of inclusion and charity. But
the heroes of America are generally heroes of reconciliation, not
division.
“In
politics, some acts are so emblematic that they cannot be undone for
decades — as when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater
voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964…. Now Republicans seem
to be repeating history with Hispanic Americans. Some in the party
seem pleased. They should be terrified.”
Emblematic
acts against the Latino community have been abundant during the last
eight years, culminating with the wall of shame on the southern (and
not the northern) border. Some Democrats have gone along, mainly for
reasons of political opportunism, but it is no secret that the
Republican home is the natural political home of hispanophobia in
this country.
Then,
to add injury to insult Bush domestic policies, the mortgage
disaster, and the economic downturn have hurt Latinos
disproportionately. McCain proposes to carry on the same approach,
including more tax cuts for the wealthy. Very few Latinos make more
than $250,000, and many of them have felt the symbolic arrows as
keenly as the Latino hotel maid and the construction worker.
Thus,
should Obama win, Latinos will be in position to have not only seats
at the table of power but also strategic input on policy. To our hero
of inclusion, we should then be willing to say: “Mr. Obama, tear
down this wall, stop the undeclared war against our brothers and
sisters. Yes, you
can.”
The
international reaction will be nothing short of ecstatic, excluding
only a miniscule fraction of obdurate anti-Americans. Indeed, never
has it been more difficult to be a pro-American as a German,
Egyptian, or Argentinean. Bush has made that really difficult and
there are not that many masochists in the world. An Obama victory
will bring forth a global feeling of empathy with this country that
can only compare with that expressed on September 12, 2001. Like
Thomas Jefferson but unlike George Bush, Obama has “a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind;” he will not squander such a
precious opportunity.
What
about the losers? An Obama victory will be an especially bitter pill
for haters of what America is in the process of becoming —
gloriously multicultural. There is little doubt that Obama will lose
the white vote. The key question is by how much. And there is also
little doubt that Obama will win the vote among minority groups by a
huge margin. This means that if he wins, Obama will be the first U.S.
president to triumph against the wishes of the dominant ethnicity in
America. I can only imagine, although I can’t conjure up much
empathy, the feelings of those who have always felt it their natural
right to be always on top. I fear for this country, I fear the anger
of the lunatic fringe; a latter day John Wilkes Booth would do more
damage to America than all the terrorists in the world. If Obama
wins, the Secret Service will need more good men and women than the
Marines.
Fear
over Hope
McCain
wins
The
first reaction of everyone concerned — Republicans included — will
be: What
the hell?
What
would have happened is that in America race still matters hugely.
What it will mean is that the most ridiculous charges about Obama,
the demonization of the Democratic candidate as a terrorist-loving,
black- nationalist, socialist disciple of Marx and Lenin worked with
some voters.
Even
more than the pollsters, whose profession and work would have been
discredited, the black community will experience a profound shock.
Americans are mainly optimistic, and no one is more American than
African-Americans. But for blacks, their experience in this country
has meant that whatever optimism they have felt as Americans has been
greatly tempered with a major dose of bitterness. An Obama victory
will go a long way in resolving the ambivalence of the black
community and the (well-deserved) guilt of some whites. For African
Americans, a McCain win will confirm their worst fears are not
paranoia, they are real.
The
global reaction to a McCain victory will be a tremendous letdown and
the conclusion that the United States is not capable of redemption —
with respect to ideology or race. How can so many Americans choose a
Bush clone after the eight-year-long Bush debacle? The problem is not
Bush, they will reason; it is the Americans themselves, their values
and priorities.
Wikipedia:
“The
Bradley
effect,
less commonly called the Wilder
effect,
is
a proposed explanation for observed discrepancies between voter
opinion polls and election outcomes in some U.S. government elections
where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each
other. The effect refers to a supposed tendency on the part of some
voters to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote
for a black candidate, and yet, on election day, vote for his or her
white opponent. It was named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who
lost the 1982 California governor’s race despite being ahead in voter
polls going into the elections.”
The
Bradley effect theorizes that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the
phenomenon of social desirability bias. Specifically, some white
voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating
their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of
racial motivation.1
