With most of the country prepared to put the idea of a “public option” out to pasture, many Barack Obama supporters are betting all their chips on one play: the race card.
On NBC Nightly News, former President Jimmy Carter gave his theory on Obama’s rapidly dissolving poll numbers: “An overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.”
People in the audience probably asked themselves, are we supposed to laugh?
Laughter would have been appropriate, but dismayingly, he was serious.
When we elected a black president, and a “post-racial” one at that, it is difficult to imagine how we are still talking about race ““ more importantly, why on earth it is being mentioned in connection with health care. What is also puzzling is how Jimmy Carter, who destroyed his credibility long ago by propagating conspiracy theories (exhibit A, his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”), has been the one to drag us into the same pit we have been slogging in for decades.
Memories are short, especially in Washington. But it has been a little more than a month since the last racial fire alarm was sounded and a beer summit was convened to smooth over a misunderstanding between white police Sgt. James Crowley and black professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Bringing up race just a month after our last bout of racial uproar seems like beating a dead horse (even if the circumstances have changed), but certain people have a high tolerance for it. As we speak, the racial torch is being passed around to whoever is trolling for cheap political points ““ not only as a way of intimidating the critics of government-run health care, but as a catchall against anyone who poses an existential threat to the president, from the tea party protesters to Crowley.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who regularly trades in these kinds of tawdry notions, said that Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” shout-out during Obama’s recent speech to Congress sounded to her like there was an “unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!” (emphasis on the loaded word “boy”).
It’s no less than Speaker Nancy Pelosi mentioning the assassination of gay activist Harvey Milk in the 1960s and today’s anti-government protesters in the same breath.
It is not difficult to see these statements for what they are ““ phony controversies ginned up by the left to explain the president’s poll numbers, which are in free fall, and his policies, all of which are either failing in practice or in Congress.
According to Gallup, the president’s job approval rating, which was initially 68 percent, has trickled down to the low 50s. Notwithstanding his Pollyannaish speeches about the future of the country, polls illustrate that peoples’ faith in the stimulus package, health care and the economy are dwindling almost daily.
While racist tacks seem to be having a boomerang effect, causing independents and swing voters to desert the president en masse, that has not stopped people from returning to them. Why? Short answer: because they would not know what else to do.
In times of crisis, the left has a long history of playing the race card. In the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, leftists argued that blacks were discriminated against in the distribution of aid ““ and more egregiously, that George Bush was pulling the strings in favor of whites.
A USA Today/CNN Gallup opinion poll asked a sample of blacks and whites to answer the question, “Do you think George W. Bush does ““ or does not ““ care about black people?” Seventy-two percent of blacks responded no, he does not, and 67 percent of whites responded yes, he does.
What do we take from this? Was it the white respondents’ consanguinity with Bush that caused them to defend him? There’s a bad apple in every bunch, but this is doubtful given that 43 percent of whites cast their lot with Obama in the last election, proving that they have no aversion to a black president. Added to this is the fact that many people who voted for Obama, swing voters, have since shifted sides. Do we now count them as racists?
Voters are not stupid. They know that when the shoe was on the other foot, the assault on Bush was far worse than anything we are witnessing now.
Wilson’s solitary “you lie!” pales in comparison to the thousands of “Bush lied, people died” stickers plastered all over car bumpers. At the same time, it is hard to imagine the latter being adduced as proof of racial insensitivity.
As more people learn that rumors about racism have been greatly exaggerated, the left is learning to deal with the consequences of using race for political gain, which involves coming up with other ways to justify socialized medicine.
If the same people cannot recrystallize their thoughts in a way that respects the basic dignity of the American people, however, and discover the bootlessness of using race as a weapon, there will be no rescuing people from the dreaded insurance companies, and no philanthropic gratification.
E-mail Pherson at apherson@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.