While the Presidential primary is pretty irritating, I did find that the elitist charge from Clinton and the racist use of the word 'boy' found a sort of operational unity within the Republican operative class. I'll put the pieces together so that we can see how this works, since the pattern it suggests about the McCain campaign will be repeated. Here's the new ad from Clinton hitting Obama on elitism.
So first of all, a Democrat is laying down an attack on the Democratic nominee. While right now it's Clinton, during the general election, any liberalish person will do, be it Ward Churchill or anyone else. And here's racist Geoff Davis, KY-04, talking about Obama.
"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis said. "He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."
And finally, to unify the charges of racism and elitism, check out what Soren Dayton, the McCain operative 'suspended' after circulating a racially charged video about Obama is distributing on Facebook.
This episode reveals so many aspects of our corroded political system. For one, while I find the whole 'don't repeat right-wing frames' kind of tired if useful, Hillary Clinton's charges of elitism are explicitly reinforcing right-wing charges. How do we know this? Well, because right-wingers are attacking him with her rhetoric. Two, Soren Dayton is a Republican operative who was apparently 'suspended' from the McCain campaign, but he's out there spreading the same old political arguments about Obama as he did before he was suspended. The whole disavowal thing for McCain is a neat trick, isn't it? Three, the use of elitist snob and the use of racist rhetoric is intimately tied together. As Glenn Greenwald has demonstrated in his important book Great American Hypocrites, male Democratic candidates must always be presented as feminine, elite, aristocratic, savage, and untrustworthy, for fear that substantive arguments will actually present the electorate with a choice on larger questions of national direction.
And no conservative is ever held accountable for their activities, no matter how dishonorable. It really doesn't matter if it's Ann Coulter calling for the assassination of a New York Times reporter or describing John Edwards as a fag, or Soren Dayton being 'disavowed' by the McCain campaign while explicitly continuing to push out anti-Obama right-wing messaging, the conservative machine marches on without fear of consequence.
George Bush has openly admitted that he signed off on torture, along with Condi and the whole senior staff, and yet the media is abuzz with silly arguments about elitism and bitterness and bowling scores. It's just remarkable. And John McCain can transparently exchange people in his political operation for one another and 'distance' himself from them by swapping his operatives into consulting or marketing shops without fear that he will be unmasked as the deceitful smear artist he clearly is.
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