The Romney Campaign and the entire modern Conservative movement is very easy to understand. It is all about race. Full stop. For these people, every election is an attempt to use fear, anger and even hate of brown folks to inspire white folks to vote against their self-interest and support their Galtian overlords.
Call it The Negrophope Strategy.
This cartoon is from 1862.
It effectively distills the relationship between the modern conservative movement and President Obama. It also explains the Romney campaign strategy that white folks should reject everything that President Obama has done to help them–to save our Nation from ruin–over the last four years because he is a Ni-CLANG and that they should vote for Mitt because he is white.
In fact, the entire Romney campaign can be boiled down to just a few words: “Vote for Mitt, he’s white”. There are no policies or specifics, just code-talking and word salads from Mitt and his surrogates. Take away the appeals to white power and Mitt holds an empty hand. They can try and hide it, or whitewash it with weasel words and bullshit, but the Negrophope Strategy is the foundation of their campaign.
Race-based campaigning is a very old American Conservative strategy–especially that part of the conservative movement with its roots in the Confederacy (which is just another way of saying all of it). These folks squeal like a poked pig if you mention their reliance on race-baiting. They will weep, shake with outrage and yell ‘reverse racism’ at anybody who points it out. Sure, it hurts their feelings to be called out, but that doesn’t change the fact that the old Negrophope Strategy is the ONLY trick they have and Mitt’s ONLY possible path to victory.
The Confederacy was defeated on the battlefield almost 150 years ago. It is time to defeat their twisted politics of white fear and white supremacy. It is time to toss the ideas of the Confederacy on the dustbin of history. It is time to defeat Mitt Romney and the GOP everywhere we can.
It is time to re-elect President Barack Obama.
It is time for GOTV.
Cheers
Yutsano
Needs moar B.
This is also a known phenomenon. There have been organ recipients who have refused body parts from those outside their race. Most of them end up dying waiting for their request to be fulfilled.
Joseph Nobles
Indeed, the GOP plan is to blame the black man for the white man drowning.
beltane
The racism of the supposedly non-partisan media disturbs me more than the racism of the Republicans themselves. The media spent many days bloviating about an offhand comment about Ann Romney made by Hilary Rosen while John Sununu’s intentionally racist attacks against the president and Colin Powell go completely unpunished. This tacit acceptance of a white supremacist worldview is something that has to change.
Jewish Steel
Really? I heard on CNN it ended in a tie.
BGinCHI
Someone redraw that cartoon with the AfAm dude throwing Sununu an anvil.
Or a small block eight.
Or a wildebeest.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: “Some say…”
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: Opinions differ after all.
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI: Sherman marched to the sea “within the margin of error.”
rikyrah
anyone see Col. Wikerson on The Ed Show?
Nothing like the truth.
RK
WASPS want their country back
geg6
You are right the fuck on, Dennis.
I’ve been working on GOTV for months, starting with getting people the IDs they don’t yet need (thank the PA Supremes). Been canvasing and phoning for a few weeks now when I have time, which hasn’t been enough truth be told. But I am signed up to drive people to the polls on Election Day, for which I’ve taken a whole vacation day off to do. I look forward to it.
As an aside, I was at the PENNDOT license center the other day (had to get my license renewed) and there was a huge crowd of African Americans there that day, getting drivers licenses and photo IDs. And the entire conversation in the waiting room was about how nothing was going to stop them from getting to the polls. It was great.
Smiling Mortician
@Jewish Steel: But Lee is going to surge. Probably tomorrow.
scav
They called us traitors to the nation for 8 years or more. When that sting lost whatever presumed efficacy it once had, they started playing the race traitor card. Bark, bark, bark.
Yutsano
@geg6: Did you offer to help drive folks to the polls who needed it? That would be awesomely cool.
BGinCHI
@rikyrah: Saw it. It was THE awesome. I was hoping they’d have him on.
That fucker hates the neo-cons and for very good reason. He and Lawrence Korb are great Americans who should be better known for their integrity.
BGinCHI
@Smiling Mortician: The South will Writhe again.
geg6
@Yutsano:
My ex has a friend that has a double lung transplant (asbestosis). He was totally pissed that his lungs came from a black kid. This old (he was 65 at the time) white fuck couldn’t just be grateful that this family saved his life. The fucker is still going a decade later with those same strong lungs. And he still bitches about it.
Yutsano
@geg6: I think they specifically leave off race when describing where the organ comes from now to lower the possibility of rejection by the recipient. Sometimes I wonder if we don’t deserve to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Dennis G.
@Smiling Mortician: Politico says that the coming assault by George Pickett will be Lee’s master stroke and guarantees him a major victory at Gettysburg…
BGinCHI
@geg6: There’s a great MASH episode where they trick the white southern racist dude into thinking he got a transfusion with “black blood.”
American racial progress, how does it work?
geg6
@Yutsano:
That’s my job. I am really psyched for it. What could be better than spending the day ferrying people who I agree with to go vote for the guy we all support to the hilt? I had a great time the last election doing canvassing on Election Day, but this, I think, will be a LOT more fun. I expect a lot of feisty old black ladies as passengers. I love feisty old black ladies.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: Nailed it.
pr
Yeah, some folks would complain even if you hung them with a new rope.
geg6
@Yutsano:
The only reason he found out then was that the family wanted to meet him and he agreed. He about had a stroke when they came into his hospital room (he was hospitalized for a few months before he was discharged). I found it ironic to the nth degree. My ex didn’t appreciate my amusement, which is part of the reason he’s my ex.
geg6
@BGinCHI:
Yup, I remember that episode. And I remembered that when this all happened with my ex’s friend. Life is stranger than fiction, isn’t it?
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI: Wow. You have a hell of a memory for MASH.
@Dennis G.: Meanwhile, the Free Soil party is losing Tri-State soccer moms…
Yutsano
@geg6: Old black ladies are a massive kick. I work with a few of them. :)
The Dangerman
We have at least one more cycle of this shit; if Romney loses, it will because of his flippity-floppiness. He will not have been a steadfast conservative. If he wins, I fully expect him to be a one termer (and I could even see him getting primaried when he doesn’t fulfill the true believers dreams).
Then the Right can go into the political wilderness and pull their collective heads out of their asses.
Gian
@geg6:
I was a wee tyke but I recall the MASH episode with the racist white guy needing blood to save his life and the only donor was a black guy
Eric Lindholm
Really? This is really the uplifting “hope and change” message from the Left now?
Sounds like a pre-crimination to me. “Obama would have won if America wasn’t so….racist!”
It’s OK – it will all be over soon.
jurassicpork
My plans? To vote for Jill Stein. I can’t stand the idea of voting for Obama again any more than I can his ideological twin Romney.
As my alter ego Mike Flannigan says, Mitt Romney’s the Man Who Fell to Earth.
redshirt
I would disagree, slightly, Dennis. Fear is the one campaign platform of the Romney campaign. Fear of the other, fear of the terrorist, the liberal, the tax man come to take your money and your guns. Fear is the father of racism, as it is the father of all kinds of -isms. Fear is perhaps our most powerful motivator, sadly.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
I ended up looking up Dr. Charles Drew for other reasons a few days ago and discovered that the part about him dying because the hospital refused to treat a black man is actually a myth.
Who knew that “M*A*S*H” was not a 100% accurate portrayal of history?
piratedan
dunno why, but i’m feeling quietly confident about this one. I think we’re gonna kick some ass.
Dennis G.
@Eric Lindholm: Silly. Pointing out that the conservative movement is dependent on racism is just a statement of fact. I have hope that we can defeat you (like fascism was defeated in WWII) and that in time your descendants will change and not grow up to think that white supremacy is their birthright and that racism is an ‘honorable’ part of their heritage.
The Other Chuck
They sure had different ideas about captioning back then. I guess comic strips and books hadn’t come around yet to introduce the now ubiquitous speech balloon and thought bubbles, which had the effect of making pithiness king.
But damn if that isn’t some magnificent artwork.
Hill Dweller
@piratedan: FWIW, Nate Silver was on Maher’s show tonight, and said Willard had a 25% chance of winning. I suspect most people reading this blog already know Silver’s projection numbers. But Silver saying there is about a 7% chance of Willard winning the popular vote was news to me.
Silver compared Gallup to the the 5th dentist in the 4 out of 5 dentist recommends commercials. He also said Willard’s momentum stopped more than a week ago, but the media is playing up the momentum angle for ratings.
double nickel
@rikyrah: Wow. That is all.
jibeaux
Not to deny the racism, but if our president were white, they’d find divisive rhetoric and a way to portray him/her as other, too. Some of them would vote for a white Dem, but the majority would not and it’s beyond rational thought. Clinton drove them ’round the bend too. The first I remember seeing the most insane conspiracy theories were in his administration. Of course, my first time was with Bill Clinton. Oh yeah baby.
TS
@geg6:
Only people who can afford transplants would be old white dudes – should be compulsory to stand in their church and sing the praises of the donor’s family
Mike in NC
@Eric Lindholm:Enjoy your shit sandwich, idiot.
Johnny Coelacanth
Huh. Funny how Realist and Spatula both fell silent at exactly the same time, a couple of threads back. How exceedingly odd.
scav
@jibeaux: Entirely overdetermined, yes, but it sure seems to have lit their afterburners: they’re round the courner in Escherspace and forgotten what hinges are.
some guy
Nice Frank Bellew cartoon, he’s one of my favorites.
Hill Dweller
@jibeaux: This is going to be the most racially polarized election in history. Obama is probably going to get the lowest % of the white vote ever despite, ironically, rarely talking about black people. Hell, he has talked far more about the Latino community.
The truth is all of Obama’s social initiatives(Obamacare, Medicare reform, beefing up unemployment insurance and food stamps with the stimulus, pseudo-Dream Act, etc.) have been portrayed as him stealing white people’s money to give to black people, or Mexicans taking white people’s jobs.
There is a lot of code on the right. Republican politicians are expert at tapping into white(especially men) fear and resentment. I say that as a white guy who grew up in the South.
some guy
@The Other Chuck:
actually, they had (or I should say some cartoonists of this period had re-discovered their absolute efficacy) just not cartoonists working for Harper’s or Budget of Fun or The Rail Splitter or Vanity Fair. or at least not yet.
Frankensteinbeck
@jibeaux:
I remember the Clinton years, too. They were nothing like this. The Village did not like Clinton and the right fringe spun its conspiracy theories, but the frothing, widescale, refuse-a-glass-of-water-in-Hell hatred was not there. The impeachment was a political insult, not either a serious attempt to remove Clinton from office or an actual declaration that they thought Clinton was guilty of anything. It doesn’t compare to the organized obstructionism McConnell launched against Obama, or the stampede to grab the third rail because Obama likes the safety net. The GOP has wanted to gut Medicare, SS, and Medicaid since Reagan, but they didn’t SAY it. They knew not to let their freak flag fly. The insanity wasn’t there, in the rank and file or the political leaders.
Meanwhile in this election, Romney looks competitive nationally because of a vastly disproportionate lead in Southern whites, especially white males. The racists have lost their shit because a black man was elected president. Everything we’ve seen fits the model perfectly.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I’ve always thought that the political cartoonists of the day were much more biting in their ‘cartoons’ than most political cartoonists today.
I want Obama to win but I hope he does so with surprising numbers that just fuck up the ‘numbers’ people on the right who are saying that Rmoney has this in the bag. I want to drop by the winger sites after the election and swim in millions of gallons of wingnut tears. OK, I also want to go scuba diving in them. :p
The right needs a thorough ass whipping right now. With the horserace people in the M$M feeding the wingers a steady diet of ‘Rmoney stands a chance of winning!’, I want the right to see that it wasn’t even close.
Listening to them howl at the moon would be music to my ears.
jibeaux
@Hill Dweller: oh, definitely. But some of that talk has been around forever, with every president. The welfare code speak I find to be a constant presence, although it’s in overdrive now. Do you think his white vote %age will be lower than in ’08? That would be interesting. Although capturing the white vote will become progressively less important, and there’s no reason it needs to be.
Mike in NC
@Hill Dweller: We live in what is basically a retirement community of 60-to-80 year old assholes from NY/NJ who hate the blacks and the browns. I look forward to spending a couple of weeks inviting them to go screw themselves.
Mnemosyne
@jibeaux:
Although, if you look at it, a lot of the hatred of Clinton was race-based as well. The only real difference is that the accusations against Clinton were “race traitor” and “nigger lover.” That was always the subtext used against white Democrats — they were somehow betraying their fellow white people by supporting things like Medicaid and food stamps.
One of the reasons the right went so far around the bend when Obama won was that they couldn’t hide their hatred behind “race traitor” rhetoric anymore — they had a real live example of one of Those People right in front of them, not a race traitor who cared more about Those People than his own (white) people.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@BGinCHI: In that same vein, there was a rather jarring episode of “The Jeffersons” that dealt with the same thing. They were taking a CPR class and a white father and son refused to go after them on the dummy because it had been “kissed by a nigger.” Later on – implausibly, I know – one of the Jefferson clan ended up saving the father’s life with CPR as the son watched. When the older guy came up for air and realized what had happened, he says, gaspingly, that he wishes they’d have let him die.
This is the fucking “Jeffersons” we’re talking about here. This is nothing new. It’s just something we’d all hoped had improved since the Norman Lear era.
max
@Hill Dweller: Silver compared Gallup to the the 5th dentist in the 4 out of 5 dentist recommends commercials.
Have you seen the article Gallup released today? “2012 U.S. Electorate Looks Like 2008”.
Strange thing is, the (likely voter) electorate they’re picturing is a bit different from the 2008 (or 2004!) exit polls, and strangely whitish. And 50-64ish. Their headline and the actual numbers seem to be pointing in opposite directions: they seem to be assuming an electorate that resembles the Y2K electorate. Or 1996 – something. (In particular: reduced black turnout, low non-white hispanic turnout, lots of olds.) I’ll be curious to see: if the October LV data from Gallup turns out to be crap, I wonder how that will go down. I assume it’ll be spun as some kind of surprise Obama resurgence, instead of ‘Wow, Gallup really screwed the pooch this year’.
To the OP: The best picture seems to me to be this ‘Abraham Africanus’ title page from Wikipedia. (Linked in the article ‘Copperheads’.)
(Incidental note: if you want to see all the model projections that make up the consensus for Sandy, that’s right here. Graphic updates with the models. The models are dropping Sandy on Philly right now.)
max
[‘But not til Monday.’]
SFAW
@Dennis G.:
Yes. But Nate or someone else is predicting that it will be the High Water Mark of the campaign.
For some reason, I fell like singing “I get no kick from champagne.” Don’t know what it could be.
Hill Dweller
Chrystia Freeland made a good point on Maher’s show when she said white men have ruled this country since its existence, but Obama might win another term with a record low % of their support, and it scares them. The country is changing, and a lot of white people fear it.
SFAW
You libtards are the real racists, ya know.
The right wingers don’t hate ALL the darkies. Only the ones who don’t do what they’re told. (Not talking Milgram, either.)
BGinCHI
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Norman Lear must be really surprised to see the same shit happening again. Man, this country is unbelievable. I don’t know how we ever got a government stick at all.
Johnny Scrum-half
Sure, there are racists, and they make up a piece of the base of the Republican Party. But sweeping statements that “the entire modern Conservative movement … is about race” are not just wrong, but lazy and counter-productive.
Dennis G’s one-note argument that the support for Romney is based on his being White, and Obama being Black, will tend to alienate a large percentage of the American population, and make it less likely that they’ll ever listen carefully enough to understand that the Republican Party is totally beholden to plutocrats.
It might help to remember that the guy who started this blog was a pretty strong defender of the Conservative movement until 7 years ago. He’s the same guy now as he was then, although with obviously drastically different viewpoints. You might say his eyes have been opened. I know that mine have, ever since the Iraq War.
If you insist on saying that all Conservatives are driven by racial hatred/superiority, then how do you account for John Cole. Did the Terry Schiavo disgrace cause him to lose his racism?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Dennis G.: Whenever the “Viking Pundit” drops by, it reminds me of this.
danielx
Miracles do occasionally occur.
Had dinner tonight with one of my oldest friends, who falls into the category that used to be known as “reasonable Republicans”. Great guy, smart, all that…has always voted Republican more or less by reflex…but.
He said this evening he’s going to vote for some Democrats this time around, primarily because of Richard Mourdock. He told me that some of his other (Republican) buds have been telling him “yeah, the guy’s a dick, but we need to get control of the Senate”. He said his response has been that if that means he has to knowingly vote for a man who he knows to be a complete dumb fuck who’s not qualified to be a senator, no way. The way he phrased it to me was that if he has to eat a shit sandwich to get into the banquet, he’ll skip it. He’d said previously that as far as he could tell the Republican party has taken leave of its senses, but he hadn’t gone so far as to say he was voting for a Democrat.
Of course I said great, good to hear it, ’cause Mourdock is a fucking idiot. Since the guy is one of my oldest and best friends, I didn’t inquire as to how he explained his votes in 2000 or 2004 or 2008…but hey, progress is progress. On the other hand this guy isn’t a Tea Party idiot, and hence still has some grasp on reality and some semblance of intellectual consistency…
Evolving Deep Southerner
@BGinCHI: I was going to come back with an “Oh ho! Norman Lear is dead!” post. But according to Wikipedia, he’s still alive at 90-something. It’s hard to know what he thinks about everything, if at all. But if he is watching, with all his faculties, I’m sure he’s marveling at how much of a parody the GOP has become of everything he parodied back in the day. I’ll see your Archie Bunker and raise you a Joe the Plumber. Archie was more articulate and consistent, though, I’ll give him that.
James E. Powell
@jibeaux:
And if Obama were not African/American, he would be whipping Romney in the same way that Clinton whipped Dole. In other words, not close.
If it were not for their bigoted base voters, and the Republicans’ constant stoking of their bigotry, the Republicans could not compete in national elections, nor in state elections outside of the south, plus WVa and Indiana.
? Martin
@Hill Dweller:
We’re near the breaking point here. The GOP knew in 2000 that they needed to break away from the southern strategy and to his credit, Bush did that to a large degree. Unfortunately, not everyone in the party was on board. McCain tried to hold them back and lost badly, and the tea party took that as evidence that they needed to go back to the old playbook. Now, if Obama wins here, they’ll make all kinds of excuses but that faction of the party is going to lose their influence. It’s going to dawn on them that the strategy is backfiring and they need to get over it. Now, it may not happen here, it might take the next election or two, but we’re close.
Remember, failing movements always get loudest right before they collapse. They never fully die, but they do lose their influence.
TexasMango
@Hill Dweller: They have to take their country back. It won’t stop the demographic changes in this country, but being able to put the white back in the White House would sooth their collective psyche.
Joel
God, we need to win this motherfucker.
TexasMango
@James E. Powell: Willard is going to get 2/3 of the white male vote, but don’t expect the MSM to even consider if race had anything to do with it. Willard will also outperform John McCain and GWB with white southerners, don’t expect them to consider if that’s because of racism either.
They will not discuss it even thought the fact that nobody actually likes Mitt Romney makes it the obvious reason.
Johnny Scrum-half
@James E. Powell: You know, Clinton had a pretty good economy in 1996. I’m thinking that was more important than the fact that he was White.
NotMax
@James E. Powell
I’ll see your IN and WV, and raise you Kansas, Utah, Wyoming Idaho and Alaska.
BGinCHI
@Evolving Deep Southerner: He must be amazed to have lowballed the fucking idiocy.
He’s like, shit, I could have gone much further.
Gwangung
Now THAT is encouraging.
May that be just the tips of the iceberg.
catclub
@redshirt: The one thing Jesus says more than anything else is: some variation on ‘Fear not.’
Next is probably that ‘in order to be a leader one must serve all.’
Hill Dweller
@James E. Powell:
Unemployment was 7.4% when Reagan was running for President, but it was “Morning in America”. He had a really bad first debate, with bouts of complete incoherence, and two subsequent mediocre debates, but won in a landslide.
The current unemployment rate is 7.8%, despite unprecedented obstructionism from congressional Republicans and historic public sector layoffs in Republican controlled states, but Obama is fighting for his political life.
Obama passed health care, which, alone, would be a significant accomplishment for any President. He pulled us out of a near depression. He reformed student aid and expanded Pell grants. He ended DADT. He got us out of Iraq, which is under-appreciated, in my view. We got Bin Laden on his watch. He(with Michelle’s help) reformed school lunch program. He signed the START treaty. He made a massive investment in green energy(also under-appreciated). Passed and implemented CFPB, which has already recovered close to a billion dollars for scammed customers. He helped steer us through a devastating financial crisis, and got nearly all the money back. Extended the solvency of Medicare without touching benefits; significantly increased fuel mileage standards; saved the auto industry. I could go on.
Obama has actually achieved quite a bit, but he is tied with a corrupt, soulless charlatan, who has never shown an ability to be successful in any endeavor without the odds stacked heavily in his favor.
How in the hell did we reach this point?
catclub
@Hill Dweller: “The country is changing, and a lot of white people fear it.”
Remember what they told us in 2000? Get over it.
Heck, they won’t even get it.
amk
Tweeted Dennis. It’s sanity vs pure racism 2012.
ruemara
@jurassicpork: Man, fuck your blogwhoring and your bullshittery about Obama being the same as Romney. As if the fucking past few years haven’t proven that that’s utter crap. Perch and rotate the next time you come with your hand out, moron.
Democrat Partisan Asshole
@jurassicpork: Bookmarked for the next time you show up here begging for rent money, which you seem to do about every three or four months.
TexasMango
@Hill Dweller:
We’re discussing how, it’s racism. Most people who vote Republicans have long been voting their whiteness undercover, but with Obama in the White House it’s front and center. The GOP has a been the unofficial white people’s party for the last 30 years, now it is official. Obama in the White House and demographic changes on the ground means white privilege is in danger and a lot of white people don’t want that to happen.
trav
I never post but this is the thesis I am driving my friends crazy with. I insist that the largest voting block for these fucking scumbags is the racists which I’m starting to think is half the white male population. I mean, when you take out the rich white guys you still have have 35% of white male voters (+/- the functional morons which are hard to tell apart from racists) willing to vote for a pair of assholes who don’t even pretend to respect them. I can find no other logical conclusion. I’m a white male in case anyone is conducting a poll.
Redshift
@Gwangung: This research on Google searches for voting information suggests it may be. (Summary: searches for voting information, which is strongly correlated with turnout, suggests that the electorate will be like 2008, not like 2004.)
Joseph Nobles
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Richard Dreyfuss is on Twitter, and recently tweeted that he, like Norman Lear, was a compassionate conservative. And then he continued by saying there was only one of those in this race: Barack Obama.
It makes sense to me that Norman Lear is a conservative. Archie and Meathead are the two halves of his head trying to get through life.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Joseph Nobles:
Richard’s son, Ben, used to post here as “Bend” and I’ve always wondered where he wandered off to. It would be interesting to hear his perspective on this.
Mike G
Political pandering to idiots will never end:
Former Republican official: “You can’t be a Christian if you don’t own a gun”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/25/former-republican-official-you-cant-be-a-christian-if-you-dont-own-a-gun/
Joseph Nobles
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Wow! I swear that’s what Dreyfuss tweeted, though.
https://twitter.com/RichardDreyfuss/status/259447143578886144
And he’s gotten a lot of flack for it, too.
Mnemosyne
@Joseph Nobles:
There are still quite a few old-time Rockefeller Republicans who are pissed off about the Southernization of their party. It sounds like Dreyfuss may be one of them.
Uncle Cosmo
There was a lot of gabble at the time that All In The Family was bringing families back together again, because everyone enjoyed the show.
True, we all sat in the same room to watch it. Often we laughed at the same punch lines. Unfortunately, we were laughing for opposite reasons.
Archie would say something & people like us in the audience would laugh thinking Can you believe what a shithead he is? We loved the idea that the writers were holding him & his ilk up to ridicule.
Meanwhile our parents were roaring thinking You tell ’em Arch! They loved the idea that someone on TV actually had the nerve to say what they had always thought. It enabled them to go on thinking that way.
And 40 years later we’re fighting the same battles. Lotta good it did.
Slightly o/t, but I have the same problem with The Big Bang Theory, which is funny as hell to the few people like me who’ve been in that environment & knew people like that (or have even been people like that), but to most of its audience it only validates & reinforces that good ol’ Amurrkin anti-intellectualism. (See thar? They’s so intelligent but they ain’t got no common sense, hyuk hyuk hyuk!)
BarbCat
I am in Nevada right now; drove here this morning. We are working our GOTV magic all weekend long. I still can’t get over that they can early vote in shopping malls here. I may be back next weekend as L.A. Councilman Eric Garcetti is organizing free transpo and free lodging. We tinsel-town tards like to do our part.
That said, my heart bleeds for you who live in swing states. The Tee Vee Machine is sick with dirty Romney/Restore our Future ads.
Another Halocene Human
@BGinCHI: There’s a great MASH episode where they trick the white southern racist dude into thinking he got a transfusion with “black blood.”
Wasn’t there a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode on this very theme (except it was Klingons and Romulans)? I thought in my callow youth it was one of the dumbest episodes I’d ever seen.
God, I had a sheltered upbringing.
Another Halocene Human
@jibeaux: Not to deny the racism, but if our president were white, they’d find divisive rhetoric and a way to portray him/her as other, too. Some of them would vote for a white Dem, but the majority would not and it’s beyond rational thought. Clinton drove them ‘round the bend too. The first I remember seeing the most insane conspiracy theories were in his administration. Of course, my first time was with Bill Clinton. Oh yeah baby.
There’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying, but if you compare the Dole campaign to the sh** we’re seeing now…
Clearly, the race angle is resonating with some, er, voters. Clinton by comparison seemed to glide into his second term. He also had a Republican wave halfway through term one and an obstructionist House, although I suppose there’s no comparison to the recent ridiculousness. And more recovery but, gee willikers, FDR got reelected too.
Another Halocene Human
@trav: white male status anxiety.
‘s killer.
Interrobang
Quite a while ago I collected a quote off Roger Ebert’s blog where a commenter mentioned that his mother nearly died, and required a blood transfusion back in the 1960s. The hospital staff made her sign a waiver, which she was only barely capable of doing, because the blood they were transfusing into her was “black blood,” and would have let her die if she had not been able to sign the waiver, because there wasn’t a white donor available.
I’m about as white as it gets, and I think that’s horrifying and half-unbelievable that people could be so racist…hospital staff would have let a woman with a rare blood type die rather than transfuse her with the blood of someone with a different skin colour, if she hadn’t been able to explicitly consent to it. Wow.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
Seconded.
Next time he asks for money I’m going to give him pie.
As John posted the other day, if you want to make money at blogging you have to provide something worth reading. And not be a dick, that helps also.
James E. Powell
@Johnny Scrum-half:
I’m not comparing the two campaigns or situations, just using the Clinton v. Dole race as an estimate of what the gap would be, were Barack Obama a white male with an Anglo name.
Maude
@Ruckus:
He does this on a lot of blogs. He’s been doing it for years.
Applejinx
@Maude: I lost patience with him with this last remark. Shit, my last comments were better than that and I’m not even blogging. Maybe I should start.
PreservedKillick
@geg6:
I REALLY wonder about the effect of voter suppression on this campaign, particularly in FL. It would seem to me that trying to take away someone’s vote in a really blatant way would only cause them to be much more likely to vote.
I guess we’ll know soon enough.
debbie
@rikyrah:
My very Republican siblings have voiced their opinion that the German citizens who did nothing while the N@zis were raging are just as guilty and as evil. I wonder if they would say the same thing about themselves today.
SFAW
@Johnny Scrum-half: and others of yours
OK, fine, there are some conservatives who are not racists. It might be 1 percent, it might be 5, it might be 10 percent.
But given all the shit we’ve seen over the last four years (birtherism, bone-through-the-nose witch doctor photos, Colin Powell endorsing Obama ’cause they’s both darkies, various other tacit or blatant expressions of racism), and given the NEAR-COMPLETE LACK OF CONDEMNATION from the Rethug “leadership”, then I’m a-thinking you’re being willfully ignorant.
For a political “movement” that appears to need the fainting couch whenever a non-member expresses anything even SLIGHTLY in-your-face, one would think they have someone, somewhere – oh, I don’t know, maybe a presidential candidate who pretends to be a moderate (at least three days per week) – who would say “Hey, you assholes, cut out that shit! What the fuck is wrong with you?” But, as the saying goes: all we get are crickets.
If Sununununununuuuuuuuu had been stupid enugh to say “Powell supports the HNIC because they’s both n1ggers”, then Romney’s outrage would have been limited to “That’s not how I would have expressed it.”
I get the sense that you’re sincere in your dismay at the “racism” comment, but I think you’re doing the metaphorical equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and saying “La-la-la-la-la-I can’t HEAR you” vis-a-vis conservatards’ racism.
SFAW
Oh, and just to help with the pule-on: I refuse to vote for Obama because he once used some of the same, exact words as Romney (“tax cut”, “Obamacare”, “and”, “the”, “President”) so THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE between them.
Stein/Nader 2012, baby!
and Zinn/Chomsky 2016 ! ! !
SFAW
@SFAW:
Shoulda been “pile on.” I semi-reserve “pule” for Pule-itical Absurder and other “sincere” whiners.
Time to get caffeinated, I guess.
Paul
The Republicans claim they want their country back. Well, as a former Republican (I left in 2002) I want my party back from those that hijacked it.
Who the heck invited the racists, the fake Christian extremists who are not much different than their Islamic extremists, the selfish greedy white folks who claim they can’t live with a slightly higher tax rate?
Comrade Scrutinizer
“May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”
/Son of the South.
TR
@Eric Lindholm:
I love when teatards cite “hope and change” back to is with fake sorrow.
Your party put its fate before the nation’s, with a slash and burn pattern of obstructionism that was nothing short of treason. And yet Obama still managed to pull us out of the disaster you assholes created the last time you were in charge and he’s still going to be re-elected, while your party dies out with its ancient base.
Go fuck yourself. Twice.
El Cid
Of course, if “the South” is more than its Confederate and Confederate-sympathizing population, then the South won, in fact was saved.
And it was the ebbbil soshullist Franklin Delano Roosevelt whom the South’s conservative white leadership from the 1940s to the 1960s recognized dragged it out of the even-less developed, colonialist model of undeveloped cheap primary export economy and maquiladora mill town hell that it sweltered in, thanks to being founded by British imperialists with slave-powered cash cropping in the Caribbean rather than Mayflower-riding Founding Fathers (at least as far as the non-Native “founders” go).
[We non-Confederate whites, and the majority of our nation’s African American population, and the fastest growing Latino and Asian populations are also “the South”. “The South” isn’t just owned by its right wing white dickhead assholes, though they do “own” most of it. Fuck ’em.]
Elizabelle
@jurassicpork:
I would really hope that you’d just write in “Ralph Nader” as you throw your vote away.
Seriously, dude.
Wingnut tears are more precious than Obama supporters’ tears.
We need a good beatdown in the popular vote. Jill Stein ain’t gonna do it.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@ruemara:
This only with more fuck yous in it.
SFAW
@TR:
Emphasis added, because it can’t be said enough.
JMS
Obama being black means he embodies it, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that a white male candidate would have a cakewalk. This all is more a symptom than the disease. Anyone and anything that doesn’t fit the mold is anathema, and anyone who reminds such people that they don’t live in a place where white male straight rich landowners (or those who aspire to such) are the only people who matter is tainted by association, even if not actually tainted (say by being non-white, or female, or what have you).
However, with the U.S. becoming more diverse, I’d rather we look positively upon a strategy that aspires to win without needing older white men (sorry). People who aren’t white males make up a majority of the country, and a more liberal majority at that–that’s a good thing. The message really ought to be come along with the rest of the country or get left behind.
SFAW
@JMS:
I don’t think anyone has said a white Dem candidate would have a cakewalk. But a white candidate wouldn’t have had to contend with four years of birtherism, with doctor pictures, and other racist memes. If the sentiments of the electorate were confined to the last 180 days of the campaign, that would be one thing.
But when you’ve been telling (overtly and not) your base and the low-information set that the country is worse off because there’s a darkie in the Black House, it has an effect.
There will always be fake scandals shrieked about by Rushbo, mAnn Coulter, and their ilk; but when they have a fallback position of “and he’s BLACKITY-BLACK”, it makes it that much harder to fight against. Certainly not impossible; it just takes resources from areas where they could be better-spent.
James E. Powell
@Paul:
Who the heck invited the racists, the fake Christian extremists who are not much different than their Islamic extremists, the selfish greedy white folks who claim they can’t live with a slightly higher tax rate?
I expect they would tell you that they were here first, and I think they were. Then they would ask who invited us.
Seriously, though. Sometimes I, and I expect some others, forget how old and how deeply rooted white supremacy is in the American social/political culture. It’s a central theme of the founding and an explanation for the horrors of genocide and slavery that followed it.
SFAW
@James E. Powell:
The only hope of that being in the same galaxy as “true” is if America (the land, not the nation) did not exist before 1492 (for you post-Columbians out there). Even then, you have to ignore most of the country.
You mean those pesky redskins invited them first?
I think it predates ‘Murica.
James E. Powell
@JMS:
Obama being black means he embodies it, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that a white male candidate would have a cakewalk.
If we can wander a bit in speculation city: if the Democratic president who took over in 2009 were a white male with an Anglo name, the response of the losing party would not have been the same. The Republicans’ ability to obstruct without cause was made possible by the loyalty of their racist base voters who became even more rabidly loyal when they saw a certain ethnic person become president. I don’t think we would have seen the huge Republican gains in 2010 without the crusade to ‘take our country back’ or the effects of nearly four years of agit-prop all insisting that the president is not a real American.
We now return you to our regular programming.
guhm61
Same as it ever was.
Ruckus
@Maude:
mittshit exposes himself to quite a few groups as well and that doesn’t make him any less of an ass either.
Johnny Scrum-half
@James E. Powell: I think that you’re right to a point. But I don’t think that racism or White supremacy is the core of the Republican Party. Rather, the core is the plutocracy — the “1%” — who control the Party leadership and the message in order to gain favorable tax treatment and the like. The leadership then uses the message to manipulate the Party’s base, which happens to include a bunch of people who are susceptible to racist messages to one degree or another.
SFAW
This just in: poll shows we have, apparently, reached the desired post-racial end state:
http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CDA25OTHO0%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1018
TZ
@SFAW:
Spot on, Justice Thomas, Rep. West, and The Pizza mogul (forgot his name already HA!) are shining paragons of true blue conservatism.
dam spahn
@Hill Dweller: The media is playing up the false narrative of a tie, because it keeps the cash money flowing into advertising, right up to the last minute. It’s all about profits, always was.
DarthSpoon
Would it be tastelessly off-topic to point out that the drowning white dude looks like Mr. Burns?
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of compassion
@SFAW: Here’s where we part company. Racism is historically a rather recent phenomenon. Prior to the end of the Middle Ages, no-one had ever heard of or thought about any such thing as “white” people. Europeans were still tribal in their outlook, and the concept of “race” had not yet developed. It was only when xenophobia (to which all human beings are susceptible) proved adaptable as a rationale for the colonial expansion of the European powers that race and racism came into existence. The genocide and slavery of the colonial U.S. are a big part of what created modern racism.
Patricia Kayden
“The Negrophope Strategy.”
Never heard of the term “negrophope” before, but boy is the entire post on point. That cartoon is powerful.