We’re Going to Talk About the White, That’s What We’re Going to Do

I suppose it’s not news that to Republicans “real” America is white America, but it’s probably useful to have a candidate on a Republican presidential ticket be so explicit about it.

It’s very appropriate that this weekend would see yet another piece about Obama chasing white votes from Matt Bai. The print edition is headlined “Can Obama Close the Deal With Those White Guys,” thereby borrowing the both the exceptionally irritating “close the deal” buzzphrase and the arbitrary division of the electorate into groups with white people somehow being more important from the Clinton campaign. Apparently, Obama’s majority coalition won’t be quite majority enough if it doesn’t get whiter. But as both Clinton and McCain have or will soon demonstrate, white votes really don’t count more.

Of course, the problem goes beyond any one writer and editor. There’s nothing wrong, in isolation and in theory, with a lengthy article about attracting particular groups of voters per se (although I could do without such features as conflating “working class” voters with “rural whites.”) The bigger problem is the obsessive focus on white male voters in particular. The real issue is that the Times would publish an interminable article about, say, John McCain trying to appeal to single women and pointing out that the GOP is doomed among this demographic until they repudiate their extremely unpopular anti-Roe position when there’s a blizzard in hell.