There was something very odd about last night’s Democratic presidential debate on ABC. Certainly the bulk of the debate was directed at challenging Barack Obama on issues that Hillary Clinton has tried to make hay off in the last month and a half. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were not shy about going after Obama with every right-wing talking point available, including a question given to Stephanopoulos by right wing talking head Sean Hannity. But, even with all the attacks thrown at Obama on the excuse that Republicans would attack him with these so the moderators should, there was something very odd about the debate. Last night I could not put my finger on it.
Then tonight I read this post by Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News and this one by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. The posts are about Nash McCabe, the woman who asked Obama the flag pin question via videotape. She asked:
Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the American flag. I am not questioning your patriotism, but all our servicemen, policemen and EMS wear the flag. I want to know why you don’t.
It was a question that of course was challenging Obama’s patriotism. It is an "issue" that the right wing has been trying to manufacture for months now. It was odd that ABC would inject it into the mainstream on a prime-time Democratic primary debate. It was odder still that ABC would use a citizen to broach the topic, rather than have the moderators do it. It was meant to be a question that ordinary voters care about. One imagines that ABC went to Pennsylvania and asked voters what questions they would like to ask the candidates, and from among the many they gathered, they picked a few that were representative of what was on voters’ minds. Not so.
It turns out ABC found Nash McCabe not from the neighborhoods of Pennsylvania, but from the pages of the New York Times. McCabe was featured in this article earlier in April that appeared on the New York Times. Her issue was the flag pin and why she didn’t like Barack Obama:
Ask whom she might vote for in the coming presidential primary election and Nash McCabe, 52, seems almost relieved to be able to unpack the dossier she has been collecting in her head.
It is not about whom she likes, but more a bill of particulars about why she cannot vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
“How can I vote for a president who won’t wear a flag pin?” Mrs. McCabe, a recently unemployed clerk typist, said in a booth at the Valley Dairy luncheonette in this quiet, small city in western Pennsylvania.
Mr. Obama has said patriotism is about ideas, not flag pins.
“I watch him on TV,” Mrs. McCabe said. “I keep looking for that lapel pin.”
Now, it is bad enough that ABC would seek out a person specifically for a pre-determined question that was being pushed by fringe elements of the American right wing. It has the feel of a hit job. It gets worse when you realize that the title of the New York Times piece was "In Ex-Steel City, Voters Deny Race Plays a Role" and the article dealt with the the role of racism and the varying reasons voters give to mask their reasons for voting against an African-American candidate. The article continues:
Americans have a long tradition of voting against candidates rather than for them. But in the first presidential campaign with an African-American as a serious contender, there may be a new gyration in the way voters think, the need to explain the vote against the candidate who is black.
“I don’t say this because he’s black, but the guy just seems arrogant to me, the way he expects things to go his way,” said Harry Brobst, a truck driver who had never registered to vote until this year.
Mr. Brobst said he would vote in the primary “not so much for,” but against.
…
But when dismissing Mr. Obama, voters in this former steel center, whatever their racial feelings, seem almost compelled to list their reasons, if only to pre-empt the unspoken race question.
Because he voted “present” too often as an Illinois state senator. Because he speaks very well, but has not talked about reviving the coal industry. Because he would not command the respect of the military. Because there is something unsettling about his perfect calm, they say.
…
He said he did not “know what to make of Obama.” Mr. Musick said he had liked the senator but then decided that he did not “for a bunch of reasons.”
“It’s not about race,” he added. “It’s about a feeling I have.”
Regardless of what McCabe’s actual motivation may be, ABC News surely knew that the New York Times article was about race. In the context of the article, the flag pin question was a proxy for racism. That ABC chose to seek this woman out for this very question puts ABC News’ journalistic credibility in serious jeopardy. We may have watched a new low in American journalism last night. Exactly how low ABC went last night is only now becoming clear.
Despicable. There’s no other word I can come up with. Hopefully, we can forget about this after next Tuesday night.