Race Card
The moment has arrived for President Obama to start working on his legacy as the first post-racial president. Either that, or to face a legacy of having the most racially divisive presidency in modern American history.
With the opposition to his health-care proposal and its imminent failure, the race card is being heavily played on Obama’s behalf by a wide and somewhat prominent array of people on the left … from comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., to former President Jimmy Carter … to smear dissent. If you virulently disagree with the idea of a public option, and fear that it will destroy a large swath of our economy, ruining the quality of health care in this country and driving up the deficit and taxes in the midst of a recession, there are prominent people who will call you are a racist. They have provided no evidence whatsoever to support this position. They cite only gut feelings and inferences. They actually cite things that weren’t said.
With the latest loss of fringe GOP support in Olympia Snowe, it increasingly looks like Obama’s health-care initiative is going down. The first black president is facing the prospect of losing his major domestic agenda item. Not only will he look weak and inept, but so will his majority party. Seeing as the majority party is not going to be interested in taking the blame for that going into the mid-term elections, it will fall to him. And the storyline that is developing is that white racism has hamstrung the nation’s first black president. White racists will not let the first black president govern (Garofalo, Carter). The nation is consumed by white racist rage (Dowd), which is on the verge of violence, with dissent signalling a Klan resurgence (Johnson), and under threat of other varieties of violent, disaffected white supremacist extremism (U.S. Department of Homeland Security).
Barack Obama is smart enough to know this is not true. He knows he has sold his initiative poorly, that his timing is bad and his politicking is worse. Having given up on the public option, he apparently also knows that his ideas are fundamentally not viable, as amply demonstrated by the history of those ideas in this country, quite independent of race. He knows that racism has nothing to do with it.
That’s why it is time for the president to rise above his own shortcomings and political agenda, and do something for the nation. At some point in the not-too-distant future, whether his health-care plan continues to crash and burn or is resurrected in a new figleaf evolution, the president needs tell the nation that it is OK to disagree with him, that political dissent and even anger do not equal racism. Also, that if he fails, he prefers to be seen as having failed on his own merits, as an American political leader, rather than as a black man who is being handed the crutch of theoretical racism, for which there is no evidence whatsoever in this debate. Not simply as a throwaway remark in an interview with a TV news anchor, or an aside in speech. He could invite U.S. representatives Joe Wilson and Johnson, former President Carter, New York Times scribbler Dowd, shrill standup act Garfalo and a lot of Tea Party organizers over for beers, but that approach was trite before he tried it last time, and this situation is more serious than a Harvard professor’s attention-grabbing antics. Given the level to which Democratic race-baiting has now risen, it is becoming apparent that Obama is going to have to do it in a more purposeful and sober manner, possibly in a major prime-time speech. In fact, if he wants to restore civility to the debate and possibly pave the way for reasonable compromise in health-care reform, he should do it sooner rather than later.
Obama was applauded in last year’s campaign for a big speech in which he excused the racism of his pastor, and said that white America is incapable of understanding the black experience, that racism on the part of blacks is different. A lot of people thought it was a watershed moment in American race relations. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even a particularly good speech.
The watershed moment in American race relations was Barack Obama’s election with a respectable majority, after winning primaries in areas where the pundits had predicted racist backlashes. That was followed by historically significant approval ratings. The good will has since been squandered by a string of actions, inactions and utterances, but mainly, apparently, by his insistence on pushing his bad ideas about health care at the wrong time, without preparing the ground.
Obama can let a growing chorus of prominent Americans call his failure racism and his opponents racists, a development which is itself driving a deeper partisan wedge and heightening the rancor and bitterness. He can let it further demean our national dialogue and intimidate speech. He can let it be his excuse, a smear in the history books. Or he tell America and the world firmly that in this country, political dissent does not equal racism. He will then have shown himself to be a statesman, who is worthy of respect no matter whether you agree with his politics and policies or not.
It is time for President Obama to take the race card off the table.
Legal Insurrection: An Allergic Reaction to the Race Card.
Great news via Powerline: Only 12 percent of Americans are buying into the race card argument, the deepest end of the Obama pool. Someone tell the national media, the pols and the pundits.
Chicago Boyz re the race card: “Won’t work.” Not if the good people of both parties denounce it, it won’t.
Thoughtful race card scholarship from a Piece of Work in Progress.
Jammie-Wearing Fool claims porcine aviation and admiringly quotes “usually unhinged AJC columnist” Cynthia Tucker: ”What Wilson did was boorish and offensive, but it wasn’t racist.” She admonishes Hank Johnson, “Stop it. Apologize.” Hey, don’t forget the race-baiting peanut farmer.
Hold everything! Riehl, with an AP poll: 60 percent of Americans racist! OK, that’s not exactly what the AP poll says. It says 60 percent of Americans disagree with government takeover policies. That’s racist, right? Jimmy just said so.
Moonbattery: America’s worst president aims for worst ex-president. … Nah, he already had that sown up.
HotAir re Carter: “Deep thoughts from the guy whose book on Israel was most recently plugged by, um, Osama Bin Laden.”
Malkin re Hank Johnson: “The era of post-racialism is dead … it never had a chance.” Also, with an IBD poll, 45 percent of docs would consider quitting under Obamacare.
Gateway: Yeah, and 66 percent of docs just don’t like it. Also, Wilson’s son asked by AP to defend his dad from the racism smear. Nice.
Maybe a big speech isn’t such a good idea. Surber:
President Obama is so full of himself that he thinks he is a Superman who can solve any problem simply by Super Speaking.
Democratic House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, a crook but I like him, told the Associated Press that Obama bombed in his State Of Obamacare speech.
The Won divided the Democrats.
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Conservatives should encourage him to give more speeches.
Hey Don, I want him to give one that actually does some good. Make that, more good. Call it the audacity of wishful thinking. Meanwhile, here’s Don’s exchange with one of his newspaper readers: “‘Let’s stop the fear rhetoric.’ Exactly.”
If you need the background, here’s the AP with a story and vid of Carter’s remarks. I like the part where the AP has Carter citing protestors’ comparisons of a black American president to a white Austrian fascist dictator as evidence of racism. Help me out here. Comparing a black man to the ultimate white supremacist because of their shared enthusiasm for nationalized health care and expanded, coercive government might be offensive and not particularly accurate, relevant or helpful to the debate, but isn’t it … kind of post-racial?
Per reader MikeHu’s request, the FireDogLake view of Carter’s racism charge, at last check:
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Checking again:
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Well, FDL’s “Eli,” who looks kind of like the nervous Kiwi with the prominent lips and the squinty eyes from HBO’s “Flight of the Conchords,” did helpfully point out that the vote to condemn MOveOn ofr insulting Gen. Petraeus was wildy popular, by comparison to the Joe Wilson vote.
What the heck is a FireDogLake, anyway? Sounds like it’ll track muck into the house.
(Comment registration is shut down due to persistent spammers. Use the “contact” link to assure me you are a real human being interested in commenting on the topics at hand, include the screenname and temporary password of your choice, and I’ll create a logon for you. Lefty Kumbayah singers, moderate handwringers, meanspirited rightwingers all welcome. Just keep it clean and make an effort to be accurate.)
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:33 am on Wednesday, September 16, 2009
16 Responses to “Race Card”
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September 16th, 2009 at 10:36 am
The Race Card is being played everywhere. Last night, I listened to BBC World and their Washington correspondent was saying that racism couldn’t be proved but it was there and he had never seen such hate and vitriol towards a president. I wondered if he had only covered Washington from this January. The level of the left’s hypocrisy is astounding. The quickest way to lose a listener is to insult him. Calling me a racist because I disagree with out giving me credit for having an informed opinion is a sure way to turn me off from whatever you could say in the future. When President Bush said, “You are either with us or against us”, he was accused by the left of not being nuanced, not being able to tolerate a difference of opinion. Now that I disagree with President Obama, I am being called a racist. It will be a long time before that insult will be forgiven.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:55 am
“It is time for President Obama to take the race card off the table.”
Yeah, well if he does that, there won’t be any cards left on his table.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Hey Jules, where’s the “firedoglake” response? What’s a firedoglake, anyways?
September 16th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] does seem to describe huge segments of the left nowadays. Just look at all the leftists claiming those protesting Obama’s proposed overhaul of our health care system [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Thanks MikeHu, silly of me to overlook that.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I think our KKK President Woodrow Wilson would be near the top of racially divisive Presidents list.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
The race card is so tattered from overuse that it’s become race confetti. Someone needs to beat the libs over the head with a copy of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
September 16th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
[...] UPDATE: Twitter is aflutter with people quoting Rush Limbaugh, who says this “raaaaacism” meme could be ended in a heartbeat by the president, if he would only speak up. Yes, well, I wrote a long time ago that the odious “Obama is Messiah” narrative could have been quickly ended, if Obama -a professed Christian- would simply have said, “hey, guys, love you too, but I’m not the messiah.” I personally do not think Obama likes all of this race-playing. But I do wonder if he tolerates it because it serves a purpose. Jules Crittenden says, time to work on that post-racial legacy, Mr. President! [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
September 16th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
[...] II: Jules Crittenden and Legal Insurrection have more on why the left should quit taking refuge behind the race [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
[...] Amazing how quickly dissent moves from being the highest form of patriotism to being the highest form of racism. Will Obama take the chance to actually demonstrate the post racial ideal he claimed to follow? [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
[...] Right Wing Nut House, Jules Crittenden and NewsBusters.org Carol Platt Liebau / Townhall.com: When Everyone’s a Racist, No [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Remind me again how many racial hate incidents came out of 9/11?
September 16th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
[...] Race Card [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
[...] Crittenden tongue in cheek, if anyone is still able to laugh. Comments [...]
September 18th, 2009 at 11:37 am
[...] Jules Crittendon says… The moment has arrived for President Obama to start working on his legacy as the first [...]