This idea that this is the nastiest campaign ever that pundits and the MSM has been running with for the last couple of days is pure nonsense. This morning, appearing on Jansing & Co, Joan Walsh clearly and concisely explained why it is nonsense, summing it all up with this statement:
So there's lots of ways to be chained or shackled that don't involve the tragedy of slavery. I don't think that's where he [Biden] was going, and I think it's great he's not apologizing, frankly.
This isn't the nastiest campaign ever. Mitt Romney just wants it to be. Fortunately, I was able to transcribe the interview before the video stopped working at MSNBC. I'm embedding the video below the fleur-de-orange in case MSNBC discovers the problem, and fixes it, but at least you can read what Joan Walsh said during the interview [
Update: the video now works]. (I apologize that I don't know the name of the gentlemen conducting the interview):
Former Democrat turned Republican, Artur Davis, is piling on Vice President Biden. Davis who will speak at the GOP convention says that Biden's charge that Republicans would put “people in chains” was insulting to African Americans. Davis says that the President should be embarrassed by those comments. The Biden back and forth is just the latest in what some are calling the nastiest campaign ever. The Washington Post's Dan Balz writes that there's now a sense that all restraints are gone, and there is no incentive for anyone to hold back[See President Obama, Mitt Romney running a most poisonous campaign, The Washington Post, August 15, 2012].
Joined now by Joan Walsh, Editor-at-Large at Salon, and author of the soon to be released book, What's The Matter With White People?. That's an interesting titled book, in itself. Joan, good to see you.
JW: Good to see you.
Host: First, let's get your response on what Artur Davis said. What do you think?
JW: Oh, it's preposterous. I mean, he joined the Republican Party. He should move on. He should give his Party, his new Party, advice. And you know, I have a lot of respect for Dan Balz, he's a really bright person. But first of all, every four years we hear, we have all the coverage; it's the nastiest campaign ever; Oh my God. And in particular this round of attacks on Vice President Biden is just so false and preposterous. I mean, we have had a campaign where Newt Gingrich talked about our president's Kenyan anti-colonial mindset; called him the Food Stamp President. We've had Donald Trump be like the big man on campus for the entire campaign, endorsing and embracing Mitt Romney, and visa versa, the embrace. And he’s a crazy birther, always insulting the President.
Host: Not just the last two years, you can look back decades and see similar attacks back and forth.
JW: Sure, sure but specifically the way this President was treated during the Republican primary. And now Vice President Biden says one thing that they find objectionable, and I will defend his remarks, there's nothing wrong with what he said. There's one thing, and suddenly everyone, including some in the main stream media, are calling it the nastiest campaign ever.
Host: Could they have been better chosen?
JW: You know, he says himself that the word he was looking for was shackled. And that the words the Republicans are using are unshackle the Free Market, unshackle the banks, and what he wanted to say is if we do that, they're going to shackle you. But shackle, chains, it doesn't really matter. And I don't accept that it was merely, mainly a very awful reference to slavery. I mean there are many forms of chains and shackles. Most of our people have had a period in their history where they've been chained or shackled, either literally or figuratively. This is language that we use in social movements .We've had debtors’ prisons. We have debtors’ prisons again, today. So there's lots of ways to be chained or shackled that don't involve the tragedy of slavery. I don't think that's where he was going, and I think it's great he's not apologizing, frankly.
It doesn't get any clearer than that. Any time somebody talks about being
chained or shackled, doesn't necessarily mean we have to jump to the conclusion that we are talking about slavery. The fact that the Romney campaign jumped all over these comments by Vice President Biden demonstrates just one thing ... how desperate the Romney campaign is right now. I have seen and read it said several times over the last couple of days that the Romney campaign has come to the conclusion that they can not raise Romney's personal likeability numbers. Therefore, their only option is to try and lower President Obama's likeability ratings.
All of the fake outrage and claiming that this campaign has turned into the nastiest ever, is simply a reflection of how Mitt Romney would like the campaign to be described. Mitt Romney only knows one way to campaign, negatively. It's the formula he used during the Republican primaries, and it's the formula he is using, and always planned to use, during the general election. The problem he didn't expect to run into was the fact that despite the millions of dollars he's pumped into negative ads against President Obama, Romney's poll numbers haven't improved. Romney now thinks that the only way to move out of this stalemate, as well as President Obama's expanding lead in the polls, is to try and force President Obama down into the mud with him.
After the discussion about the notion that the campaign was supposedly the nastiest ever, the conversation turned to the addition of Paul Ryan to the Romney ticket, and the battle for votes from white working class people.
Host: Talking about vice presidents; Paul Ryan being chosen by Mitt Romney. You had said in a recent interview that the GOP has doubled down, and I quote you, on whiteness. What do you mean?
JW: They're White and whiter, is the team. You know, I think the Republican Party has a problem right now. Right now, according to Gallop, 89% of Republican voters are white. That is a tough road to hoe in the future in a country that is now about 62% white. And so the party could have gone a couple of different ways. They could of gone with a Marco Rubio. Risky choice in some ways, but at least a choice that talks about the future. The choice that says, Hey, we can't be a 90% party in a country that is diversifying this rapidly. We're going to take this chance. Instead, the “chance” that they took was Paul Ryan, who is about as white bred as Mitt Romney. Now Paul Ryan, part of why I wrote my book is Paul Ryan is the sort of person that is considered the white working class representative. He's a well to do kid from Janesville. He's never spent a moment in the working class in his life. But he's working class and average Joe by comparison with Mitt Romney, and a multimillionaire.
Host: And there are other examples of this.
JW: Yes, Yeah, well you know, I mean I'm a working class Irish Catholic, well at least my family background is that. And you’ve got Bill O’Reilly, Pat Buchanan and Sean Hannity, all of whom come from wealthy, well to do families speaking, as the troubadours of the white working class. I think the only thing you have to do to be a spokesman for the white working class is be white.
Host: Does that then show, basically what your saying here, Joan, is that this election is going to be about the white working class?
JW: I think that the white working class is going to be critical. And you know, they do not vote for Obama, although he got a larger share of the white vote I have to say, then either John Kerry or Bill Clinton or Michael Dukakis. So he actually managed to pull more white voters, and more of the white working class.
Ohio specifically, right?
JW: He won the white working class in Ohio, and people forget about that. So you know, in 2010, the white working class went back to the Republicans. And you know, there's a great debate among Democrats as to why that is. Is it racism or is that they were disappointed that the economic change didn't happen as fast as they wanted? So I've been really encouraged by the way the president is talking about the economy and talking about economic populism.
Host: Is that the investment that's being made in Iowa, in Ohio? We have to get the white working class vote, the non-college educated white folk?
JW: Yes, we have a shot at it. We can go back to 2008 and see what we did then. There were points in 2011 where Obama strategists were looking at, openly talking about, a strategy of winning the White House without Ohio. I was like, Oh my God, what are they doing? No one's ever done that. So, you know, I'm encouraged by the, I think it's the message of economic populism, the message that we're all in this together. The message that we're going to rebuild the middle class together. That, I think, has a shot of bringing back some of those Reagan Democrats to the Obama coalition.
This discussion about
white working class people reminded me about the title of a diary I saw here yesterday:
Dear Most White People: When rich white people say "We're taking America back," they don't mean you. The title intrigued me. Unfortunately, the diary turned out to be a list of one-liners and did not expand on a theme about the title as I had hoped to find when I clicked in. I did think that a comment in the diary by
koseighty improved the title:
Rec'd for the Title, but
With all due respect to the diarist, my humble re-write of the title:
Dear Average American,
When rich people say "We're taking America back," they don't mean for you, they mean from you.
by koseighty on Wed Aug 15, 2012 at 05:27:35 PM EDT
With all due respect to koseighty, I would make one more change that mimics the
Hey Girl meme currently being made popular on twitter by the
Paul Ryan Gosling account and inspired by Joan Walsh's discussion of working class white people:
Hey White Working Class People,
When rich white guys talk about "taking our country back," they don't man "for you," they mean "from you."