So says the white elitist dude who can read our minds.
Posted on 05/13/2014 11:01:39 AM PDT by Drango
It's a fact of American life that a good share of the electorate is , and even of President Obama. What's less certain are the reasons why.
For some Democrats, the explanation is simple: race. In recent weeks, West Virginia Sen. , Mississippi Rep. and former Florida Gov. have all said racism is the driving force behind Republican resistance to the president.
Republicans, unsurprisingly, say their disdain for Obama is based not on the color of his skin, but on the content of his policies.
"If any white Democrat had pushed through a billion-dollar stimulus plan and a takeover of the health care industry, he would have been equally detested by conservatives and Republicans," says Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster and consultant.
There's no question we're living in a time of divisive politics, when roughly half the country is likely to hate the president, no matter whom he or she might be.
But race has been a factor in American politics since the very beginning. It's certainly part of the mix in terms of responses to Obama.
His status as the nation's first African-American president exacerbates the concerns of those who feel the country is changing rapidly in ways that are not always comfortable.
"It's more than just about race," says Christopher Parker, a political scientist at the University of Washington. "He represents the changing demographic nature of America, the browning of America."
Race Is Not The Whole Story
Obama has had to put up with no white president has endured, including a protester waving a outside the White House gates last fall and a South Carolina congressman, Republican Joe Wilson, yelling at him during a 2009 address to Congress.
But modern presidents have all triggered strong negative reactions. John F. Kennedy met with rhetoric from the John Birch Society that in some ways Tea Party responses to Obama. Militia movements expanded and grew during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, while George W. Bush's presidency inspired on the left and a fantasizing about his assassination.
"Bill Clinton was vilified and hated more, with more passion," says David Carney, a Republican consultant. "It was much more personal and negative than anything about Obama."
That's debatable, but Clinton was impeached and Obama has not been. Robert Smith, a San Francisco State University political scientist who wrote a book about Obama, Kennedy and the politics of ethnicity, agrees that the primary source of animus toward Obama is ideology, rather than race.
"If the first black president would have been a conservative, then these conservatives would not express this racial animus," Smith says.
But Race Is Definitely A Factor
It's possible that no Republican would have voted for the Affordable Care Act if it had been promoted by a President Joe Biden or John Edwards. (Hillary Clinton raises a different set of issues, as we'll be reminded over the next couple of years.)
But the fact that it was a president of color who pushed the law through has added fuel to the fire, argues Smith, the San Francisco State professor.
"There's a perception that Obama's major achievement is a transfer from middle-income white people to low-income minorities," he says.
Obama's tenure has been marked by consistently disappointing economic news. At times of such anxiety, demographically similar groups of white reactionaries always gain renewed prominence, says Parker, co-author of Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.
At the present moment, Obama's own race and the much-discussed rise of previously marginalized groups including Hispanics and gays serves to heighten that recurring reaction.
"That makes these people nervous," Parker says. "They feel that they're losing this America that they've known."
All That Obama Represents
Obama is not just an African-American, but a man whose father was African and gave him the Muslim middle name of Hussein. His mother was white but on the countercultural left.
Obama himself is the first urban president the country has seen for decades, a cosmopolitan figure who spent part of his childhood abroad.
He's a product of the Ivy League who did himself no favors in 2008 by those who differ culturally from him as "bitter" and clinging to their "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
"He just doesn't relate well to flyover country," says Carney, the Republican consultant. "His eliteness, his disdain for things that are more traditional America is more the reason why he's disconnected to this large portion of the country than his race."
All of this — his ideology, his background, his manner and the unforgettable fact of his race — bleed together, making him a figure held in a type of disdain that's notable even in an era of heavily polarized politics.
"Obama's race and his Ivy League background and the sense of his elitism, all of those come together to make his case the worst we've seen," Smith says.
The racism is clear. If Obama were not half black, he would have been impeached already. I don’t think he would have been elected much less reflected if it weren’t for the color of his Kenyan daddy. And then there were the men who ran against him. Ugh. Yes, racism is very apparent.
Well I am. I hate the whole human race. Now what have they got?
Spike lee is a racist and hates obama for being a mixed breed thus watering down the black race. Gave his mother dagger eyes too.
They clearly exist in an alternative universe. Our differences are irreconcilable.
But I'm afraid they will not stop trying to shove their kooky ideology down our throats until forecably stopped.
A stupid nation would elect him twice.
It’s not misanthropy alone that makes NPR support abortion and economic policies that harm the poor as an unintended consequence, but it’s part of the mix.
NPR shut down the comments. Guess it wasn’t going the way the wanted it to.
They will be the ones writing text books that cover this era and they will be the ones dictating the “decade in review” clips for future generations.
Da white boys and girls down at NPR just can’t leave the race card alone.
They can’t answer the question
“what policy would we support if he were white?”
We loved Bill Clinton so much, just because he was white. /s
Race only explains how a totally unqualified person got elected (twice).
I imagine that will work about as well as it did for their big brothers the soviets.
And believe me, NPR: President Kucinich would get treated like used food from this Congress.
Leaving aside his octoroon status, 1/8 black, a white liberal with the exact same resume would have never gotten out of the primaries.
Because under the neatly pressed suit he’s a militant N-word who hates America and white people. Anybody who has ever worked with or been around somebody like that can sense it.
So says the white elitist dude who can read our minds.
Race is absolutely NO part of the explanation.
These are same type of white liberals that get mad that I married a white woman ...and not someone of my own race.
I believe The Savior instructed us to love those who hate us. I pray the he will be convicted in his heart and will then strive to undo all the evil he has wrought.
Regrettably, the answer to THAT prayer may be "No".
That’s a good counter as well -
“I assert that Obama hates me far more because of my skin color than I do him.”
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