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Raising Race

-- By AdamCarlis - 09 Feb 2008

Introduction

Hillary Clinton targets potential voters by highlighting her experience. This issue is central to her popularity with the over 65 crowd and working class white voters, particularly in the South (the conservative wing of the Democratic Party).

Unlike Mrs. Clinton’s equally ubiquitous “change” slogan (“Working for Change; Working for You”), her “experience” argument fails the sniff test. When Mrs. Clinton says “experience,” she is actually speaking in code – reassuring conservative Democrats that she is the traditional candidate for the job. It is an argument designed to prey upon hidden prejudices regarding age and race in order to secure her base. In this essay, I will attempt to illuminate how her “experience” argument is designed to exploit the electorate’s insecurities about Mr. Obama’s race for the benefit of her campaign.

The Experience Argument

Outside of Politics

Hillary’s experience buckles under scrutiny. Her “35 years of change” include fifteen working as a corporate attorney, defending companies like WalMart? and Tyson’s Chicken. Moral judgments aside, no reasonable person would classify her legal career as change-oriented executive experience.

Clinton the First Lady

Her public service career is equally suspect. Twenty years as first lady (in both Arkansas and the White House) gave her insight into the daily life of an executive. However, claiming that experience makes her a skilled executive is tantamount to claiming that a sports reporter becomes a better hitter after covering the Red Sox or a historian, armed with a complete record of the Kennedy White House would be skilled at negotiating an end to a nuclear missile crisis. Observing and doing are two very different things and, during her years as first lady, Hillary did not do much. In fact, her most important attempt at acting like an executive failed, resulting in our current health care crisis.

Clinton the Legislator

After leaving her husband’s shadow, Mrs. Clinton’s time in the Senate has been similarly unremarkable. She has no major legislative accomplishments to speak of and her vote on the key issue of the past 8 years, authorizing the use of force against Iraq, has proven unpopular. Absent leadership on any major bill, it is hard to see why spending four additional years the Senate makes her more prepared than Mr. Obama for the presidency. Certainly being present cannot count as experience. This indicates that, when Hillary speaks of “experience,” she is not inviting an analysis of her record. Instead of referring to a proud history of leadership and legislative accomplishments, she is directing us to the prejudices that buttress her “experience” argument.

Given the Weakness of Her Experience, there Must be More to the Message

Raising the Age Issue

Mrs. Clinton is nearly 20 years older than Mr. Obama. The generation gap between the two candidates is mirrored by their supporters. Perhaps – to sure up her senior base – she hopes to highlight Mr. Obama’s relative youth. By asserting her “experience,” she may actually be saying to voters over 55 that she is one of them and Mr. Obama is a precocious child not quite ready for a seat at the adults table.

This is a dangerous tactic; one that backfired when used against John F. Kennedy Jr. and Bill Clinton (who, like Obama, was 47 during his presidential campaign). Given the Democratic Party’s pride in JFK and Mr. Clinton, let alone Mrs. Clinton’s reliance on her husband’s success in office, it would be both foolish and disingenuous to raise the age issue directly. Doing so in a coded fashion; however, offers all the benefits without any of the risk: she can identify Mr. Obama’s youth without risking comparisons to two of history’s most popular democrats.

Raising the Race Issue

However, if the age argument couldn’t defeat the great Democrats of the past, why is Hillary using it today? The difference is Mr. Obama’s race. Historically, white supremacy has used “son” and “boy” to emasculate and infantilize black men in an attempt to neutralize their growing power. While Mrs. Clinton can’t directly campaign by positioning Mr. Obama as a child (Mr. Clinton has referred to him as “kid”), she can conjure up that image in the minds of those who hear her “experience” argument. It is a subliminal cue to voters to be wary, one most of us don’t recognize until it has invaded our subconscious.

If Mrs. Clinton’s “experience” argument is attempting to tap into an undercurrent of racism in America, it is not the only weapon in her arsenal. As Mark Penn spoke about Obama’s past drug use, other surrogates referred to him as “the black candidate” in what looked like a coordinated effort to caricature Mr. Obama as the stereotypical urban, black, drug abuser. After a victory in South Carolina, Mr. Clinton publicly compared Obama’s campaign to that of Jesse Jackson, an analogy that misses on every issue except race. During the recent debate, Hillary argued that immigrants were displacing American workers. She then offered confirmation of her pollster’s false claim that Latino voters have “not shown a lot of willingness . . . to support black candidates.” These subtle hints are coming together to form the background music of the Clinton campaign and make it easier for voters (at least subconsciously) to make the leap from “experience” to “white.”

Conclusion

The result is that voters across the country, knowing little about her actual record, claim to support Mrs. Clinton based on her experience. They have been bamboozled into thinking they are voting based on experience, when in reality they are voting based on age or race. Gone are the days when segregationist Democrats loudly declare their racist ambitions from the steps of the statehouse. Yet today the same irrational fear is being stirred up, albeit in a more secretive and perhaps more palatable way. Despite losing almost every demographic in the recent Virginia primary, Mrs. Clinton carried 96% of those voters who claimed that the candidate’s “experience” was the most important factor in their decision. Given that Virginia has an open primary and John McCain? (who was in a POW camp while Mrs. Clinton was still in school and has three times her congressional experience) was also running, those voters must mean something else when they say “experience.”

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