Political Hay
Race to the Bottom
Obama faced more discrimination in the Democratic primaries than he does today.
Last year Geraldine Ferraro called Barack Obama’s race an advantage. “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she said to a California newspaper, the Daily Breeze. “He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Now Jimmy Carter says his race is a disadvantage. Which is it?
Bill Clinton cast Obama’s early primary success in the South as a Jesse Jackson-style fluke. Now the same liberals who defended Clinton against race-baiting charges attribute Obama’s lack of success to racism in the South.
Carter says Americans don’t think Obama is qualified to lead. So did Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. So did her feminist supporters. Gloria Steinem said Obama enjoyed an unfair racial and gender advantage over Hillary: Black males, she noted acidly, got the vote before women. George McGovern agreed, saying “I have a feeling that in this country where we’re at today in our thinking, it’s going to be harder to elect a woman than to elect a black man.”
Where was Carter then? Obama faced more racial discrimination during the Democratic primaries than he faces today. Conservative opposition to him these days is based on policy differences, as Obama himself acknowledges; liberal opposition to him during the primaries wasn’t.
Many liberals agreed with his policies, but out of a kind of white liberal paternalism thought that he should wait his turn. Hillary at one point condescendingly implied that Obama could serve as her apprentice for eight years. And long before the “birthers,” one of her chief advisers, Mark Penn, thought it preposterous that America would elect someone with Obama’s foreign-sounding name and time spent in Indonesia.
If anybody saw Obama as an Affirmative Action president waiting to happen, it was the running mate of Jimmy Carter’s vice president. If anybody is assuming the worst of a race reflexively, it is Jimmy Carter himself. And how is it that one of the most unsuccessful politicians of modern times could have such an acute understanding of the people’s moods and preferences?
The left sees racism in conservative opposition to Obama’s health care proposal even as they cast it as an identical replay to opposition under a white president, Bill Clinton. They have seen it all before, yet somehow it is new and racist.
But then, almost anything qualifies as racism in their eyes. Even that old opposition to Bill Clinton. Author Toni Morrison saw racism in his impeachment proceedings, which transformed Clinton into the “first black president.”
In the left’s “conversation about race,” evidence is irrelevant. Conservatism is automatically equated with racism. Jimmy Carter’s malicious and willful assertion would never be treated as front-page news otherwise. Nor would NAACP President Benjamin Jealous be able to say without any proof whatsoever to the Washington Post that an “ambiguous, uncommitted middle” of racists exist in the country, which the “Republican Party’s far-right-wing contingent is definitely fighting hard for.”
It says a lot about the twisted victimology of left-wing identity politics that the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons are more inclined to embrace Obama as a “black president” in his failures than in his successes. Recall that as Obama went from strength to strength in the Democratic primaries, Jackson was caught in an off-camera moment disparaging him as a sell-out upstart in the crudest terms imaginable, a comment that makes Joe Wilson’s look tame. Now that Obama is failing they feel more comfortable with him.
The Democratic primaries pitted feminists against racialists and blacks of Jesse Jackson’s generation against those of Obama’s. The nation had largely moved beyond race. But the Democrats hadn’t. They were still, as Ferraro revealed, “caught up in the concept.”
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
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Pingback| 9.18.09 @ 8:55AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Race to the Bottom [spectator.org] o links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Darin| 9.18.09 @ 9:28AM
Democrats are racist. Every finger they point has three fingers point back at them. Who sponsored Jim Crow laws in the south? Democrats. Who encourages blacks to continually be a victim class and never realize their potential? Democrats. And who ended slavery? Republicans.
ergosy| 9.18.09 @ 9:33AM
Thought Obama wasn't ready - guess I'm a racist
Thought Hillary wasn't ready- guess I'm a sexist
Thought McCain wasn't ready - guess I'm geriatric hater
---- Goood Grief----
Gina Downing| 9.19.09 @ 5:32PM
That caputures our current culture in a nutshell. Well said!
Ed Coyne | 9.18.09 @ 10:01AM
erogosy,
If you hold conservative values, you can "win" with liberals. They have the memory span of a gnat and the media to make them believe they're in the majority. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Metalman| 9.18.09 @ 10:47AM
Obama would not be President if it were not for white voters. He was elected by white people! How racist is that? Oh course, it is not.
Nick| 9.18.09 @ 11:11AM
On Wednesday I had to endure pictures of the "painted lady" Dowd and Shrillary the Hut.
And today, it's Gerry Ferraro.
I don't need this first thing in the morning. It messes up my stomach for the rest of the day!
Texian| 9.18.09 @ 12:35PM
The "all-knowing, smarter than the rest, well educated" Liberals are using racism as an excuse for Americans rejecting their "superior,wonderful, enlightening" programs. It's got to be racism, why else would you reject their ideas.
David T.| 9.18.09 @ 1:42PM
Democrats need to follow Joe Biden's lead and accept the fact that Barack Obama is the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.
Pingback| 9.18.09 @ 3:07PM
Race to the Bottom | LeftRight Jab links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Margie| 9.18.09 @ 6:52PM
Someone should do an interview with Bill Clinton. Ask him how he feels now that Obama has stolen his title as the first black President. This is all so confusing though. Obama is actually half white. Aw shucks.
John II| 9.18.09 @ 8:03PM
I need to think about all this: I can't figure out whether it's the stupidity of the libs or the malice that annoys me the most. Is it possible to be maliciously stupid?
GEDoug| 9.19.09 @ 5:59AM
Democrats have been the enemy of minorities, especially African Americans, since the civil war. Many Dems strongly supported slavery and opposed the 13th Amendment. During Reconstruction a splinter of the national Democrat party was the KKK (Sen Byrd once a proud member). The majority of Dems opposed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 (including Byrd and Gore Sr.). Examples abound demonstrating the double standard of Republicans being labeled racist when in fact the Democrats have always been, and are today, the true racist political party. Since FDR’s New Deal, and now with the help of race baiters like Sharpton and Jackson, they have gone to great lengths to keep African Americans dependent on government and on the Democrat plantation. What is truly puzzling is how they (Dems) have managed to maintain the support of so many of whom they have so wronged.
Pingback| 9.19.09 @ 8:59AM
“Criticism Of Obama, Jimmy Carter, & Race: Conservative Perspectives” and related pos links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Ken (Old Texican)| 9.19.09 @ 9:00AM
GE
Your last question in your comment above was right on point.
Answer:
They have maintained their support the same way they want to maintain OUR support. ie: lock us in to their programs, then dare us to object to the constantly diminishing pie size.
Tish | 9.19.09 @ 10:38PM
It was no accident that Barack Obama chose to be the smallest fraction of his genetic heritage, and he was correct. Being black has allowed him to use his race as both a shield and a sword, and he has wielded it skillfully.
Scott| 9.20.09 @ 4:39AM
The race card has simply fizzled. It was used to death.
Now we all know that as we oppose Obama, Obamacare or any Obama initiative, we will be tagged as racists...and we just don't care anymore.
We see it soming, as in "EVERYBODY EXPECTS…THE LIBERAL INQUISITION!" at http://firebreathingchristian......quisition/
They're cracking up in the wake of the anti-Obamacare movement and the ACORN story, folks. Keep the pressure on!
Pingback| 9.20.09 @ 7:26AM
The Fringe Media – Proof Socialism Fails; The Titanic had a band, not so ABC CBS NBC links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Supra Vaider | 9.21.09 @ 1:10PM
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Lucy | 10.1.09 @ 8:36AM
The concept of race is not going to go away anytime soon. The Liberal ideologues need neo Platonic essentialist fantasy to weild power. Race as a reality is much harder to deal with politically.
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