The weather was beautiful yesterday with a bright blue sky set dramatically against the bold golds and yellows of the Midwest autumn leaves. I was paired by our district organizer with a young dad who brought along a beautiful, little girl and his incisive sense of humor.While driving to our canvasing neighborhood, a new development of town homes (1/4 of which were for auction or sale), we laughed and joked about the absurdity of the television adds being launched by the GOP in our state.
I talked about my apprehension about a possible Bradly effect, where White voters polled say they will vote for Obama, but behind the curtain, will not follow through with voting for an African American. My co-canvaser insisted this will not be a significant phenomenon, and easily overwhelmed by the enthusiastic new voters.
I want to believe this young man. But I have seen first hand that there is angry racism among many white voters here in Minnesota and the Republicans are drill-baby-drillin' into the deep wells of this hatred with their stump speeches and advertisements. I fear they will be successful in bringing this poison to the surface and unexpected outcomes will follow.
Senator McCain did "tone down" the rhetoric here in Minnesota yesterday during a rally, with a few moments of it being picked up by the mainstream media. A young white man told McCain he was afraid for his unborn child if Obama becomes president. Another rally participant, an apparently older, white woman (her back was to the camera) told McCain she was afraid because Obama was an "Arab," by which she apparently also meant terrorist. In both cases, McCain acted like a reasonable human being and told the audience Obama is a decent, family man and there is nothing to fear. The Minnesotan audience booed his call to reason.
Most of the days I canvased for the DFL over the last several weeks, I have run into at least one openly angry, white, male Minnesotan who made an active point of communicating this anger to me and at me for supporting Obama. I have not written about this before in part because I don't want to mischaracterize Minnesotans. Indeed, it is highly likely Obama will win here because of cross socio/cultural/economic support he is enjoying in the twin cities. But here in the suburbs it is different. I have run across several who were only barely able to contain their anger, with huffy voices, tense faces and defensive body postures, they have told me, in no uncertain terms, they did not support my ticket and I was not welcome on their property.
One many even followed me around his neighborhood in a car. When I approached a home across the street from his, he jumped out and yelled at me, "No one is home!"
I said loudly back, "There are some people home."
He then said, "There's no one home at my house!"
I popped back quite annoyed, "I'm not going to your home, sir." I added in the "sir" because it often calms highly agitated people down when someone makes an extra effort to be polite. I felt I was dealing with someone who may be mentally ill and instinctively moved into my therapist mode.
"Good." He got the last word in.
Yesterday, the man I was canvasing with got an address wrong and approached a home not on the list. People identifying themselves as Republican on the state voting records are not on our DFL lists. Only people who are not identified as supporing a particular party or Independents are on our lists. People who tell us they are Republican are noted and the newer lists will drop them. Most of us have no intention of changing people from one political party to another.
At any rate, a man at the house we approached did not answer the door, but watched us through a window. Apparently, he figured out we were DFL supporters as evidenced by the fistfuls of Obama and other DFL candidate pamphlets we carried. He opened his window and shouted out that he did not want us leaving any of our information and was not a supporter of us. We smiled and readily agreed.
The man in the window had that same contorted, angry expression on his face and tense voice I have seen and heard many times in the last few weeks. My fellow canvaser did not seem the least bothered by any of this and continued on his way. I was disturbed as I have been in the past. In my training as a therapist, I have fine tuned my skills at reading people, and it certainly wouldn't take a therapist to read the anger I have seen among some. These people, I'm sure not in any way a majority of Republicans, but a significant popluation nonetheless, seem to have extremely emotional, even aggressive reactions to political discussion. Political strategists on all sides need to take this seriously.
Although McCain himself did not support the angry ignorance of those in his crowd of fans, he has continued to allow his campaign to make hateful, insincere statements designed to inflame the Republican base. Considering how angry and threatened many in their base already are, this tactic of the McCain campaign is extremely irresponsible. They do not understand there is a tremendous distance between the elite and academic Republicans and the Republicans in the rural and suburbans areas.
Many of the every-day-man Republicans of the rural and suburban neighborhoods do not take these hate tactics with a grain of salt. This is not politics as usual for them. McCain's campaign isn't inspiring doubt in the electorate, they are tapping into deep rage and prejudice. And some of these every-day-man Republicans are capable of violence.
When McCain looses this election, and he will, he will have exhausted the capital he built over his political career on this dubious failure of a campaign. I only hope his legacy is the only casualty of this idiocy. I hope very much African Americans, immigrants, and other people in historically vulnerable positions in our country will not become the targets of the tapped hatred McCain's campaign and Palin have been drill baby drillin' for.
Funny Battle Royal Game
2 years ago
2 comments:
I think that the McCain campaign has inadvertantly done something helpful. They have inciting their followers into being honest about how they feel. The fact that McCain is pulling back on his rhetoric means that he only went dirty long enough to reveal the hatred you are talking about. When he saw what that racism looked like up close, he pulled back in shame.
The truth is that Pres. Obama will have to deal with racist Americans, indeed the entire country will have to deal with them. But hopefully, many will come around. What studies have found is that the fear of people like this will ebb as the new leader does a good job. As people watch Pres. Obama do an effective job that improves their lives, most of them will see beyond their racism. For those who won't, well, they were pathological to begin with and probably nothing will change their minds.
The racism you encountered has to be dealt with by simply moving on to the next house, electing Pres. Obama, and allowing great leadership to teach ignorant people that it is not what a person's skin color is that matters, it is the person within.
With the economy in the toilet, people are scared, very scared. Republicans are afraid of losing their homes just as much as Democrats and Independents. That's creating this reflexive dynamic of abusiveness not seen in prior election cycles.
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