Posted on 05/13/2014 11:01:39 AM PDT by Drango
It's a fact of American life that a good share of the electorate is , and even of President Obama. What's less certain are the reasons why.
For some Democrats, the explanation is simple: race. In recent weeks, West Virginia Sen. , Mississippi Rep. and former Florida Gov. have all said racism is the driving force behind Republican resistance to the president.
Republicans, unsurprisingly, say their disdain for Obama is based not on the color of his skin, but on the content of his policies.
"If any white Democrat had pushed through a billion-dollar stimulus plan and a takeover of the health care industry, he would have been equally detested by conservatives and Republicans," says Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster and consultant.
There's no question we're living in a time of divisive politics, when roughly half the country is likely to hate the president, no matter whom he or she might be.
But race has been a factor in American politics since the very beginning. It's certainly part of the mix in terms of responses to Obama.
His status as the nation's first African-American president exacerbates the concerns of those who feel the country is changing rapidly in ways that are not always comfortable.
"It's more than just about race," says Christopher Parker, a political scientist at the University of Washington. "He represents the changing demographic nature of America, the browning of America."
Race Is Not The Whole Story
Obama has had to put up with no white president has endured, including a protester waving a outside the White House gates last fall and a South Carolina congressman, Republican Joe Wilson, yelling at him during a 2009 address to Congress.
But modern presidents have all triggered strong negative reactions. John F. Kennedy met with rhetoric from the John Birch Society that in some ways Tea Party responses to Obama. Militia movements expanded and grew during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, while George W. Bush's presidency inspired on the left and a fantasizing about his assassination.
"Bill Clinton was vilified and hated more, with more passion," says David Carney, a Republican consultant. "It was much more personal and negative than anything about Obama."
That's debatable, but Clinton was impeached and Obama has not been. Robert Smith, a San Francisco State University political scientist who wrote a book about Obama, Kennedy and the politics of ethnicity, agrees that the primary source of animus toward Obama is ideology, rather than race.
"If the first black president would have been a conservative, then these conservatives would not express this racial animus," Smith says.
But Race Is Definitely A Factor
It's possible that no Republican would have voted for the Affordable Care Act if it had been promoted by a President Joe Biden or John Edwards. (Hillary Clinton raises a different set of issues, as we'll be reminded over the next couple of years.)
But the fact that it was a president of color who pushed the law through has added fuel to the fire, argues Smith, the San Francisco State professor.
"There's a perception that Obama's major achievement is a transfer from middle-income white people to low-income minorities," he says.
Obama's tenure has been marked by consistently disappointing economic news. At times of such anxiety, demographically similar groups of white reactionaries always gain renewed prominence, says Parker, co-author of Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.
At the present moment, Obama's own race and the much-discussed rise of previously marginalized groups including Hispanics and gays serves to heighten that recurring reaction.
"That makes these people nervous," Parker says. "They feel that they're losing this America that they've known."
All That Obama Represents
Obama is not just an African-American, but a man whose father was African and gave him the Muslim middle name of Hussein. His mother was white but on the countercultural left.
Obama himself is the first urban president the country has seen for decades, a cosmopolitan figure who spent part of his childhood abroad.
He's a product of the Ivy League who did himself no favors in 2008 by those who differ culturally from him as "bitter" and clinging to their "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
"He just doesn't relate well to flyover country," says Carney, the Republican consultant. "His eliteness, his disdain for things that are more traditional America is more the reason why he's disconnected to this large portion of the country than his race."
All of this — his ideology, his background, his manner and the unforgettable fact of his race — bleed together, making him a figure held in a type of disdain that's notable even in an era of heavily polarized politics.
"Obama's race and his Ivy League background and the sense of his elitism, all of those come together to make his case the worst we've seen," Smith says.
I suspect some blacks do hate that he’s half wite.
NPR – Nice, Progressive Racists
Then what explains the leftie hatred for Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice and Mia Love?
I loved Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton - and all because they were white.
Yep, NPR’s one smart bunch.
Liberals are racists so they think everyone else is motivated by race too.
Read all of this people and you will hate his guts too.
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/Communism/barack_obama.htm
Funny, NPR cannot understand why conservatives don’t like Obama, so they blame race. Why do I dislike Hillary? Sexist? Why do I dislike Harry Reid? Ageist? I hate the direction these people are taking the Country.
It is not the color of the Current Occupant’s skin that is the driving force behind this sort of reactionary response. It has to do with how THIN his skin is.
NPR and the Current Occupant continue to find offense where none exists.
Now the only colors exhibited by The Won are Red (for his Marxist tendencies) and Yellow (for his cowardice in international confrontations).
Just because you liberals hate blacks doesn’t mean the rest of us do.
Funny, during Bush's two terms with all those Black liberals calling for his impeachment at the least and his assassination at the worst, no one ever accused them of hating him because hating him or disrespecting him because of his color but with Zero it's always about race.
More proof that the Left only approves of free speech when they agree with what is said.
It's obvious they don't care anymore if their hypocrisy shows or not. They have the confidence to believe they can do so. What does this say about American society?
No! Thats wild.
Even black voters hate how he is advancing the gay agenda when he said that he was personally opposed to same sex marriage in 2008.
We’re all responding to the accusation instead of going on the offensive.
They know it’s not about race, it’s about policy.
And we all know that they just use the race issue to silence dissent because
WE’RE DECENT PEOPLE (and will react to the accusation),
AND THEY’RE NOT (so they accuse us of vile things).
It’s not part of my ‘mix’.
I oppose him because:
He is a ‘progressive’
He is a democrat
He is a liar (this is strongly implied by the first two reasons but is definitely the case with Mr. Obama)
He is a thief (also strongly implied by the first two reasons and also definitely the case with Mr. Obama)
He hates me because of the color of my skin
He hates the version of America that I love
We will see real, visceral racism (from the "tolerant" left, of course) when someone like Ben Carson or Allen West is elected. The left will come completely unglued when that happens.
Joe Wilson was correct. Obama DID lie and Obama was LYING in his speech when he said (at that moment) that his critics were liars.
F the libtards at NPR who hold the president at a different standard. What happened to the President (Bush) lied, people died meme?
F a bunch of commie progressives with their he-she panties in a bunch.
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