For the most part, news outlets have been fairly responsible when dealing with issues regarding Barack Obama and race. It’s why I was so taken aback by the absurdity of this piece in the Weekly Standard.
First, a little background. Hans von Spakovsky, as regular readers know, served as a top political appointee in Bush’s Justice Department, and was a leading player in what McClatchy labeled the administration’s “vote-suppression agenda.” When it came to voter disenfranchisement, von Spakovsky was a reliable member of Team Bush. That’s not a compliment.
Naturally, the president decided to give him a promotion, rewarding von Spakovsky with a six-year term on the Federal Election Commission. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick recently made a very powerful case that the nomination itself is insulting, and if senators have any sense, they’ll reject von Spakovsky out of hand.
Obama took the lead in opposing von Spakovsky’s nomination. Today, the Weekly Standard’s Edward Blum argued that Obama isn’t motivated by von Spakovsky’s record, but rather, by the drive to play “the race card.”
When you’re ten points behind in the polls, less than two months away from the first presidential primaries, and African American Democrats are divided between you and the front-runner, what is the easiest way to narrow that gap?
Apparently, if you’re Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill), you play the race card.
And that’s exactly what he’s done with his latest salvo against Hans von Spakovsky, the Bush administration’s nominee to the Federal Election Commission. Recently, Sen. Obama published an inflammatory essay in the Chicago Defender, a weekly newspaper serving Chicago’s black community, blasting von Spakovsky for undermining voting rights and creating roadblocks for minority voters.
It’s hard to overstate how ridiculous this is.
Blum’s broader argument is that von Spakovsky did a perfectly admirable job at the DOJ, and his “only crime was his failure to embrace the agenda of the liberal voting rights community.”
Reality shows otherwise. Take a few minutes and read this piece from Lithwick. To make a long story short, von Spakovsky has been at the heart of the indefensible, right-wing effort to prevent eligible voters from participating in elections. Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme that violated the Voting Rights Act? Von Spakovsky approved it. Georgia’s re-redistricting scheme to disenfranchise black voters? Von Spakovsky approved that, too. The conservative campaign to fabricate an epidemic of voter fraud? Von Spakovsky helped create the scheme and execute it. When a U.S. Attorney in Minnesota discovered that Native American voters were being disenfranchised? It was Von Spakovsky who shut down the investigation.
In the president’s mind, this record qualifies Von Spakovsky for a promotion.
But to hear Edward Blum tell it, Obama’s concerns about the nomination constitute playing the “race card.” Why? I don’t know; Blum simply asserts it as fact.
It’s a bizarre charge that requires a little follow-up. If Blum wants to argue that Von Spakovsky is qualified and that Obama is wrong to oppose the nomination, fine; make the case. But Blum emphasizes race as the key to his argument. In other words, to be concerned with a controversial nominee’s record is to play the “race card.” Obama expressed his concerns in a “newspaper serving Chicago’s black community.” The opposition is about appealing to “African American Democrats.”
Isn’t it possible that a senator has considered Von Spakovsky’s scandalous record and concluded he’s the wrong man for the job? Indeed, there are white senators opposed to this nomination, too. Are racial politics driving their opposition to, or just the African-American senator?
If anyone’s playing the “race card” here, I think it’s the Weekly Standard.