Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Aug 10, 2008 at 11:08 AM Pacific

Great analysis of the Tinker-Cohen contest

Adam Serwer (who blogs as dnA at Too Sense and JJP) takes a look at the implications of Nikki Tinker's failed campaign in Tennessee's ninth CD ("When Identity Politics Backfire," The American Prospect):

Media coverage of Tinker's identity-based ads showed how people across the country were shocked by one candidate's attempt to cast the other as an outsider not by tying him to Hamas or Fidel Castro but to the Ku Klux Klan. But the novelty of a black politician using wedge identity politics against a white Jewish opponent obscures the fact that this kind of politics is extremely common. There exists a bizarre idea that somehow, because of racism, black people should be immune to the kind of petty clannishness that afflicts other human beings, and it is therefore even more reprehensible when they aren’t. But there really isn't much difference between what Tinker did in Tennessee's 9th District and what Republicans do every year. The Tinker campaign’s attempt to argue that only a black candidate could represent a majority-black district isn’t so different from John McCain’s invocation of himself as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

What's really remarkable about Nikki Tinker's racist campaign is that it's not remarkable at all. It's the typical culture-war stuff -- just from a black perspective. But black or white, the story is always the same. This kind of politics is a hustle, wherein politicians use their cultural currency to distract from issues of substance. These identity-exploiting candidates use whatever connection to a community they have to appeal to voters' sense of cultural familiarity, which serves to obscure the candidates' competence or fitness for office. And as the success of the Republican Party has shown, it can be a remarkably effective campaign tactic.

But this time, it didn’t work. On Thursday night Tinker was cooling her heels at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club in downtown Memphis while, across town, Cohen addressed a cheering victory party. The residents of the 9th District resoundingly rejected one candidate’s attempt to paint the other as a cultural outsider and went with the one that best represented their interests.

It just might be that kind of year.

Side note: It's great seeing Adam get exposure in TAP and other places -- he's one of the smartest young voices in politics, and will be making important contributions to our nation's discourse for decades to come.

(h/t: JJP)

Great analysis of the Tinker-Cohen contest

Adam Serwer (who blogs as dnA at Too Sense and JJP) takes a look at the implications of Nikki Tinker's failed campaign in Tennessee's ninth CD ("When Identity Politics Backfire," The American Prospect):

Media coverage of Tinker's identity-based ads showed how people across the country were shocked by one candidate's attempt to cast the other as an outsider not by tying him to Hamas or Fidel Castro but to the Ku Klux Klan. But the novelty of a black politician using wedge identity politics against a white Jewish opponent obscures the fact that this kind of politics is extremely common. There exists a bizarre idea that somehow, because of racism, black people should be immune to the kind of petty clannishness that afflicts other human beings, and it is therefore even more reprehensible when they aren’t. But there really isn't much difference between what Tinker did in Tennessee's 9th District and what Republicans do every year. The Tinker campaign’s attempt to argue that only a black candidate could represent a majority-black district isn’t so different from John McCain’s invocation of himself as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

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