Jew-Baiting Fails in Tennessee Congressional Primary
By Haley Swenson - Aug 8th, 2008 at 5:31 pmLast night, incumbent Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee walloped primary challenger Nikki Tinker, whose campaign consisted almost entirely of attempts to sway voters from Cohen by pointing out his status as a white Jewish Congressman representing a predominately Christian, black district.
Sadly, these identity-based tactics weren’t surprising, especially given that they occurred in the state notorious for the 2006 GOP advertisements which were undoubtedly designed to ignite miscegenation fears about then Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr., who is black.
What seems to continuously surprise politicians, however, is just how savvy and unmoved voters–yes, even Southern voters–are when targeted with these sorts of tactics. The Ford advertisements couldn’t stave off what became an incredibly close race in an overwhelmingly conservative state (though Ford did lose), and Tinker’s suggestions that only a Christian African American could represent the needs of a predominately black district couldn’t even win her 20 percent of the vote.
Campaigns like Tinker’s demonstrate just how little credit some politicians give to the voters they are trying to attract, and suggest voters could perhaps become even more sophisticated if candidates would stop taking racially charged shortcuts to winning us over, and would instead talk to us about substantive issues.
Rather than simply accepting that a white Jewish man is not adequate to represent their district, voters in Cohen’s district wanted to know specific examples of his failings and how his challenger planned to better represent them. Tinker failed to take the time to spell out these reasons (that is, assuming she bothered to come up with any).
Cohen’s dominance in this race demonstrates that a good number of today’s voters know identity-based nonsense when they see it.
i heard about this race a couple of days ago on npr. i’m really happy that people were unpersuaded by the other candidate’s appeals to race. the ending quote from the npr story was something like “i don’t think someone of another race can represent me.”
August 8th, 2008 at 10:09 pmI’m glad of this; I hope it’s a trend we see continuing to spread. It saddens me modern political discourse does focus on things other than the issues that really matter.
August 9th, 2008 at 1:36 amIt’s funny you mention Harold Ford, Jr. This challenger was his campaign manager then, and it was widely believe he floated her to knock out the progressive that replaced him. Ford’s a steady right-wing vote and not very friendly to fellow Democrats.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:29 pm