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While many politicians are accused of employing racial euphemisms, all deny guilt. The line between legitimate debate and appeals to racism is often fuzzy and turns on the good faith and background of the candidate. Candidates rarely play the race card as baldly as North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms did in 1990 in his race against Democrat Harvey Gantt, the black former mayor of Charlotte. Helms, who refers to blacks as "Freds" and has for decades been hostile to civil rights legislation, was eight points behind Gantt three weeks before the election. Then he ran an 11th-hour TV ad showing the hands of a white man crumpling a rejection slip for a job that had been reserved for a "racial quota." Many Republicans as well as Democrats denounced the ad for inflaming racial animosity. But it worked: Helms came from behind to win, 52% to 48%.
In other cases, however, Republicans as well as conservative Democrats protest that many blacks and liberals are too quick to cry "racist" at any attempt to discuss explosive, racially tinged issues such as welfare, crime and affirmative action. "There is no reason for Republicans to be ashamed to talk about racial preferences in terms of equal opportunity," says former Republican Party chairman Bill Bennett. "You're probably going to get called a racist, but that won't stick if you establish credibility on these issues by spending time among black people, in schools and on street corners," debating them instead of talking about them. Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, who spends more time among working-class blacks than any other Bush adviser, says that "if you don't have a positive message to balance talk of racial quotas, you're going to come across to blacks as discriminating."
In the recently published book Chain Reaction, authors Thomas and Mary Edsall write that race "is no longer a straightforward, morally unambiguous force in American politics." Instead, the Edsalls contend, considerations of race permeate voter attitudes toward such issues as taxation, equal opportunity, public safety and moral values. Racism alone, they say, fails to explain why large numbers of white, formerly Democratic voters have defected to the G.O.P. Worse yet, from the Democratic standpoint, blasting the defectors as bigots instead of exploring the complicated reasons for their disaffection only angers them. "Democratic liberals' reliance on charges of racism guarantees political defeat," the Edsalls write, "and . . . guarantees continued ignorance of the dynamics at the core of presidential politics."
Though some Democrats hope Duke will sully the G.O.P. as a racist party, Democrats must share the blame for Duke's success and the rising national appetite for Duke's scapegoating style. Leaders of both parties attribute Duke's appeal to rising unemployment, yet as Democratic strategist James Carville, a native of Louisiana, observes, it is Democrats who are held most responsible for "failing to define ourselves as we traditionally have, as the party that defends the interests of working people of all races."