Obama Backers Use Race as Alibi for Ebbing Support

Townhall ^ | June 25, 2012 | Michael Barone

[2ndDivisionVet]

As Barack Obama's lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fundraising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it's alibi time for some of his backers.

His problem, they say, is that some voters don't like him because he's black. Or they don't like his policies because they don't like having a black president.

So, you see, if you don't like Obamacare, it's not because it threatens to take away your health insurance, or to deny coverage for some treatments. It's because you don't like black people.

This sort of thing seems to be getting more frequent, or at least more open. As White House Dossier writer Keith Koffler notes, HBO host Bill Maher accused Internet tyro Matt Drudge of being animated by racism because he highlights anti-Obama stories.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown if House Chairman Darrell Issa's treatment of Attorney General Eric Holder was "ethnic." Brown agreed, and Matthews said some Republicans "talk down to the president and his friends."

There's an obvious problem with the racism alibi. Barack Obama has run for president before, and he won. Voters in 2008 knew he was black. Most of them voted for him. He carried 28 states and won 365 electoral votes.

Nationwide, he won 53 percent of the popular vote. That may not sound like a landslide, but it's a higher percentage than any Democratic nominee except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

Democratic national conventions have selected nominees 45 times since 1832. In seven cases, they won more than 53 percent of the vote. In 37 cases, they won less.

That means President Obama won a larger percentage of the vote than Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and (though you probably don't want to bring this up in conversation with him) Bill Clinton.

Now it is true that you can go out in America and find people who would just never vote for a black person. But it's a lot harder than it was a generation or two ago, when most voters admitted to pollsters they would never vote for a black president.

And you can probably find some people who usually vote for Democrats but would not vote for a black Democrat. But not very many of them, and they're likely to be pretty advanced in age, and so there are likely fewer of them around than there were four years ago.

My own view is that such voters were more than counterbalanced by voters who felt that, as an abstract proposition in the light of our history, it would be a good thing for Americans to elect a black president.

In 2008, Obama, who came to national attention by decrying the polarization of Red-state and Blue-state America, had obvious appeal to voters. I think there is a similar, and similarly unquantifiable, factor working for Obama this year: Many voters feel, as an abstract proposition, that it would be a bad thing for American voters to reject the first black president.

Some conservatives complain that there is a double standard, that whites who vote against Obama are accused of racial motives, while blacks, 95 percent of whom voted for him, are not.

I think that's unfair. Members of an identifiable group that has been in some way excluded from full recognition as citizens will naturally tend to support a candidate who could be the first president from that group. In 1960, Gallup reported that 78 percent of American Catholics voted for John Kennedy.

American blacks have suffered exclusion and discrimination more than any other group. And very large percentages of them regularly vote for candidates who share Obama's views on issues.

What's remarkable about our politics in 2008 and today is that most voters seem to be making their decisions based on their assessment of the issues and the character of the candidates.

The fact that some have, at least for the moment, moved away from supporting Obama to opposing him, or remain unsure, reflects not an increasing racism, but the fact that we simply have more information than we had four years ago.

Most of us are disappointed when our candidates don't win. But that's no excuse for phony alibis.

[ETL]

Oops, found it... I previously wasn't using the right search terms. It's an "OWS" [Occupy Wall Street] thing.

So, in other words, it is indeed a "Panthers" thing. ie, revolutionary communist, "peace through Communism" thing.

[ETL]

From the Wall Street Journal
NOVEMBER 24, 2007

Oswald was a dedicated communist who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 out of disgust with American capitalism. After becoming disillusioned with Soviet life, he returned to the U.S. in 1962. In early 1963, he bought a scoped rifle through the mail and soon used it to fire a shot (which missed) at retired general Edwin Walker, the head of the John Birch Society in Dallas. In the summer of 1963, Oswald was active in street demonstrations in support of Castro. In September 1963, he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City seeking a travel visa that would allow him to travel to Cuba.

Oswald was among the radicals of the time who saw Third World revolutionaries like Castro as the wave of the communist future. He was well aware of Kennedy's efforts to overthrow Castro's regime. As a Senate investigative committee suggested in 1975, Oswald shot Kennedy to interrupt his administration's plans to assassinate Castro or to overthrow his regime in Cuba.

Ignoring Oswald's communist links, journalists and political leaders quickly claimed the president was a martyr to civil rights. Earl Warren said that Kennedy had "suffered martyrdom as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots." Martin Luther King said the assassination had to be viewed against the backdrop of violence against civil rights marchers in the South. James Reston wrote in the New York Times that "something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order."

The consensus opinion was that Kennedy was a victim of hate and bigotry, a casualty of his support for civil rights. The Cold War and Kennedy's ongoing feud with Castro were rarely mentioned as factors behind the assassination. The reasons? Mrs. Kennedy wanted her husband remembered as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln. Lyndon Johnson feared complicating relations with the Soviet Union. Liberals feared a replay of the McCarthy period, when the Wisconsin senator inflamed public opinion about fears of domestic communism.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586848318702756.html

[MayflowerMadam]

Received the following in an email:

“Barack Hussein Obama is not half black. He is the first Arab-American President, not the first black President.

Barack Hussein Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother’s side and 43.75% Arabic and 6.25% African Negro from his father’s side.

While Barack Hussein Obama’s father was from Kenya, his father’s family was mainly Arabs. Barack Hussein Obama’s father was only 12.5% African Negro and 87.5% Arab (his father’s birth certificate even states he’s Arab, not African Negro).”

[Hotlanta Mike]

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Playing with a 52 card deck composed of nothing but RACE CARDS.

[Lazamataz]

You know what? Fine. I’m a racist. I don’t care any more.

[Lazamataz]

I mean hell, I’ve never had a racist thought in my life, but I think it’s long time past we defuse this verbal bomb. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should proudly define themselves as a racist. Whether they are or not.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Oh, reminds me of an old movie I PASSED FOR WHITE.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053933/

I’ve never seen the movie but I remember the ads for it on TV back in 1960.

Obama passed for black!

[cpdiii]

As Barack Obama's lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fund raising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it's alibi time for some of his backers. His problem, they say, is that some voters don't like him because he's black. Or they don't like his policies because they don't like having a black president. So, you see, if you don't like Obamacare, it's not because it threatens to take away your health insurance, or to deny coverage for some treatments. It's because you don't like black people. This sort of thing seems to be getting more...

I do not dislike him because he is black. I loath him because he is a hard left quasi Marxist borderline Fascist and not a patriot. He practices the art of character assassination and politics of personal destruction with a vengeance. He has total contempt for the Constitution of the United States and the same contempt for our great nation. His own memoirs have proved him to be a serial liar. His politics are those of envy, racial division, and hate that promotes violence. He is not a good man and he is racist consumed with hate and leftist ideology.

Using the logic of the author, I can not admire and like, Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, Allen West, etc. because they are black. I admire these men greatly and would vote for and support them

No I do not want to have a beer with this man.

[StAnDeliver]

"My own view is that such voters were more than counterbalanced by voters who felt that, as an abstract proposition in the light of our history, it would be a good thing for Americans to elect a black president."

This is what every Libtard I know has resorted to as their excuse for '08 when I eviscerate Bobo's many failures...

[unique1]

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
Depression is when you lose your job.
Recovery is when Obama loses his job!

[dennisw]

Liberals love to use blacks as a battering ram against conservatives and conservative American values. The immoral white libs are in charge and using blacks and cries of racism to shut us down.

[dennisw]

dittos on that!! Give Moochie and Bammy Boy the boot on Nov 6th!

[knittnmom]

I think you could be right. If so, I hope he blames everything on racism, without ever trying to find the real cause, so he loses by a landslide.