Race card divides both political parties

Published 5:46 pm Tuesday, March 10, 2009

By Staff
Rush Limbaugh's conservative "dittohead" fans might not seem to have much in common with embattled U.S. Sen. Roland Burris's mostly black and liberal supporters. Yet each group in its own way has shown us how even in the age of Barack Obama the race card endures.
African-American ministers and politicians have held news conferences and rallies in Chicago to call for everyone else to leave Burris alone. Partly as a result, Democratic lawmakers in Illinois and the U.S. Senate have backed away from their early calls for Burris to resign the seat to which he was appointed by now-impeached-and-expelled Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Burris admits changing his stories several times about contacts with Blago's camp and attempts to raise money for the fallen governor. Yet in rallies and news conferences his loyalists insist that he is being persecuted because he is black. Sure, that's a thin card to play, since there's no real evidence to back it up. But in politics, evidence doesn't matter when the voters' emotions turn against you.
Urban blacks are important enough to the Democratic base that few of the party's leaders want to be perceived as taking on its leaders, even when it could jeopardize the party's chances to hold onto the Senate seat that once belonged to Obama in next year's elections.
Like quite a few other African Americans in the age of President Obama, I had hoped local Chicago politics had grown beyond the notion holding onto a "black" senate seat as an end in itself, even if it leads to a flawed incumbent and long-term political losses. But I should have known better than to underestimate the power of racial paranoia.
Limbaugh knows. In his drive to build ratings, the radio talk show star has shown a talent for playing the strings of racial resentment. "We are being told that … we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black," he said recently of Obama. "Because this is the first black president."
Who is telling us this? Rush does not say. Just as he did not offer any evidence to back up his claim that Colin Powell endorsed Obama, after months of careful consideration, simply because they were both black. As with Burris' supporters who think their guy is being persecuted for his race, Rush's dittoheads don't need evidence. It is what they feel that counts. They feel like the "racist" tag carries enough power to put a black man in the White House and that's all that matters.
This was the sort of commentary Michael Steele, the first black Republican National Committee chairman criticized as "ugly" and "incendiary" on CNN. Steele has been trying to help his party reach out to minorities and the moderate swing voters the Grand Old Party needs if it is going to have a future as something more than a regional party.
But after Limbaugh raked Steele over the coals on his talk show, Steele melted. He apologized to Limbaugh and made himself and, by association, his party look weaker. Like his Democratic counterparts, Steele learned the hard way that he should not violate the first rule of party politics: Thou shalt not divide thy political base, even when the base doesn't seem to mind being divided.
The problem posed by Limbaugh's fans and Burris' defenders is a classic tension between dedicated political movements and the establishment parties with which they form alliances. If you think of Limbaugh's hardcore followers as the embattled minority that they think of themselves, the late Eric Hoffer, author of "The True Believer," about the psychology of mass movements, anticipated the current tension.
"A minority is in a precarious position," Hoffer wrote. "The frustration engendered by (their) unavoidable sense of insecurity is less intense in a minority intent on preserving its identity than in one bent upon dissolving in and blending with the majority. A minority which preserves its identity is inevitably a compact whole which shelters the individual, gives him a sense of belonging and immunizes him against frustration."
Limbaugh's fans are just as frustrated by anger, fear, resentment and suspicion as the liberals who stand by Burris. Barack Obama showed there is a larger group of Americans who care more about what works than which side wins. I wish more power to them.