Bradley Effect narrative lays the groundwork

It’s called the “Bradley Effect” ( wiki) and chances are you’ve had it explained to you by now. In a nutshell, this is the name for voters claiming to have voted for a black candidate in an election but actually voting for the white candidate because those voters are racist and don’t want to admit it. This seems to have become the popular theory among some chatterers for why the polls were incorrect in New Hampshire.

John P. Judis at the New Republic looks at the statistics and doesn’t see any evidence, but I don’t have to crunch numbers to call bullshit.

Let’s be clear on what we’re saying here. We’re saying pollsters called Democratic primary voters — primary voters being the most in-tune and dedicated to their party’s principles — and asked them who to they were going to vote for. And a significant number of the primary voters thought “if I say anything other than Obama, the pollster will think I am racist.” And then these same people went and voted for Hillary Clinton.

Bullshit.

First, I don’t buy that there’s a significant population of NH democratic primary voters racist enough to refuse to vote for Obama based simply on the fact that he is black. And then these crypto-racists go vote for the female candidate instead.

Pretty progressive racists, don’t you think?

John Edwards, the white man from the South, seems like the bigger beneficiary in that story. “But John,” you say. “Edwards has spoken a lot more than Obama about race issues.” That’s true. But if a crypto-racist, primary votin’ Democrat is aware enough of the race to know that, then he or she is aware enough to know Clinton occasionally outpolls Obama among black voters.

Let me tell you what the theory is good for, though. It’s great for finally inserting the narrative into the general public consciousness that Democrats are secretly racist. It also turns Clinton into the “candidate of racists” and Obama into the “black candidate,” something Obama has studiously avoided doing himself. They don’t have to prove anything, or show that anything has to have any statistical basis. All they have to do is get people to think that this is a likely explanation, and then later whenever they want to make the case that Hillary is a racist or that Democrats are racist or that an Obama defeat (or election) could spark race riots — yes, this is something the likes of Rush Limbaugh are concerned about — all they’ll have to do is point at the fiction they made up in New Hampshire and say “Remember the Hillary/Bradley Effect”?

Please don’t let them do that by treating this nonsense seriously.