Prometheus 6

Looking over my pittance of posts today, I suspect there's a couple of folks who were confused by my absolute approval of The Divisive Frauds in the Media by eriposte, when I follow up with questions about The Clintons like

if they are not bigots, why did they play on white folks' racial fears? Because that is the underlying meaning of "play the race card," no matter who plays it.

Here's the deal. Though I am not as unhappy with our slate of candidates as Republicans are, none of them are what I'm looking for. Edwards' statements come closest but he didn't vote then the way he's talking now...and even so he's not very far from Hillary and Obama's positions. I entered this campaign season prepared to jack whoever lied to, on or about Black folks.

I am, however, under no illusion about Republican candidates. Frank Rich was right in Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead (GHOD, I love that title).

Whatever the merits of the Democratic candidates’ takes on our fiscal crisis, at least they saw the crisis coming. Though Mr. Romney officially kicked off his presidential candidacy in Michigan, he started grandstanding about the misery in that state only after all his other campaign strategies had failed and he needed a Hail Mary marketing gimmick. In his announcement speech in Dearborn last February, the lone economy he mentioned was the fuel economy of the Ramblers his father manufactured at American Motors in a distant past.

Among Mr. Romney’s rivals, Mike Huckabee alone made affinity for economically struggling Americans his calling card. Unfortunately, Huckanomics is more snake oil. All federal taxes would be replaced by a national sales tax that despite its Orwellian name (the Fair Tax) would shift more of the burden to middle- and low-income Americans.

For the other Republicans, the downturn has been an occasion to recycle the mindless what-me-worry optimism of the pre-1929 G.O.P. presidents and Wall Street potentates since relegated to history’s dustbin. When Maria Bartiromo, moderating a CNBC Republican debate in October, asked the candidates if the nation was heading into a recession, Fred Thompson found “no reason” to think so and pronounced both the near and longer-term economic future “rosy.” Rudy Giuliani extolled the glories of freedom and the market before promising that “the sky’s the limit.”

Even if they managed not to run the ol' Southern Strategy this year, that crap right there is a loser for everyone in the country. You don't have to worry about me voting Republican.

Here's the thing, though. We're supposed to be transcending race, right? Well, if I read the way the term is being used correctly, we only get to do that one issue at a time, one moment at a time. And for every moment that passes, another one arises.

The whole idea of "transcending race" is a sign of how confused everyone is, to tell you the truth. Clarence Page, who I like, mind you, wrote a column titled Race hides campaign's bigger issues that ends with this paragraph.

Obama observed that it's not easy for a black politician to strike the right tone between anger and not-angry-enough. But, rightly or wrongly, "white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America." Every time news people talk about "the black vote," for example, I suspect it makes somebody feel "more white." But race is so deeply ingrained in American customs, traditions and memory that it's hard to cover politics without talking about it.

Read that last sentence again.

I was going to say it's wrong, but maybe it isn't...race coded rhetoric is the norm. I personally don't consider its use to be talking about race, though. I consider it hiding. Either way it's obvious race is a huge issue in the USofA. There may be larger issues but race is the longest issue. It will not be resolved by "transcendance." We're going to have to work through it.

And that's why Democrats, Liberals and Progressives, if they want to get to a place where racism is no longer a problem, need to answer the question:

if they are not bigots, why did they play on white folks' racial fears?

Because if they are NOT bigots, you must identify whatever it is that encourages and rewards bigotty behavior and eliminate. And if they ARE bigots, you need to figure out how you were so badly fooled.