McCain Using Race Now

Update: Affirmative distraction
via mal contends - Jesse Helms and the Southern Strategy live.

John McCain just cannot resist that old-time religion used by the GOP in fighting general election presidential campaigns: Race as a wedge issue.

Obama says McCain flip-flops by opposing affirmative action reads a McClatchy headline on a piece by William Douglas, though a more instructive headline is that: McCain did flip-flop on affirmative action.

That flip-flop is a fact, and should be reported as such.

Writes Douglas:

McCain, speaking on ABC's 'This Week,' said he backs a proposed ballot initiative in Arizona that would prohibit affirmative action policies by state and local governments. ... McCain's endorsement was an apparent shift on affirmative action. ... He opposed a 1998 resolution in the Arizona legislature that asked voters to eliminate most preferences based on race, gender or ethnic origin. ... 'Rather than engage in divisive ballot initiatives, we must have a dialogue and cooperation and mutual efforts together to provide every child in America to fulfill their expectations,' (McCain) said at the time.

As Jamin Raskin has written, opponents of equality of opportunity have been arguing since reconstruction that blacks just need to help themselves and have only themselves to blame for any lack of achievement in America.

The critics of affirmative action invite us to believe that we live in a color-blind society in which the last vestige of racial discrimination is affirmative action itself. ... To transcend the destructive politics of division and derision surrounding affirmative action (if we still can), we need to reaffirm the equality of all peoples in a culturally pluralist society and to posit a universal politics of freedom and equality for the next century. But a vigorous defense of affirmative action right now is central to such a politics. For in a society where the lines of race and gender double as lines of class and power, even the idea of affirmative action for minorities and women is an affront to the structure of domination and inequality. Our job must be to make affirmative action the first line of defense in a politics which insists that all citizens have a right to equal participation in the fruits of our social life.

I'm sure a desperate John McCain will have no qualms about using race, overtly and through subliminal message impressions, as a means of staving off a rout in November.

Jobless? Losing your standard of living? The blacks (and their Jew allies) did it!

Jesse Helms would be proud. Now McCain needs to get down to Philadelphia , Mississippi and make a rip-roaring good speech, a la Ronald Reagan.