Last week, the Democratic Strategist's Ed Kilgore took up the ongoing debate over President Obama's political opposition and racism. The latest iteration began with Times columnist Frank Rich. Rich ascribed racial motives to a debate not about race (in this case, healthcare). I wrote a column arguing it's not about race. And I drew a bigger picture: Rich's charge was indicative of decades of leading leaders who “constantly saw the color of the issue as the only issue.”

Kilgore appears unaware of this history (or how it helped sunder the FDR coalition). I'll spare the reader the sprint through those decades. (But for a starting point see Democrat Henry Jackson; despite his strong record on civil rights, many liberals portrayed him as a racist because he opposed mandated bussing.) A simpler place to start is with one very important political book: Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon's “The Real Majority” (1970). They wrote of the politics of the time:

With half of women in America uptight about law and order what was the liberal response? Law and order, they said, “is a code word for racism.” In other words, “lady, you're not really afraid of being mugged; you're bigot.” … instead of saying, “We are for civil rights and against crime,” many seemed to feel that anyone against crime must also be against civil rights.

For my 2007 book on how Democrats lost white men and with them, their majority, I interviewed Michael Dukakis. A related excerpt:

“In the name of tolerance, did liberals, tolerate crime?” I ask him.

“We did a lousy job helping people to understand the difference,” [Dukakis] responds, placing his elbows on the desk. “It's one thing to treat people fairly no matter who they are or where they come from no matter the color of their skin. It's another thing not to take seriously the fact that crime in neighborhoods and cities is up and people are getting terrorized and folks don't want to come out of the house and all that stuff, there's got to be a response to that. Clinton understood that.”

So Dukakis believes liberals made this mistake (albeit the realization was too late for his own political good). Bill Clinton, check. And to a significant degree (albeit insufficiently) Barack Obama agrees as well (a point I wrestled with after his “bitter” mistake in 2008).

The basic point is that many leading liberals seek to (or by consequence do) delegitimize valid concerns by tossing the race card. And as I said on Lou Dobbs' radio show last week, conservatives do the same thing with the “patriotism card.”

But Kilgore wrote that my “standard” on the race debate was:

… If there is any possible non-racial motive for a political posture, then it's irresponsible to impute any racial motives, not just today, but in the past…

Kilgore makes my point in his attempt to delegitimize it. My critique used the word “only.” My argument is with those who say a debate that does not largely concern race largely does, in fact, concern race (as Rich and others take to an extreme on healthcare; we'll return to issues like welfare).

In Kilgore's view, to deny an issue is mostly not about race is equivalent to denying racism. Kilgore's spin is complicated by my book (which discusses the racist appeals of men like Goldwater and Wallace) and the column in question (where I note debates over issues like welfare as “racially loaded" and cite the racism of some anti-Obama radicals). It's true, of course, that some debates are about race and also about much more than race – like say welfare or affirmative action.

Kilgore carries on:

If David Paul Kuhn really believes that antagonism to busing, affirmative action, welfare, and immigration did not have any racial content…

Let's stop there. The “if” undercuts the point, since I never wrote that I believe such revisionism (because I do not). Kilgore also mistakes me as a conservative because I highlight a liberal error (he overlooks recent pieces on fiscal conservative hypocrisy or concerning a GOP presidential contender's radical words).

Ergo, Kilgore mounts an argument. The argument is just not with me. Rather, he is in a fight with the hard right. And thus Kilgore disputes hard-right revisionism on issues like the Civil War or civil rights (where I agree with him).

Yet hard-lefties create their own revisionism as well. Consider Paul Krugman. In 2007, he wrote a column exemplifying the same mistake as Rich. Krugman wrote that racism explained much of the rise of Reagan. I laid out Krugman's mistakes here: Misunderstanding Racism in the Rise of Reagan and Republicans. And sometimes, even for an economist like Krugman and Princeton's Larry Bartels, it's simply a matter of misreading the data on the white vote and race.

So we return to that 1970 warning. Then, whites heard from liberals: “Lady, you're not really afraid of being mugged; you're bigot.”

Now, many whites hear: “Man, you're not really upset about healthcare or the role of government or inattention to the economy, you're a bigot.”

The same mistakes decade after decade (whether on policy, priorities or race debates) produce the same result. Many liberals suggest the worst motives when whites do not support liberal policy. Many whites turn their back on liberalism. And all over again, liberals wonder why the Democratic Party loses whites.

--------------------------------------------
Follow the RCP Blog on Twitter.
Become a fan of RCP on Facebook.
--------------------------------------------