Democrats are losing -- and they know it -- so things are getting awfully ugly out there. A New York Times story over the weekend previewed the onslaught of overt political race-baiting that has begun to sweep across the country. Entitled, "Black Vote Seen as Last Hope for Democrats to Hold Senate," the piece describes the party's desperate measures:
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The confidential memo from a former pollster for President Obama contained a blunt warning for Democrats. Written this month with an eye toward Election Day, it predicted “crushing Democratic losses across the country” if the party did not do more to get black voters to the polls. “African-American surge voters came out in force in 2008 and 2012, but they are not well positioned to do so again in 2014,” Cornell Belcher, the pollster, wrote in the memo, dated Oct. 1. “In fact, over half aren’t even sure when the midterm elections are taking place.” Mr. Belcher’s assessment points to an urgent imperative for Democrats: To keep Republicans from taking control of the Senate, as many are predicting, they need black voters in at least four key states. Yet the one politician guaranteed to generate enthusiasm among African Americans is the same man many Democratic candidates want to avoid: Mr. Obama.
Bring Obama to town on your behalf, and you might attract more black voters to the polls; but you'll also associate yourself with a deeply unpopular president, and alienate voters who aren't aligned with Obama's most unflinchingly loyal voting bloc. Quite a dilemma. Solution? Resort to grotesque racial attacks to scare black voters. In Texas, Wendy Davis is pretending that Greg Abbott might oppose interracial marriage, which would be disgusting enough even he weren't...in an interracial marriage himself. In North Carolina, a pro-Hagan group plastered churchgoers' cars with fliers warning that a Republican Senate would mean the impeachment of Barack Obama, using
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Vote your skin color (*cough* Democrat *cough*) unless, of course, you want more unarmed black teenagers shot to death and "left in a pool of blood in the street." Georgia Democrats' chairman has defended the flier, arguing that it's really all about job training and education, or something:
"It’s about opportunity. Are you going to be in situations more like that? I mean, that’s when you don’t have people having the opportunity for jobs or to participate in their community and the opportunity to grow. When you have communities like that that are stagnant — that’s what we’re getting to in Georgia — and when you offer people the HOPE grant to get retrained, or the fundamentals in education so we can get our dropout rate down. That very much of what that climate is, is what we’re trying to change here.”
Oh, it's "about opportunity," alright. Just not the kind he's talking about. Extra points for name-checking something called a HOPE grant in the context of justifying undisguised race-baiting. Incidentally, Democrats' Ferguson linkage comes as Michael Brown's
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I am a 59-year-old African American man, born and raised in Jacksonville, and now living with my family in New Bern. I am insulted by the arrogance of the Democratic candidates during this election because they talk to us through their advertisements as if we are stupid...I was shocked to hear the radio commercial that featured a couple of ladies suggesting the Republicans were trying to take away the rights of African Americans to vote. The voter ID initiative,(if that’s what they’re referring to) is to preserve the integrity of the vote, and a photo ID can be acquired for free through the North Carolina DMV...These things do not invoke trust within me or many of my friends for the current Obama administration. The Democrats are spending an awful lot of money on negative ads designed to discredit Republicans. Why would anyone choose that kind of strategy over one that highlights their own accomplishments? Thank you for allowing me to voice this opinion.
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Well said. Democrats ferociously oppose voter ID laws -- which are overwhelmingly popular with the public -- because, frankly, the party machine doesn't have a problem with voter fraud, which they insist isa "myth" (something I've addressed here and here). One man's fraud is another's "putting votes to good use:"
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