Here are several “dog bites man” stories, which is journalism code for “stuff that’s so obvious it doesn’t merit a story.” Except this is primary season, and so the simple fact that there are simple facts in the world makes them important enough to put in the paper, provided they can be anchored on the page with words like “exit polls” or “strategists” or “operatives.” Which is why, from the LA Times on down, papers that never find need for the words “West Virginia” in their copy have been shucking reporters out to my state.
The first bite: Hillary Clinton won the primary in my dear little home state of West Virginia. Not a surprise. Basically, she beat Barack Obama because he is—shhhhh—-black. Here’s how the Times led their story:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won a lopsided victory on Tuesday over Senator Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary, where racial considerations emerged as an unusually salient factor.
I think that’s the writer’s way of politely saying–second bite– “where white people are still racists.”
Anyone who has spent any time in West Virginia will not be surprised to hear that
95 percent of the Democratic primary voters were white, 70 percent did not graduate from college, and 54 percent had household incomes less than $50,000.
I’ll go out on a limb–which is my own personal code for “I didn’t look this up”–and say that this is also true of non-Democrats, non-primary voters, etc.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m not disappointed. I am. It’s depressing to me that there are still pockets of America where 1/5 of the people actually leaving the polls said that “race was an important factor.” I’m even more disappointed that these are, allegedly, my people.
But I’m also disappointed that the Times (and likely other papers) are using the WV primary as a way to imply bigger questions about the ability of an African-American to “unite” Democratic voters. After running down all the numbers that basically imply white Democrats in my home won’t vote for a black Democrat, the Times says:
The West Virginia results raised troubling signs for Mr. Obama. Although exit polls in other states have indicated that many Clinton supporters, including many whites, would back him in the fall, more than half of West Virginia voters said they would be dissatisfied if Mr. Obama won the nomination, according to the surveys by Edison/Mitofsky.
Taking a cue from (and attributing it to) the Clinton media playbook, the story later says that
no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916.
As if suddenly we’ve found “evidence” that legitimately portends that Obama might not have ‘broad appeal’ or whatever it is candidates think they need to rake in lots of votes in November.
But here’s the thing: no Democrat could’ve ever lost West Virginia before 2000. We’ve been a solidly Democratic state, when it comes to national politics, for a long time. At least as long as Robert Byrd has been pulling pork for us, and he’s almost older than God.
So let’s not pretend that little West Virginia–dear as it is to me–is any kind of harbinger. Most of the year, no one cares about us, which is why we are famous for things like illiteracy, obesity, and unemployment. Let’s not suddenly act as if we are a metaphor for the “troubling signs” of unacknowledged racism that might yet undo Obama. (If for no other reason than because some of us at home acknowledge our racism.)
For the first time, I simply ask to be treated as the aberration we are normally thought to be.
Then again, I’ve been watching the media watch the campaign, and I know that by tomorrow–if not by five hours from now*–the lens will change, the angle will shift, and some new metaphor will “raise questions” or “troubling signs” that don’t get answered or even named, but linger in people’s brains as doubt, heavier with the feeling of fact than it deserves to be.
* THREE HOURS LATER: The copy of the story I quoted here has changed, and now the focus of the Times piece, of the same title (and, in an archive search, still logged with the same lede I quoted), is Clinton meeting uncommitted superdelegates (who sound, for the record, like exactly the kind of people I’d like to date.). Also, now the situation is raising “fresh” questions.
I guess the answer came this afternoon when NRAL -PCA, and Edwards, endorsed Obama.
I live very close to West Virginia and did during high school as well. It is another world from what is just fifty miles away, and I am not sure how well Obama would fare there, just as I am not sure how he would do in any of the fifteen least educated states in the union. I do know the Clinton’s pander most often to those who know no better.
I am lucky to be at the end of term with little time to listen to news.
West Virginia is also famous for one of the best hot dog places I’ve ever been to, interestingly enough. If I could just remember what the name was, this comment would be slightly more cohesive.