As someone who grew up in NYC in the 1960s, here’s a phrase I never expected to say: Way to go, Senator Rockefeller!
Politico video via Dave Weigel:
… People sometimes wonder if there’s a word as offensive to white people as the n-word is to black people. Easy answer: “Racist.” Republicans shared Rockefeller’s comments and assumed he was talking about them, all of them. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson blew up at Rockefeller during a thinly-attended hearing, decrying for calling him racist. And Rockefeller, who’s aging and gazing hopefully at the exits, has not rushed to expand on his comments.
But come on. The guy’s a senator from West Virginia. West Virginia, where the 2008 primary voters who called race the “most important” factor in their vote gave Clinton a 76-point landslide over Obama. West Virginia, where any reporter could air drop in that year and find white voters openly admitting they could never vote for a black Muslim like Barack Hussein Obama…
West Virginia, where in 2012 Obama won only 59 percent of the primary vote as a convicted felon who never campaigned—as he was, you know, in jail—won the rest. Anyone who’s been on an Internet comment thread since 2008 has seen racist comments about Barack Obama. Do we want to bet that the senator from West Virginia, who voted for Obamacare, hasn’t gotten some of that?…
Paul Waldman, at Greg Sargent’s WaPo blog, has the sercon (serious sensible, constructive) unpacking:
Is opposition to Obamacare really about race? That’s the highly charged question that has bubbled up in the last day or so, starting with a Senate hearing and then bursting into the news media. I won’t keep you in suspense: The answer is, “Yes, but . . . .” Not all opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and not from all people, and not at all times. But two things are clearly true. First, some conservatives with large megaphones have worked hard to use the ACA as a tool of race-baiting, encouraging their white audiences to see the law through a racial lens. And second, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that race plays a role in many people’s opposition to the law…
No doubt Ron Johnson’s gonna go back home to what I’m guessing are his lily-white supporters in Wisconsin and clutch his pearls for the cameras, but that won’t make his hissy-fit any less risible.
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