Grab your coffee and let’s read Rich
Once again, he nails it
There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what “real America” is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don’t have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.
But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.
I want Obama to win as much as anyone, but I’ll still believe it when I see it. Never underestimate the number of passive bigots in the U.S., particularly the number who SAY they’re voting for Obama, only to make a very different choice once they’re in the booth. Having grown up in Amstrong County, Pa. (John Murtha shouldn’t have said what he said, but anyone who thinks he isn’t RIGHT hasn’t lived in western PA) and now living in Sussex County for four years, underestimating the number of passive bigot voters is not something I’m willing to do just yet.
Maybe I’m too cynical.
Then again, I grew up in Armstrong County, and I turned out just fine. I’m just sayin’, some of the nicest people I’ve started out talking to turned out to hold some pretty ridiculous racially-based prejudices.
It’s really, REALLY creepy to hear an old white woman say something extremely racist, and then watch for any trace that she realizes what she just said on her face, only to see none. That’s ingrained, generationally-insitutionalized racism that isn’t going ANYwhere, unfortunately.