White power on the march

When I first heard that McCain's new campaign strategy was to "go negative," I said to myself: "OK, so McCain is going to remind voters that he's white and Obama is black." That serves a dual purpose: 1) to sway wavering working-class white Midwesterners who like Obama's message but are afraid of blacks, and 2) to get people who are already on board with the white-tribal narrative to come out and vote on Election Day. Sure enough, reports have come trickling in from the campaign trail to support my theory:

McCain was speaking today in New Mexico, [attacking] Barack Obama...and McCain asked the crowd "who is Barack Obama?" Immediately you hear someone yell "terrorist."...

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

Now to some, this would be chilling, but to me it's just kind of pathetic. American white racist mob violence has gone the way of the dodo. And no matter how badly the Republicans lose in November, they're not going to start a race war in response.

On a purely Machiavellian level, you can't really blame the Republicans for turning to white tribalism. Their economic and foreign policies have been absolute disasters, and nobody is interested in an evangelical theocracy. White skin is all they've got now. But in the long run, this just isn't going to cut it.

The Republicans have two choices: either accept the idea of America as a multiracial nation, or become a rump party that wins lots of local elections but few national ones. Every day they fall back on lynch-mob politics to get out the vote is a day that potential Hispanic and Asian supporters turn their back on the GOP forever. And I think the Republicans will also find that, outside of the little fantasy bubble of Sarah Palin rallies, mainstream white America isn't very gung-ho about racism either. That shit is just tired.

Update: The New York Times agrees with me.