Tag Archives: race

…the remaining explanation, no matter how bizarre, must be true, according to Sherlock Holmes.

Sometimes that leads to uncomfortable truths.  In the Nation this week Melissa Harris-Perry brings up the theory that some liberals turning on the President right now has at least something to do with an unfair double standard based, in part, on race.

Today, America’s continuing entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan provoke anger, but while Clinton reduceddefense spending, covert military operations were standard practice during his administration.  In terms of criminal justice, Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which decreased judicial disparities in punishment; by contrast, federal incarceration grew exponentially under Clinton. Many argue that Obama is an ineffective leader, but the legislative record for his first two years outpaces Clinton’s first two years. Both men came into power with a Democratically controlled Congress, but both saw a sharp decline in their ability to pass their own legislative agendas once GOP majorities took over one or both chambers.

These comparisons are neither an attack on the Clinton administration nor an apology for the Obama administration. They are comparisons of two centrist Democratic presidents who faced hostile Republican majorities in the second half of their first terms, forcing a number of political compromises. One president is white. The other is black.

In 1996 President Clinton was re-elected with a coalition more robust and a general election result more favorable than his first win. His vote share among women increased from 46 to 53 percent, among blacks from 83 to 84 percent, among independents from 38 to 42 percent, and among whites from 39 to 43 percent.

President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation. His record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

Now whether or not you agree with Harris-Perry is actually almost beside the point, the truth of the matter is that if there’s one group of Americans that doesn’t want to have an honest conversation about race in America more than conservative Republicans, it’s liberal Democrats.

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