Race, Class and Gender

Every mathematical analysis would seem to indicate that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will have the requisite number of delegates by August for securing the party’s nomination in Denver as the Democratic presidential. The question is now whether the campaign can be conducted until then in such a manner so that the winner is not weakened when he or she goes up against John McCain.

Last week has shown that Hillary Clinton is not bothered by this. She put out campaign ads that raised doubts about Obama’s crisis management abilities; only when forced did she discount the rumors that her opponent is Muslim; she indirectly accused him of anti-Semitism; and she stated that he had less experience than John McCain . The Republican opponent will certainly make good use of these attacks.

These are tactics that the Clintons have picked up in the many political campaigns over the years, which have also made them into a mirror image and favorite target of their Republican opponents: never give up, focus on the next fight, make virtues out of tenacity and comebacks, divide voting blocks, build up networks of political dependents: the Clintonistas and the Republicans are forever locked in combat with each other, to the detriment of the nation. Left-liberal and moderate commenters in the blogs pray that this nightmare will finally be over, but it doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon.

But what is the source of this animosity against Obama – which besides Clinton is shared by a considerable number of intellectuals and academics? To some extent there is some understandable concern that such a young and inexperienced candidate will be torn to pieces by the Repbulicans in the general campaign in the fall. Clinton, it is felt, has been through this already. But there is also a general perplexity with the new generation of voters and how they organize and communicate with each other through Facebook, YouTube and diverse blogs. Clinton’s favorite medium is the televised debate, where she can display her knowledge of policy details and control her message. Then there is the constant criticism that is expressed over and over again in different formats: Obama may have charisma, but Clinton represents the promise of rational governance.

This criticism contains many implications which cannot be explicitly expressed; it places Obama along side black preachers, who sound threatening to white voters; it sexualizes him as a rock star; it makes him the kids’ candidate, with the same lack of maturity. What’s behind the criticism is Obama’s great oratorical skill: the fear is that he overpowers and intoxicates the listeners, depriving them of their critical faculties.

People are attracted to Obama’s speeches because for the past eight years we have lived through a rhetorical drought, brought about by the cacophony of the partisan hue and cry. Up to now young voters in the US have never heard a politician speak so well, and that includes both Clintons. But the notion that Obama whips his audience up into a frenzy is most certainly wrong, and completely misses the pathos and even hymnal quality of his speech. As the criticism of empty rhetoric has gotten louder, Obama has reverted in his speeches more and more to the easygoing cadence of a speaker who doesn’t mind being interrupted. Still, in this hard-fought campaign there are advantages that one will not give up completely.

But this criticism of charisma and oratory, which is almost always made by those who possess neither, is probably not the most important concern about Obama by progressive intellectuals. Prior to his rise as a political force they had invariably backed Hillary Clinton, in large measure because she was able to assert an exalted level of discourse while her husband was president.

The 90s were a decade in which all discussion – at first in universities, but soon also in radio and television – was impacted by a mild constructivism, in which nothing is received as fundamental, but rather filtered through the lenses of race, class and gender. During this decade universities couldn’t stop establishing professorships and academic departments for women’s studies, for post-colonial studies, for gay and transgender studies, or for African-American studies. The implicit understanding was that both the students and the instructors in these departments had to belong to the groups being studied. The movement was an attempt to make amends for past injustice – an atonement for historical evil -, at least within the ivory tower.

But the triangle of race, class and gender never really functioned on a completely equal footing. For example, it was no coincidence that Harvard president Larry Summer was chastised not when he tangled with the black professors Cornell West and Henry Louis Gates, but rather when he let slip comments concerning “essential” differences between the sexes. It was in any case difficult to separate the categories of race and class from each other, and the usefulness of the concept of class, with its Marxist implication that classes are the progressive subjects of history, was questionable after Bush won two elections.

That left the issue of gender – or, more precisely, the issue of women’s equality – as the final Topos of atonement movement, and this was personified by Hillary Clinton. Her time had arrived, was what we heard up until just a few months ago. And then this black man appeared on the scene and competed for her place.

In her latest televised appearances Clinton has tried to blunt the sharpness of her attacks by pointing out how wonderful it is that either a black or a woman will be the candidate of the Democratic Party. Obama’s ice cold silence in this respect demonstrates not only that he views the relationship of race and gender as far less symmetrical but also that he wants to keep questions of atonement and reparation out of his campaign.

The next weeks will show whether Obama and his campaign will draw the necessary lessons from his losses in Ohio and Texas and go on the counter-attack against Clinton and her negative campaigning or if they work out a new strategy. His speech on the evening of his loss in Texas would seem to indicate the latter: he didn’t mention Clinton’s attacks at all, rather he wanted to start a grand conversation with John McCain, whom he admires, concerning the future of America. Whether he will be leading this as his party’s candidate remains to be seen.