Let’s pretend that a grainy cellphone video of Hillary Clinton or John McCain is posted on Youtube and in the video, the respective candidate is shown talking about Barack Obama, and the candidate uses the “n-word”, either in describing or referring to Obama, or in a more casual usage (such as referring to people in their past, or telling an off-color joke).
In the case of Clinton/Obama, let’s assume it is pre-nomination, and in the case of McCain/Obama, let’s assume that both McCain and Obama won their party’s nomination and are now preparing for the general election.
What would happen, in the short term and the long term? Would the offending candidate be removed from the race? How would this be reflected in the media… for example, if a major political candidate uses that word and presumably feels that way, is it safe to say that the same mentality is present in a significant number of the candidate’s constituency?
It would really depend on the FULL context to see if McCain or Hillary could spin his or her way out of it. You’ve got a range of options from:
1 ) Extreme bad: “That no good nigger should be in the fields picking cotton instead of running for President”
Spinable: "I was watching Blazing Saddles the other night. Barack reminds me of the sheriff. The new President is a nigger! hehe and the other guy said near! "
The media is looking for an excuse to pronounce Clinton dead, and this would be it. It would also hurt her more with the superdelegates than the primary voters, but it would kill her campaign.
McCain would lose a significant amount of support, but more than that, he’d energize Obama’s supporters, especially among African-Americans.
I think it’s a fairly obvious that if anyone opposing Obama says anything remotely racist, they’re over. But this first-black-candidate thing puts him on a tightrope, too. Most all candidates are one awful joke away from losing, and he’s no exception.
Pretty sure. It’s a double standard. Black people can say the n-word all day long and absolutely nothing will come of it. Obama can drop n-bombs over and over on national TV and a chorus of Obama supporters will figure out a way to defend him. And people who would’ve voted for him before will vote for him anyway. They’d rationalize it by saying he meant the -az ending.
It seems to me that in the US, people are given a lot more leeway in using ethnic slurs if the slur applies to their own group. If Giuliani had used a word like “dago” or “guinea,” it would be much less of a problem than if another (non-Italian-American) candidate had used it.
If it was Clinton, she’d be toast. Assuming she gets the nomination, she’s already going to need to rebuild support among the black voters she’ll need to win the election.
If it was McCain, it would have less impact. If he’s running against Obama, he will have probably already conceded the black vote is lost to him so it wouldn’t move him any deeper in the hole. It would have a greater effect if he were running against Clinton. As I wrote above, she’d need to regain black voters and having McCain revealed as a racist would bring them back to her.
To me: Though it won’t change my dislike of HRC (has to do with her support of Jack Thompson if you must ask), if I want to consider it a mark against any cadidate I need context. Are they telling a joke? Is it about a person or just in general? Everyones allowed the occasional racist joke, in fact I think that’s a step forward in racism when those can come to be accepted now and again with no hard feeling to any party. If it’s about any person Obama or not, explicitly or implied. It’s a big x next to their name (not that x doesn’t mean don’t vote it simply means a negative mark on their “profile”).
Overall: The public will probably overreact. There is a chance they can spin their way out, but the media will jump on it and the rights activists and everyone against <cadidate> will jump on it. All in all, they’ll lose a significant portion of votes most likely.
The media are (it’s a plural noun, you see) only interested in stories. They don’t want Clinton dead, they want narrative. I assure you Obama supporters are convinced they want Hillary to win. They refer to “Clinton News Network,” etc. But you’re both wrong. They don’t have favorite. They would love to catch Obama smoking crack or Hillary shagging McCain. They want anything newsy and scandalous that gets people to watch the news instead of American Idol.
Anyway, it would kill Clinton, no matter what the context short of reading Huck Finn aloud to school kids (and even then… who knows?) Right now it would play into the narrative of Hillary falling apart. I think they might prefer a narrative of unsinkable Hillary since it would go on longer, but they’ll take what they can get. McCain would be less scandalous – does anyone doubt he’s never told a racist joke or used a racial epithet? – and possibly not change the dynamic of the election. Frankly, I don’t think singing “Bomb Bomb Iran” to the tune of a Beach Boys hit is much less offensive in the way racial epithets are offensive (FTR, I just roll my eyes at both, so don’t bother calling me names.)
It would be more suicidal for McCain to make some remark about Christians right now, or even something anti-semitic, at least terms of eroding his chances of shoring up the conservative vote while reaching out to the middle. However, it really would depend on context.
I’m sorry, but what?? Are you honestly saying you think Obama could drop the N-bomb repeatedly on national television and wouldn’t get called on it? That it wouldn’t effect his chances of getting the nomination?
Are you serious?
There is no way Obama would get away with dropping a “my nigga” over an open mike. He’s not Chris Rock. He’s being scrutinized under a much different standard. There are an awful lot of people who are waiting breathlessly for any kind of slip up or scandal from Barack Obama. That would instantly become the dominant story in the news cycle, righty talk show hosts would pound it into the ground and widespread handwringing over the “double-standard” would saturate the media (and there would probably be at least nine threads about it on the SDMB). He would have defenders, but they would get shouted down. He would apologize but it wouldn’t matter. His bubble would be popped. There is absolutely no way in hell he could recover from something like that. I actually think he’d take a worse media bashing for dropping an N-bomb than even Hillary or McCain would. Anyone who thinks the media would ignore it is kidding themselves.
I think it’s kind of a silly hypothetical, though, since Obama is simply not going to do that. He’s not only too smart politically, it just is not part of his character to use that kind of language.
Incidentally, John McCain has used a racial slur before, specifically, he said “I hate gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” The media didn’t care that much. McCain later said he was only talking about the VC captors who had imprisoned and tortured him for 5 1/2 years. I don’t think the press was inclined to push him too much on that.