The “chickens are coming home to roost” for Obama supporters

Original Link: http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/02/the-race-card/

By SusanUnPC

As Big Tent Democrat, an Obama supporter, admitted in “The Fairy Tale Revisited” (Talk Left): “The big hook for McCain is the fact that Obama supporters disgracefully smeared Bill and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries.” BTD includes the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, whose latest column consists of whining about the McCain campaign (successfully) jumping all over Obama for introducing the race card himself:

Here’s the problem — Bob Herbert spent the entire Democratic primary accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of having no class, being persons without scruples and of playing the race card. He is now disqualified from pushing back against John McCain’s race baiting and disgraceful campaign. Indeed, McCain welcomes a blast from Bob Herbert. Why? Because he can quote what Herbert wrote and said about Bill and Hillary Clinton. More . . . (Read all — it’s great.)

What goes around, comes around. And the McCain campaign has handled this “hot potato” just right. Take a look at this, via Fox News:

Back in March, our great writer Bud White wrote a highly thoughtful piece on exploiting the race card, drawing on the writings of George Packer and Sean Wilentz (perhaps one of the most insightful writers we are privileged to read):

Bud White chose a provocative title: “Is Barack Obama the George Wallace of the Left?“

Here is what Bud wrote:

The code words are different this time around. Instead of appealing to whites’ fears of forced integration by mentioning busing, Obama has elicited black prejudice by using terms like like hoodwinked, bamboozled, and okie-doke.

Can you imagine another prominent African American politician using this language? Can you see the dignified Colin Powell using this dog-whistle? How about the politically moderate Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Harold Ford, Jr.? Or the passionate Congresswoman Sheila Lee Jackson? Never. To truly transcend race is to reject the use of race in a divisive manner. Not only has Obama not rejected using race divisively, he has given birth to a whole new justification for the use of bigoted and racially divisive language and innuendo. In fact, Obama is exploiting the pain of racism experienced by African Americans to manipulate the emotions of anger and guilt as rallying cries for his ambitious assent to power.


The decision by Obama to use race against both Clintons has been well-documented and brutally effective. Obama has elicited black racism and defended it by appealing to white guilt. His defense of Revered Wright’s anti-American, anti-white racism was political contortionism in the extreme. His comment following his speech that his grandmother was a “typical white person” solidified for many people that Obama was not just of Rev. Wright’s church, but also one of Wright’s most enthusiastic disciples.

In many ways, Obama is the opposite of who he proclaims himself to be. He claims to be from outside of Washington, even while serving in the United States Senate, and his candidacy is supported by the Party’s most powerful powerbrokers.

He claims to be post-racial while practicing racial politics. As Christopher Hitchens, no friend of Mrs. Clinton, writes about Obama’s excuses for Revered Wright: “[I]s it ‘inflammatory’ to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it ‘controversial.’ It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.”

Because Obama’s candidacy is based on his biography and race, the Left - including most liberal bloggers, The Nation magazine, George Packer of the New Yorker, MoveOn.org - have endorsed Obama for offering a “transformative” opportunity. This is simply a code word for purifying the nation by electing a black man. It’s tokenism in the extreme, and it’s significant that none of the liberal elites have endorsed Obama for his policy proposals, which as Paul Krugman has pointed out are rather impotent and to the right of Hillary Clinton.

If we are going to elect someone because of their color, it should be because that person wants to heal the nation. For example, Nelson Mandela, upon becoming the first Black president of South Africa formed the Truth and Reconciliation commission, refused to hate the whites who imprisoned him and his countrymen, and insisted that one form of hate could not replace another.

Obama says “the anger is real” in the black community. If that is the case, we must meet our racist heritage with a genuine attack on all racism, including the racism that Obama is generating against non-blacks.

As PM comments on mydd.com:

What Obama has done is to open all kinds of wounds without offering remedies. He has successfully divided the Democratic Party by using race for everything as his campaign/political strategy for political gain.

He has painted both blacks and whites with very broad strokes, almost offensively — equating blacks like Mayor Nutter and others with his pastor or equating whites who have always stood up for the welfare of black people as a typical white person (by implication racist).

Large sections of both groups on either side have consciously moved to make race relations better. But here is a vile politician who when caught with his hateful pastor has brought back the worst of the two groups and calling that the state of the union for his own political gain. America is not full of Archie Bunker types neither is it full of pastor Wrights.

This situation of Obama and Wright is just between those two — the indiscretion of a guy (who perhaps never planned to run for the highest office) associating with a pastor who preaches anti-American sermons. If some people, most people find it unacceptable in a future president, that is their prerogative and right. This Wright scandal has nothing to do with race, I repeat, nothing to do with race. For him to have made it such, is something to be shunned.

Obama’s racial politics are not the overt racism of George Wallace standing at a school door and proclaiming “segregation now, segregation forever.” It is the more odious kind; it’s the accusation of racism when none existed, the implication, the dog-whistle, and the double entendre. It is perhaps more divisive and hateful because it’s nearly impossible to defend yourself from the accusation. Bill Clinton really was saying that Obama’s position on the Iraq War was a “fairly tale.” It really did take Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson to pass Civil Rights legislation.

As Sean Wilentz writes in The New Republic regarding Obama’s use of race: “A review of what actually happened shows that the charges that the Clintons played the `race card’ were not simply false; they were deliberately manufactured by the Obama camp and trumpeted by a credulous and/or compliant press corps in order to strip away her once formidable majority among black voters and to outrage affluent, college-educated white liberals as well as college students.”

The absurdity of the accusation regarding the Clintons’ alleged use of race brings into relief Obama’s repugnant racial strategy. In Democratic primaries and in the General Election, Clinton clearly would want to have as many black supporters as possible.

To paraphrase Senator Ted Kennedy speaking of George Wallace, Obama’s racial politics not only need to be repudiated, they need to be defeated. As Democrats, if we are to be congruent with who we say we are, we must wash the stain of racial politics from our party forever.

I could no more vote for Obama than I could vote for George Wallace, and the reasons are much the same.