George Will: Obama Is Winning Because He’s Black |
Washington Post columnist George Will suggested in his Tuesday column that President Obama was only ahead in the polls because he’s African-American. After dismissing Obama’s record as being obviously “in shambles,” Will suggested that Americans were supporting him only because they didn’t want to see a black president fail, writing that “the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant not to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.” Credible academic estimates suggest Obama lost a net 3 to 5 percent of the national vote in 2008 as a consequence of his race.
"...Will... is nothing more then white glove cover for a party that is a safe home for racists, misogynists, homophobic and science denying flat earthers. Useful idiots who are shocked when called out (Hello Todd Akin) because in the caves they live in this is what they all believe."
Couldn't have expressed it better myself. Thanks, P. Doherty.
"Obama is't winning because he is dark skinned, he is winning because he has done very well in the circumstances of a delusional and destructive GOP. You are correct in that the stats on the economy should be better but it is hard to make an honest case they could be much better given what anyone could have done."
Mistermix over at Balloon Juice writes about Will's column.
2008: GDP: -9.0%...Jobs per Month: -750K, Total Jobs: +1.1M.
2012: GDP: +1.3%..Jobs per Month: +100K; Total Jobs: +5.1M.
25 comments:
He's winning because he's black.
They hate him because he's black.
They won't except his official birth certificate because he's black.
He's not American because he's black.
I'm sick of these racist pigs.
Shaw, this week I was reading on one right leaning blog and the writer said they did not have a blog to let people come and slam the conservative candidate no matter what they thought.
Silver disagrees with the logic of small business owners because they favor Romney.
Others say the liberal media is manipulating FOX News polls as part of a plot to discourage conservative voters.
And of course others who favor false facts have already said these numbers have to be lies because they know better.
I know libs spin too and look for the best in our candidates, but it does seem as if this is over the top.
What are we to think of the GOP?
Have they gone as far right as the Dems did in the early 70's, literally divorcing themselves from the political center and reality...
@ RR and comment... zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Dave you make a valid point. And many of the far left remains were they could be found in the late "60's"and early "70's" don't ya think?
silverfizzle's resident racist is at it again...he's off his metamucil today...and this is about as bad as it gets:
"On the [supposedly] bright side: Obama supporters may comfort themselves and maintain their high level of smugness because the DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE has just about DOUBLED since Sambo took office."--Free Thinke
no...those conservatives aren't racists...no...we just imagine they write racist rants like that...
The Sambo comment is off the wall and over the top. Way out of line and certainly is not helpful to the libertarian and true fiscal conservative positions.
Free Thinke is most certainly not deterred by the sensitivities of "political correctness."
"Sambo?" Really?
Free Thinke has called Mr. Obama's father a "savage," and Mr. Obama's mother worse.
Now he refers to President Obama as "Sambo?"
And you think FT isn't deterred by the "sensitivities" of political correctness?
Would you say that if he were to refer to Jewish people with slurs? Or come out and say what he really would like to call Mr Obama but hasn't the courage to? Y'know, the "N" slur?
How about if he referred to all Italians as wops and guinneys? Or Chinese as "chinks," or every other slur ignorant people use to defame other cultures?
I think FT is a product of an old, dated, white-centric culture that finds any inroads made by people who are not like him frightening and threatening. To calm himself, he uses defamatory language to demean these people, thereby making him and other like-minded people feel superior and justified in their fear and loathing of different cultures.
That's my opinion. Brushing FT's slurs off as merely not being politically correct is like staying silent in the face of rancid bigotry.
Dave,
The commenter, skudrunner, has used my blog to spread misinformation about Mr. Obama for months.
I've been more than generous in allowing him to do that. I've found him spreading lies on several occasions, and have at times chosen to not publish his comments.
Most of them add nothing to the discussion, are nothing more than repeated GOP talking points, and often are wrong.
I'm not obligated to publish anyone's comment if I feel it adds nothing to the blog post or discussion.
Will's definitely a racist, and must be marched off to reeducation camp!
OK, I went and read Will's article, and now I understand why the left is raging against it.
He lets loose some damnable facts:
• That data just released for August 2012 showed that real disposable income had again declined.
• That Obama would actually celebrate the fact that for the first month since he took office there were more U.S. jobs than when he took office.
• That the most recent figures show a 13.2% decline in durable goods orders.
• That nearly 25% — the highest in three decades — of Americans between 25 and 55 are unemployed.
• That the second-quarter growth rate was adjusted down from an anemic 1.7% to the stall speed of 1.3%
And his description of the MSLSD loonies was exquisite:
"MSNBC's excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up."
So, I can understand your anguished howls, which prove Will's point, btw...
The most hilarious part of Will's stupid column was the fact that he left out the GOP's intransigence and unrelenting will to stop anything the president attempted to do to get the economy moving--like the American Jobs Act.
The American people understand that the president has been facing a GOP opposition that wants him to fail, has said it wanted him to fail, and did everything in its power to achieve that goal.
The American people aren't buying your or George Wills one-sided nonsense. They understand perfectly why the economy isn't growing fast enough, and that if we put the same group in power, they'll face the same tired old policies that got us to this point.
There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE to prove the Republicans could do better than what Mr. Obama has done in this horrid economic/political situation. NONE. You and Will have no facts to show us anyone could do better.
You have only your opinion based on the policies that got us here, and that's why Mr. Romney has been trailing in the polls. Americans don't want to go back to the future.
Shaw, I see and understand the point(s) you make. In the broadest sense I agree and wish the human race was, let's just say different. History has shown time and time again humans are incapable of living harmoniously with one another over prolonged periods of time. "Prolonged period time" can be viewed as subjective I know, so I leave it to you to decide.
Humans are nothing more than animals with the ability to reason, to think logically. Yet we continue by and large to group together based on ethnicity, race, language, social status etc .
I am amused by your white-centric culture remark. As if the same trait is not to be found in other races and cultures. The human race certainly has a great capacity to bigotry.
I'm not sure human tendencies will allow for eradicating bigotry within the species.
My opinion, but I do admire attempts to do so.
The Great Charles Pierce gets it just right:
"Will finds solace in condescension, which has been his ideological binkie against ambitious black politicians ever since he bragged how much more he knew about Mikhail Gorbachev than Jesse Jackson did."
Will: 'Obama's administration is in shambles, yet he is prospering politically. This may not, however, entirely be evidence of the irrationality of the electorate. Something more benign may be at work. A significant date in the nation's civil rights progress involved an African American baseball player named Robinson, but not Jackie. The date was Oct. 3, 1974, when Frank Robinson, one the greatest players in history, was hired by the Cleveland Indians as the major leagues' first black manager. But an even more important milestone of progress occurred June 19, 1977, when the Indians fired him. That was color-blind equality.'
"Well, you certainly could look at it that way. Please, do continue.
Will: 'Perhaps a pleasant paradox defines this political season: That Obama is African American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC's excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up. Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation's heart, if not its head.'
"First, in my capacity as the Don King of Punditland, I will make the match right now: George Effing Will vs. the Kindly Doc Rachel Maddow. Fifteen rounds. The parking lot at Caesar's. Who ya got?
Second, if Will believes that the reason the president seems to be prospering right now is because the good heart of America is giving the black fella a break, he's climbed so far up his own ass that he could sneeze and break his collarbone. And that's what I call staying within yourself."
Will's comments are not surprising. He is one of the racists that needs to disappear from the Republican party.
What will Republicans do when America is a white minority country? Die off hopefully. Unfortunately, racism will always be around.
"Would you say that if he were to refer to Jewish people with slurs?"
It's interesting you would make that comment to RN, who you have chastised before for making insensitive Jewish remarks.
I would love to hear RN's explanation of his Jewish comments, since he claims they were taken out of context.
SF and his minions are announcing proudly that they will not watch the debate. You can bet they will have plenty to say about something they did not watch, and know nothing about.
SF told us he has not seen a news, or political show in over six years, which proves why he has the most uneducated (false) political opinions in blog land.
I can count on SF giving us falsehoods about the debate he did not watch.
Maddow -vs- Will?
Will in the 7th.
"I am amused by your white-centric culture remark." --RN
This country was, for the majority of its history a "white-centric culture."
When I was a little girl, I never saw an African-American doll, ever. Even bandages that were called "flesh colored" never included brown-skin tones. And there were no teevee shows where an African-American was the star, ever. It was as though that part of our population didn't exist.
That culture is fading away. That's what I was referring to, and that is what FT is railing against when he uses slurs to describe people he fears and loathes.
Silverpiddle is once again engaged in change-the-subject trolling. The point here is that Will claimed Obama is only winning because he's black, thus implicitly accusing Obama supporters of backing him for racist reasons. This while right-wingers routinely react with fury whenever they themselves are accused, often on much more convincing grounds, of being racist.
That, not any economic statistics cited, is the objection to Will's essay.
"That culture is fading away."
You are correct Shaw. I am sure I will rile some conservative and libertarian but I've said for years that eventually American society will be different shades of brown.
"... and that is what FT is railing against when he uses slurs to describe people he fears and loathes."
Possibly Shaw, but not being a psychologist or psychiatrist I hesitate to draw firm conclusions on his fears and or loathings.
But yes, his comment does allow for conjecture and from a rational perspective your point(s) are reasonable to consider.
Shaw,
You demean me in your blog and that is alright. All of what I have said is true, it just goes against your worship of Obama as the next coming.
You spout all this misinformation about how Obama cut taxes to small business and did not raise taxes on the middle class when you know neither of those are true. You seem to be so deep into liberalism that the truth just doesn't matter.
I realize Geraldine Ferarro got drummed out of the good liberal club for this, but could such an ill-prepared, unremarkable and inexperienced white person get elected president?
Maybe George Cloony...
Let's face it, it made people feel good about themselves and America to vote for Obama, and God bless us, we overcame a racial barrier, with white people voting in the majority for a black man, which is what I think Will's point was.
Anyhoo, as Joe Biden observed, Obams is clean and articulate, and as Harry Reid said, he doesn't speak with a negro dialect, unless he wants too, and those are imporatant traits for a president.
Biden, of course is a clown, as is Harry Reid, but at least Biden slips up and tells the truth every now and then, pointing out that Obama's dithering, ham-fisted policies have created...
"...a middle class that has been buried the last four years.
skudrunner, you write that because YOU are so deep into conservatism that facts don't matter to you.
"Let's face it, it made people feel good about themselves and America to vote for Obama,"
Keep telling youself that fairy tale, SF, it's how conservatives deal with the fact that Americans voted for the man they believed would be better than McCain and the disaster he chose as his running mate.
The president has done very well with what he's had to work with in the opposition party.
And keep telling yourself all your little fairy tale stories about Biden and Reid.
The American people will decide.
Infidel753 is correct. You and skudrunner always come here and try to change the subject. This post is about George Will and the fact that HE, not the liberals, inserted RACE into the conversation by saying Americans will vote for Obama only because he's black.
In effect, he's calling me a racist because I voted for Obama over McCain and the dumbass he chose for his running mate, and the woman conservatives believed was qualified to be president!
Look at yourselves and internalize that sort of conservative idiocy, then understand why Americans are leaning toward another Obama presidency.
Now, can we all watch the debate and attempt a clean, concise, unbiased determination of the eventual outcome?
We won't get that from you or SF
Certainly not you.
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