Black America and the Obama Disaster

The time was right and the man was personally appealing. As Joe Biden said,

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," ….. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

He ran as a post racial fusion candidate; a black/white man who had published a book about his black and white roots. He was to symbolize the end of America’s racial divide. Despite denials by the media, Obama won the votes of lots of liberals as much for the color of his skin as for the platform of “hope and change.” He was the opportunity to show that they were good people who had transcended the racism they knew existed in every white heart, even theirs, by their vote.

Things did not quite work out that way. The man of unity has become the Saul Alinski follower who seeks to destroy, not love his enemies. He has become the man who presides over trillions of dollars of “stimulus” spending while unemployment reaches double digits in many states. He has transformed America’s free enterprise system by socializing the auto industry, the banks and soon the health care industry. He’s the community organizer who promises to run multi-trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and many Americans worry that as a result their children will be worse off than they are. He’s the American president who has spent his first months in office apologizing to the world for America. He has managed to get millions of middle aged and elderly people to participate in street protests against his policies; people who had never attended a rally before. And thanks to the rhetoric of Obama and his admirers, racial tensions have erupted to a level that I had hoped we would never see again.

And it’s a shame.

Imagine for a moment combining the Obama smile and with the gravity and maturity of a Colin Powell. Imagine someone like former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder as the first black President. The promise of a truly post racial society could have been realized if only the first black American President had not been a person who felt comfortable having as his spiritual advisor the Reverend Jeremiah “God damn America” Wright, or someone who does not have Bill “Pentagon bomber” Ayers as a personal friend (and perhaps ghost writer). If only our first black American president was someone whose appointment did not include admirers of Mao, or self proclaimed communists; someone who had not worked quite so closely with the underage sex slavers at ACORN. More and more people are coming to the conclusion that Mr. Obama is Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Van Jones, and Anita Dunn.

Charles Krauthammer says it well …

What you also learn about the White House is when [Valerie] Jarrett said, as we saw on tape, 'We've been watching [Van Jones] all these years.' Well, that means you've been watching him and you must know something about his history of quite radical politics and statements. And that apparently was undisturbing to Jarrett and to Obama people. And that tells you, it's a reflection of the boss.

The boss also had a history, before he became a candidate, of being around and friends with the likes of Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers. Liberals scolded us last year how irrelevant all of that is, how it's a smear campaign against Obama. But if you live in that environment and you find nothing inherently wrong with that kind of radicalism, then a Van Jones will show up. You'll watch him years and years and you'll think this guy is perfectly mainstream.

It would be wonderful is our first black President believed that America was a shining city on a hill; instead we have a man who feels compelled to tell the world he’s sorry for being a representative of America, but now that he’s in office things will be better. His wife tells us that she was never proud of America until now.

There is a certain small sliver of America that believes that we are responsible for the evil in the world. But that sliver is small, and as more people see that we have elected a member of that sliver, Mr. Obama is losing his mandate. The Right has turned from being opposed to him to being genuinely afraid for the country. The middle is wondering what happened to the person they thought they were voting for. The Obama supporters are turning up the rhetoric and embedded in lots of that rhetoric are accusations of racism.

That is a tragedy for black America for they are a minority. The memories of the civil rights struggle are just that – memories for middle aged and elderly people. The younger generation did not live it and wonders what they did to have the sins of the fathers visited on the children.

Unfortunately, what the young see is something very divisive and ugly. They see accusation of racism without cause, and associate it with the age of Obama. And they are reacting. Look at not only the middle aged and older faces at the Tea Parties, but the young and the very young. And then look at the iconic image of Obama that was once used during the campaign and is now used as a counter weapon. The visage is transformed and repellent.

It is entirely possible that we have elected a leader who promised to bring the races together but who manages to drive them apart. That is bad for white America, but it could be a tragedy for black America.

UPDATE: From Strata-Sphere we get some startling polling data about the Virginia governors race.

The latest SurveyUSA poll showing Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell with a 19% lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds (which would be the biggest win for any Virginia Governor of either party since 1961) has some interesting internals. One of the strangest findings is that McDonnell is getting 31% of the African American vote.