The criticism of President Barack Obama has hit a fever pitch. Gov. Rick Perry is all over him for his weak stance on Israel, Gov. Sarah Palin is critical of his attempts “to win the future by investing in harebrained ideas [like] solar panels and really fast trains,” and the Congressional Black Caucus is exercised over the fact that black unemployment in the U.S. is at 16.7%. That’s a far cry from the just over 9% unemployment rate of the country as a whole.
All hyperbole aside, Obama’s “hope and change” has turned into hope for change, and even the Congressional Black Caucus is ready to jump ship. Yet, by their own admission, they won’t follow through and jump because Obama is black.
As CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) told the Miami Herald: “If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House.” (In other words, were such a high level of black unemployment taking place under someone as white as Clinton, protests would be in full bloom.)
But as it stands, the left’s criticism of Obama nuanced by the fact that he is black, and therefore someone against whom the race card cannot be played.
Moreover, he is someone who rode the race card into office.
Those of us who paid attention in 2008 remember Obama purposefully accepting the Democrat nomination for president on the steps of the Lincoln memorial on August 28th – the same day in which Martin Luther King Jr. had stood on those steps in 1963 and delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. We also remember that once he was elected, mainstream media outlets of almost every shape and size gleefully reported that we’d elected our “first African-American President.”
Collectively, they waited for the clouds to part and the sun to shine forever more.
But it wasn’t to be.
And in time we realized Obama’s election had been the result of what Shelby Steele called “White Guilt” – a racial appeal to our psyches that turned an incalculable number of votes Obama’s way.
And now that the race card has been played by and for Obama to such a clear extent, it’s nearly impossible for those close to him to turn against him. Sure, they can criticize his support of higher taxes and the uber-elevated level of unemployment among blacks, but they can’t do much more than that because they sold their souls to get him in the office to begin with.
He was the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream in 2008, so it’s not really apropos to admit he’s worse than Jimmy Carter in 2011.
The lesson is simple: live by the race card, implode by the race card.
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