In the final days before the election, Democrats in the closest Senate races across the South are turning to racially charged messages — invoking Trayvon Martin’s death, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Jim Crow-era segregation — to jolt African-Americans into voting and stop a Republican takeover in Washington....Why would the NYT push what seems to be a Republican talking point? Why would the NYT direct the entire country to look at ads that the Democratic Party supposedly only wants black people to see? It's possible that the NYT is simply following neutral journalistic principles, but I find it hard to believe that, on the eve of the election, the NYT isn't trying to help Democrats.
In North Carolina, the “super PAC” started by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, ran an ad on black radio that accused the Republican candidate, Thom Tillis, of leading an effort to pass the kind of gun law that “caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.”
In Georgia, Democrats are circulating a flier warning that voting is the only way “to prevent another Ferguson.” It shows two black children holding cardboard signs that say “Don’t shoot.”
The messages are coursing through the campaigns like a riptide, powerful and under the surface, largely avoiding television and out of view of white voters. That has led Republicans to accuse Democrats of turning to race-baiting in a desperate bid to win at the polls next Tuesday.
So the question becomes: How can this exposure of blatant race-baiting be thought to help the Democrats? I'll list all the ideas I can think of right now, and you can help me refine and add to the list and also opine on the soundness of the various listed points. There are 2 aspects to soundness: 1. Whether the proposition is true, and 2. Whether the editors at the NYT believe it.
1. The racial material in the ads is aimed at black voters, but other voters looking on are alerted to their otherwise more marginal concern about racial matters in America, and seeing these materials tips them toward voting Democratic, and therefore it's helpful to give wider exposure to these ads.
2. Race has not been a sufficiently important issue in this election, and nothing is happening right now to drive it forward. The NYT is looking at an array of possibly newsworthy stories with a racial angle, and this was the best one they could find. There's at least some potential to get some candidates talking about Trayvon Martin and Ferguson again.
3. Lure Republicans into talking about race, because you've got to get them talking about race to create the risk that they'll say something stupid about race. Those damned Republicans have been tight-lipped, and this might loosen them up.
4. It's a longer game. The NYT sees this election as a disaster for Democrats, so kick them while they're down, build some semblance of distance, and make that a foundation upon which to build a Democratic victory in 2016.
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3) and 4) sound pretty likely to me.
(4)
By the way, I like Rush Limbaugh's practice of always calling it the "Democrat Party", never using the word "democratic". That's accurate. Kinda like putting the word "liberal" in quotes.
Maybe they're washing their hands like Pilate.
I wonder whether the NYT has seen the winding sheet on the Democrats running in this election?
Longer game. The jig is almost up for the Dems this time around and so a dash of neutrality is thrown in to season an otherwise leftist porridge. If they were serious, they might investigate voting by illegal Latinos. But I wouldn't bet on them doing it anytime soon.
Maybe they're flashing their abs like Pilates.
"Race has not been a sufficiently important issue in this election"
Huh ?
Try, Ferguson 24/7.
Blacks are starting to wake up to the fact that Democratic policies have done them incalculable harm. The NYT is prepping the party's coming abandonment of blacks as the Democrats move onto their next victims, Hispanics.
5) The party needs money.
The Times is sending the message to its mostly democrat, mostly well-off, readership that Democratic candidates in far-off southern locales need help.
This is a readership that likely sees these ads as truth-telling not race-baiting.
The independents and moderates who read The Times as a national paper don't matter because they aren't the targets of the money pitch.
Maybe it's to explain to NYT readers why they see people like this 82 yr old grandmother calling in to CSPAN to explain why they jsut voted Republican for the first itme in their lives. Or the Chicago Unchained video released a few days ago.
Sometimes the Times really does act like a local paper with a local readership. They're insular unwittingly.
What will happen if the Democrats pull out a win? What if they hold the Senate and win governorships in, say, Wisconsin and a few other states?
Rightists are already wondering what the hell went wrong in 2012. We will dig holes and crawl into them, thinking the country is beyond redemption.
Was this what it was like in 1936?
It is the "wet-dry distinction" applied to political advertising.
The actual ads themselves are 'wet' -- meant to transfer the message through direct contact to the desired voting audience, hoping to cause as many 'symptoms' as possible to the political 'body': outrage, anger, passion, etc.
The reporting of the ads by the NYT is 'dry': it is not meant to 'infect' but rather to simply make the NYT's audience aware (or reminded) on an intellectualy distanced level, safe from base symptoms but eliciting concern in the political 'head'.
Politics as disease.
From the NYT quote,
"In Georgia, Democrats are circulating a flier warning that voting is the only way 'to prevent another Ferguson.' It shows two black children holding cardboard signs that say 'Don’t shoot.'"
I'm surprised Althouse didn't cite this as well in her recent post condemning using children politically.
Stop and frisk is more relevant to Times readers. But Times readers like the huge drop in crime in NYC over the last 20 years. So it must be avoided.
5. Nothing in the NYT is going to impact a possible Republican voter, while the liberals who read it don't have a problem with the tactics if it helps them win. It produces a glimmer of hope for quarantined NYers that they just might pull this off...damn the means.
betamax3000, that's a good comparison.
Somewhere yesterday, maybe on Instapundit, someone commented that unbiased journalism is a late-20th-century idea. I'd say it's a boast, a self-hagiography, a thing most of us Americans alive today think was always there, but really never was.
The NYT has played the myth well, but that paper's end times are coming.
Not sure if any of the pat answers actually address this, but maybe the NYT is just trying to salvage their reputation by acknowledging the obvious.
Alternately, maybe Peters slipped up, had an epiphany, or just plain slipped one through. Are web stories as tightly controlled editorially as printed news?
It's also a reminder to NYT readers why they vote Democrat PArty. Why they have to keep voting against their interests. Or it could be a set up for a Ta-Nehisi-Coates piece on why NYT readers to get to the polls.
The pandering will eventually stop working. It certainly turns off as many whites as it wins over blacks, and enough blacks eventually will sour from it.
I really don't think 9 out of 10 black voters just love the Democrats so much--rather, there's just this accepted idea that the GOP either fears them, hates them, or just considers them invisible. They vote for the Democrats as the only alternative, and it helps that the Democrats have campaign infrastructure in the black areas--their churches, neighborhoods, community centers--so a lot of this is personal relationships.
Undoing that is a long process, and made harder by the fact that so many blacks are poor, and have either had trouble with the law or know someone who does. This affects middle class blacks as well, because many are still not far removed from someone in a worse position, or could at least relate to people who are. When the right pushes a "law and order" message, it's true that less crime is better for blacks as they tend to disproportionately be victims of crime, but when you also can imagine the cops giving you a harder time the message can be read a different way for you. When the right pushes business growth, it's true that this would help the poor communities in creating more jobs and services, but many still will view themselves as the least likely to get those jobs, or imagine that the jobs won't really be created and the rich will be the only ones benefitting.
A lot of this means changing the culture, in making the message stick, and being invested in those communities so there's a way to build support there. The thing is, it's easier to focus on expanding the current base and placating swing voters who are more attainable, so the lack of focus on the black communities means reinforcing their current voting patterns.
It also doesn't help when a lot of Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot when talking about race.
For me, the bigger, meta-question is whether Althouse can bring herself to call race-baiting by liberals explicitly "ugly" and explain (1) that liberals must understand why such ugliness is a turn-off to Althouse-like voters, and (2) why Democrats deserve to lose simply because of these ads.
Reporting on the Dems "pandering to black people"? They're taking it for granted that the pandees won't see this reporting or recognize what's going on, first of all, and, second, their Democrat readers will approve and cheer this on, given their "by any means necessary" ethic and their tendency to look down on everyone else.
That's all.
But what about that creepy report on noncitizen voting linked to by Drudge?: that people simultaneously said they couldn't serve on Jury Duty because they're not citizens, but yet appeared on the lists of voters.
I have no idea what the NYT is up to but the whole exercise reminds me of the cold war: Kremlinologists would read Pravda never with the assumption that what was in it was "true" but that somewhere between the lines one could see what was going on in the heads of the top party leaders.
Maybe they let this slip in by accident or maybe they occasionally print straight news just to throw us off.
I have yet another "Reason 5" to throw on the pile.
I think that the NYT is calling out the Democrats by "sunlighting" the Party's race-baiting tactics. Remember who are the NYT readers --- they aren't exactly comfortable around black popular culture, either, but they'll die before they'll say so in public.
The NYT & its readership see themselves as on a team, leading themselves & the various minorities towards a brighter, more multi-culti future. Appeals to minorities that are too blatantly of the "vote Democratic or the honkies will kill you" or "Vote Democratic because the Republicans will cut off your gravy train" strain upset the NYT readership because it reminds them of just how close to Tammany Hall their coalition still really is.
In the South at least, Democrats have always made racial appeals for votes. When I was a boy, the racial appeals were made not to blacks, but whites.
Exposure of race-baiting for Dems makes sense:
1. It's not race-baiting; it's all true. Dems are truth-tellers. Exposing Dems as truth-tellers is good.
2. Racial truth-tellng boosts black and liberal turn-out. Exposing turnout-boosting truth-telling is good.
3. More subtly, exposure now conveys hints of desperation and prepares the base for failure: "we are doing everything we can, but it might not be enough." As preventive therapy, exposing desperate efforts is good.
Is this article in the newspaper as well? Maybe the Times views internet readers as more sophisticated than the dead tree rubes.
The NYT Times floats the story, hoping that Fox News will cover it, especially on 'talking heads' shows. They can then take the result with a few choice quotes and make the story about how the Right is insensitive to black concerns.
Brer Rabbit.
4. Primarily. Add in that low information black voters aren't going to ever see anything published by the NYT, and white voters who enjoy telling others that they read the New York Times aren't going to stop voting Democrat anyway... why not make the token effort to be the 'unbiased' source to pave the way for a nice, fair, railroading of Hillary's opposition?
But there's another element here. The New York Times doesn't particularly like blacks. They are a useful demographic, but as a demographic they are a pain in the ass and scary to urban-dwelling whites, they are very tribal and can't be trusted to vote for the white liberal prog if some uppity negro makes a jump for the same position (from Hillary to Mogadishy, Minneapolis!), and if it weren't for the economic handouts they would not vote Democrat, having no real truck for the white liberal ideals of gay marriage, gun control, an atheist government, etc. etc.
In short, blacks are losing to Hispanics, and while the Hispanics aren't particularly receptive to any of the issues above either, it simply becomes a game of who the more important demographic is, especially as they both hate each other.
So expect to see the blacks thrown under the liberal bus from here on out. The NYT has to suck up to the Latins now - game over for Crack & Friends. As usual, they finish dead last in the race of race.
To YoungHegelian:
"Appeals to minorities that are too blatantly of the "vote Democratic or the honkies will kill you" or "Vote Democratic because the Republicans will cut off your gravy train" strain upset the NYT readership because it reminds them of just how close to Tammany Hall their coalition still really is."
I usually agree with you but was surprised by this comment. Where is the evidence that NYT liberals are "upset" about such appeals?
Even journalists have shame.
I vote for The Long Game scenario. The editorial board has read the tea leaves and decided that the election is over except for the question of how many ballots can be found in how many car trunks and that any overt help they could give to the Democrats this cycle is very limited. So:
Hillary! just won't be able to pull Blacks into the polling places like Obama did. She just can't. Neither for that matter would Warren, and I think '16 is going to turn into a battle of who has the freshest vagina. Race-baiting in an effort to motivate a disillusioned demographic to vote will probably be counterproductive going forward.
(The story named Harry Reid as a driver here multiple times. I doubt there's anything less inspiring to the African American community than a septuagenarian Mormon from Nevada).
So just like in Wisconsin, the Democrat Press is laying the groundwork for the coming Great Blame Poo-Toss, The difference is that for the NY Times they have to look ahead two years and prep the battlespace accordingly.
Alexander said, "The NYT has to suck up to the Latins now..."
But why? What is their motivation? Why would they switch teams?
These are people working for a dying institution, the NYT, and they have to get up and ride the subway or get a cab and write about stuff.
What moves these individuals? Are they all trying to become Maureen Dowd or George Will? Some of them might think that's gonna happen, but most Manhattanites know no, it ain't.
What moves them? Something does. They still get up and get on that subway.
My guess is it makes them feel better. These individuals want to feel good about themselves, so they demonize others, mostly as projection. That's their caffeine. Get-up-and-go juice.
If the other person is a jerk, then I'm less of a jerk, and I will have lived a worthy life.
The Democratic Party can be reasonably sure that most African-Americans who vote will consistently vote Democratic. African-Americans are by far the most reliable Democratic voting bloc.
BUT they can't be sure how many African-Americans will actually get out and vote.
This sort of propaganda is unlikely to change anyone's mind, but it may get enough people exited about the election to increase the percentage who vote.
So, as ugly as the message is, it's unlikely to hurt Democrats and it might just help them. At least, I suspect that's how Democratic Party strategists would see it.
And the line between these strategists and the New York Times is somewhere between thin and non-existent.
"(The story named Harry Reid as a driver here multiple times. I doubt there's anything less inspiring to the African American community than a septuagenarian Mormon from Nevada)."
Be that as it may, you have to admit, relatively speaking, Harry Reid's vagina is amazingly fresh.
Data confirm that elections are won by energizing the base. Independents and cross over voters are generally irrelevant.
@Meade
You are the last person on earth I would have expected to write the most unsettling line I'm likely to see all year. Gracious. Some thoughts cannot be unthought.
The Democrat plan this election cycle is to energize their base (A lot of whom are black voters) and try and win this election.
The thing is, black voters have been their base for a very long time. But something changed.
That change was our very own King Putt. The first black president.
The reason so many black people got to the polls to vote for him was because, running up to the elections, everywhere you went in the black community there was buzz.
If you went to Church, there were sermon's about him. Not calling him Christ or anything, but about the black experience in America and how this is a historic moment.
It captured a feeling in the black community. Everyone felt it. Hell, even Colin Powell fell for it, and still does. His election was monumental. As was his re-election (Because losing to a white Mormon guy would have been a huge rejection that the collective psyche couldn't handle).
But in 2010 and now, in 2014, what do they have to vote for? Harry Reid?
C'mon. It's over. The moment has passed, not with a bang, but a whimper.
I think the rats in the hold have seen the condition of the Democratic ship and are skittering ashore while they can.
5. The democrat party has a shiny new thing called the hispanic vote and have thrown blacks under the bus, the NYT has just noticed this?
The only thing that makes sense to me is that the NYT does not have a problem with these despicable ads.
It's a shot in the arm for the many liberals who believe that the only reason they don't win more elections is that they're too nice to get down in the gutter with the Rethuglicans who do underhanded things like (to pick a random example from the "Readers' Picks" comments) vote against laws Democrats want. Finally, we're fighting back!
They may be preparing the excuse. Soft landing as they blame blacks for not showing up.
Where's Crack?
More like:
5) Because Republicans realllllly are raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacists. Really! Believe us! Come on, you know it's truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue.
It's about helping progressives feel better about the thumping they're going to take on Tuesday. It's okay that you're going to get your butts whipped, the other side is evil! You have to get angry and not despondent, getting angry and letting that hate for those Republican haters flow is what the progressive movement needs to sustain itself.
#2 sounds abut right to me.
3) and a blend of 1) and 2). It's a subtle message to any blacks in any states that haven't seen the ads., and even reinforcing the message "Get out and vote, otherwise.......Trayvon Martin....remember Ferguson"
Black turnout is critical. More press will help get the vote out.
Isn't it possible that the Times committed non-partisan journalism not as part of a malicious scheme, but out of absent-mindedness?
New York Times is not all bad. They print the views of one of the most interesting and articulate conservative columnists (Douthat); Nocera and Morgenstern are also good. I will never subscribe or send them a nickel but I do read the newspaper on the web simply because it's worthwhile knowing what they are saying. So I think the reporters involved here are repulsed by the ads and are honestly telling the story. The WSJ, to which I subscribe, is probably more ideologically narrow, at least on the editorial pages, than the NYT.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
The NYT exists on such a high plane, it may not have occurred to the writer and his editor that they were undercutting their own side.
It's tragic that most political reporting in the New York Times begs to be examined for ulterior motives.
"It's tragic that most political reporting in the New York Times begs to be examined for ulterior motives."
That's a good point--the fact that everyone's first instinct is "why would they do this if it doesn't obviously help the Democrats?" says everything about the paper's reputation these days.
Is any of this obvious racially-charged pandering ugly, though, Prof? I haven't heard it called ugly on this blog so I have to assume it's not.
No, it's cute racial pandering.
Isn't it possible that the Times committed non-partisan journalism not as part of a malicious scheme, but out of absent-mindedness?
what a great line
I sort of agree with #4. After felching President Obama for so long, the NYT needs to mildly reproach him and his party for the next two years so that when they savage the next Republican president, they won't be accused of naked partisanship.
You should all just hear all the knee-jerk liberals in St. Louis talking about Ferguson - especially when it comes to a teeming horde of rampaging blacks burning private properties.
Remember, most of these liberals (in St. Louis) are elderly, third-generation descendants of rag-pickers and junk dealers, who brought themselves up by their own hard work and sent their children east for an education.
Most of them are retired professors, attorneys or physicians, or married to one.
They're all about someone else being forced to tolerate a rule change or government obligation - but heaven forfend some person or entity should take something from one of them!
Is it possible you guys are protesting juust a little too much?
By definition, is pandering not ugly?
"Blacks are starting to wake up to the fact that Democratic policies have done them incalculable harm"
They're too far gone to ever wake to that fact in any meaningful way. It's blend or stagger off to oblivion now.
Pandering has lots of negative connotations by itself. Racial pandering throws racist stereotyping into the characterization, and that's ugly squared.
I don't get Mead's Hamlet reference.
Meade that is.
I see this as related to the description of bias and prejudice by Frank Herbert in the Ophiuchi Hotline.
Bias: If I can rule for you I will.
Prejudice: I will rule for you unless I can't.
The NYT is biased for the Democratic Party. But not prejudiced. A good news story will trump the bias in the end. Even if the editorial board did not like it, it is a good story and so will run.
"'Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.'
"The NYT exists on such a high plane, it may not have occurred to the writer and his editor that they were undercutting their own side."
I suspect most of Team Times believes blacks are oppressed, Republicans in office will make them more oppressed, and Democrats in office will make them less oppressed. So these ads are actually a public service.
In fact, complaining about them might make you racist, the same way complaining about affirmative action makes you racist.
Is this article in the newspaper as well? Maybe the Times views internet readers as more sophisticated than the dead tree rubes.
A pictorial excerpt from four such ads — including the one with the two kids holding “Don't shoot” signs — appears on page A1 today, above the fold, with the caption: “Democrats hope blunt ads being distributed in Southern states like Arkansas and Georgia will draw more black voters to the polls.”
Perhaps it represents a proactive effort to neutralize or degrade issues that may compete with their preferred issues in this or upcoming news cycles.
Henry is correct about it being the original #2.
The NY Times are true believers who think that these ads will help thier cause and only hold back a little by pretending that they are just reporting the "facts" as they leak these "Speaking Truth To Power" ads.
Matthew Sablan said...
Even journalists have shame.
Leftist journalists? HA! since when?
6.
By cheating in black areas in the cities the Democrats are going to win. And that has to be explained. So the explanation is going out - the Democrats used fear tactics and got out the vote in those areas.
I believe that the Democrats are using new cheating tactic which I call the zombie vote. They used to vote the graveyards, now they vote the zombies. Zombies are people who are on the unpurged voting list in some precinct but who have moved to another area but the Democratic Party continues to vote them in their old precinct. They are the undead who kill legitimate voters, hence "the zombie vote."
The reason I think there is a zombie vote is that in the poorest precincts in the big cities including Milwaukee very high percentages of registered voters are supposedly turning out. But in these precincts you have renters and 60 to 70 % of renters are moving every five years. (In Milwaukee 25% of the students change schools every year, most because they have moved.) So the unpurged voter lists in areas characterized by renters have a huge bloat from the fact that they are filled with people who have moved. This bloat makes it impossible to get 85% of the registered voters to the polls no matter what the ground game.
Like this
100 voters
5 years later 60 have moved
Registration drive signs up all the new renters and gets 87 out of 100 people to the polls.
What percent of the registered voters turned out?
87/160 = 54%
So very high percentages of registered voters turning out in areas filled with renters and with an unpurged voter list indicates zombie voting fraud.
And to cap it all these zombies will re-elect Democrats who will then turn around and legalize 5 million Hispanic workers and drive African-American unemployment even higher than it is. So the stolen votes don't benefit the African-Americans. Sickening.
Obama - our first Zombie President
I think racebaiting is the more accurate term
Did Crack finally shake lose the mortal coil and go to that big street corner to beg on in the sky?
You would think this sort of post would be right up the alley of a self described "republican."
Did they close all the libraries in San Francisco to celebrate the world series victory?
Crack is still alive. Next time I talk to him, I'll let him know you asked about him. Because you love him. You know you do. The kind of love money just can't buy.
DougWeber said...
The NYT is biased for the Democratic Party. But not prejudiced. A good news story will trump the bias in the end. Even if the editorial board did not like it, it is a good story and so will run.
10/30/14, 12:44 PM
A statement to facts not in evidence.
I can not in recent memory recall the NYT letting a "good" story get in the way of the narrative even to the point of having to completely misconstrue the story in order to let the narrative live.
Must be much too busy with his lucrative music career to grace us with his nuggets of wisdom on matters of race.
Tell him I understand that his time is far too valuable.
I don't think it is exactly "pandering". Pandering is gratifying a reprehensible desire. The ads in question are clearly intended to get blacks to vote, by scaring them, not by gratifying their desires.
I don't know what's up with the Times. Perhaps they are aware that the people those ads are directed at don't read their paper, so they can be dispassionate about it? Beats me.
Meade said...
Is it possible you guys are protesting juust a little too much?
By definition, is pandering not ugly?
Well, have you or the Prof called it ugly? If not, why not? I don't have access to the OED at the moment but pander is synonymous with gratify, so while you can argue that the word itself has negative connotations that doesn't answer why this hasn't been explicitly labeled "ugly."
On the language front, by the way, calling someone a panderer is equivalent to calling them a pimp (usually with the implication that they're pimping out younger people). In most modern contexts the word "pimp" is certainly not "ugly" and in fact is not necessarily derogatory at all. So no, by definition (taking the words/language as they are commonly used) pandering is not by definition ugly.
Meade said...
Crack is still alive.
So he hasn't offed himself. The man never could keep his word.
Perhaps he's busy putting his alleged new found wealth up his nose.
I'm sure I speak for others here when I say I'd be surprised if he landed a job, but if he did, good for him. I'd be more surprised if he can keep it for longer that six months.
It may be that Dean Baquet is a better executive editor than Jill Abramson. After all, she was a horrible journalist.
Also note the racism in her attack on Justice Thomas, as well as the race of the man who replaced her, and the racial slant in the article.
One hopeful possibility is that Baquet does not like race-baiting, and so the NYT no longer approves of such tactics. If so, bravo.
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