A Race-Baiting Leftist Hits a New Low

As I have quoted an anonymous poster on Lucianne.com, the left "want racism, need racism, therefore they create racism". Paul Waldman, in response to criticism of Obama's long-term relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, has published a masterpiece of race-baiting that will be difficult to top. Some quotes:

...these kinds of attacks have their greatest power when they tap into pre-existing archetypes voters already carry with them, and the deeper they reside in our lizard brains the better. So they will make sure white Americans know that Obama is not Tiger Woods. He's not the unthreatening black man, he's the scary black man. He's Al Sharpton, he's Malcom X, he's Huey Newton. He'll throw grievance in your face, make you feel guilty, and who knows, maybe kill you and rape your wife.

The Republicans are certainly setting down their marker: they intend, as they have so many times before, to wage a campaign appealing to the ugliest prejudices, the most craven fears, the most vile hatreds. It's not that people should vote against Obama just because he's black, they're saying, but you know, he's that kind of black.

Hmmmm...... where do I begin? If Reverend Wright claims that whites invented the HIV virus "as a means of genocide against people of color" then I am supposed to agree with him? Yeah sure Paul, I invented HIV in the shack behind my house here in Oklahoma. The only one who is "appealing to the ugliest prejudices" and "vile hatreds" is Reverend Wright.

Now don't misunderstand me, Paul. I am someone who believes in complete freedom of thought and expression. If Reverend Wright wants to believe that whites invented AIDS, he is free to do so. If Senator Obama wants to attend his church for 20 years and listen to this bunch of crap, and donate thousands of dollars, he has the right to do so.

But if I refuse to vote for someone who is running for president and supports this kind of nonsense, that makes me a racist?

Some more gems:

The voters Obama needs, it is now sometimes said, are the "Reagan Democrats," those blue-collar whites who rejected their traditional ties to the Democratic party to support Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. But one of the things that has been forgotten about the Reagan Democrats is that the phenomenon was built almost entirely on racial resentment. The question now is, will those voters be receptive to a black candidate? At their birth nearly a quarter century ago, the answer most certainly would have been no.

It's almost three decades later, and American opinions on race have become far more progressive in the interim. But Greenberg's point about how "progressive symbols and themes have been redefined in racial and pejorative terms" points to an effort at which Reagan excelled but Republicans continued after he was gone.

The 1980 and 1984 elections were the first two presidential elections I voted in. I was never a Democrat, but to claim that those Democrats who voted for Reagan were motivated by racial prejudice is both unfair and absurd. Both Democrats and Republicans voted for Reagan over Carter and Mondale because the previous administration's domestic and foreign policies were a disaster. Inflation and unemployment were sky-high. The islamofascists in Iran were holding our diplomats hostage and Carter was foolishly trying to negotiate with the terrorists. The brutal, totalitarian Soviet regime was expanding in Afghanistan, Jamaica, Grenada, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. That was why Reagan defeated Carter and Mondale in consecutive landslides. Race had nothing to do with it.

Furthermore, Reagan was a very kind and gracious man. He did not have a racist bone in his body. For Waldman to claim that Reagan won by redefining "progressive symbols and themes" in racial and perjorative terms is stupid and asinine.

The Democrats have not won a majority of the popular vote in a presidential election since 1976. Paul, do you really want to know why your party consistently loses? It is because voters are tired of listening to ridiculous nonsense like what you have written in your article.