The racial pillorying of first Lady Michelle Obama was bad enough. The occasional snide digs and ugly depictions of the Obama's daughters were even more despicable. But now the presidential family's pet Portuguese Water Dog, Bo, has taken heat. A Brown University social scientist used polling experiments and an independent survey to identify a series of issues that have been bitter and contentious between Obama and the GOP and that are seemingly race-neutral such as tax policy, health care reform, Supreme Court appointments, and political party identification. He found that those with a racial antipathy toward blacks were more prone to oppose anything that Obama supported. That racial antipathy even extended to his dog. To test this, the Brown researcher showed a picture of the Obama's dog to one half of the test group. He showed the same picture to the other half but told them that it was a picture of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's pet Portuguese Water Dog, Splash. Those hostile toward Obama were much more likely to express disdain toward Obama's dog than that of Kennedy's presumed pet.
At first glance, it seems trite, silly and, well, petty. But it is anything but. The never-ending assault on the Obamas has been the one constant from the moment that Obama declared his presidential candidacy in 2007. It did not hamper his drive to the White House in part because GOP presidential rival John McCain categorically forbade any use of overt or subtle racial appeals by his campaign team during the campaign. The disgust, revulsion, and apathy of many GOP-leaning voters and conservative independents toward the domestic and foreign policy bumbles and stumbles of Bush, and the GOP's sex, and corruption scandals, and giveaway to Wall Street, neutered the overt racial animus of many voters. But even that was misleading.
The final presidential vote in 2008 gave ample warning of the potency of the GOP's conservative white constituency when aroused. While Obama made a major breakthrough in winning a significant percent of votes from white independents and young white voters, McCain still won a majority of their vote. Overall, Obama garnered slightly more than 40 percent of the white male vote. Among Southern and Heartland America white male voters, Obama made almost no impact. In South Carolina and other Deep South states the vote was even more lopsided among white voters against Obama. The only thing that even made Obama's showing respectable in those states was the record turnout and percentage of black votes that he got. They were all Democratic votes.
A Harvard post-election assessment of the 2008 presidential vote found that race did factor into the presidential election and that it cost Obama an added 3 to 5 percent of the national popular vote. Put bluntly, if Obama had been white the election would have been a route.
The quick surge of the Tea Party in the aftermath of Obama's election with its thinly disguised race-baiting digs, taunts, slogan, offensive parodying, posters, and depictions of Barack and Michelle Obama were early warning signs that race was not off the presidential election table. During the GOP presidential primary campaign GOP presidential candidates made sure of that with the stream of race-tinged references Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney made to food stamps, welfare, work ethics, and an entitlement society. Then there were the racially-loaded newsletters from Ron Paul that resurfaced. The candidates, when challenged, ducked, dodged, and denied any racial intent, or in the case of Paul's newsletter, that he even penned them.
GOP presidential candidates for the past three decades have crunched the voter numbers and the statistics. The GOP base is the white South and the Heartland. They deliver more than one-third of the electoral votes needed to bag the White House. These are the also the voters that GOP presidents and aspiring presidents -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. George W. Bush, and John McCain and legions of GOP governors, senators and congresspersons -- banked on for victory and to seize and maintain regional and national political dominance. They haven't disappointed them. Racial code talk has been a key weapon in the GOP's campaign arsenal. It has been the spark to reignite the GOP's traditional conservative, lower income, white male loyalists. A legion of well-heeled GOP Super PACS will spend millions on below-the-belt-hit ads on Obama before November. Almost certainly some of them will go even lower into the gutter and dredge up the bogus birth certificate ploy and his long-severed relationship with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
The Brown University survey simply reconfirmed the horrid fact that President Obama's public policy stances and battles have been relentlessly clouded, obstructed and opposed by subtle and overt racial perceptions and animus. It's no surprise then that the Obama's family dog has drawn racial fire, too.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a frequent MSNBC Political Contributor and weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK Radio-Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Viviana Hurtado: Election 2012 Goes To Los Perros
Jason Stanford: Austerity Roulette
Anna Jane Grossman: Obama Raising Campaign Funds by Selling Officially-Branded Dog Apparel
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Since regressives are practicing their historical versions of voter suppression, progressives should begin their own - ANYONE who votes or intends to vote against their economic self-interest will not be allowed to vote until they can prove they can overcome. (Actually, just kidding, but a thought, none-the-less - bad one, I know).
and why -- because these same elite are sending the jobs overseas so they can save a few bucks. To save a few bucks they are destroying pensions, downsizing, evicting, foreclosing and even genetically altering seeds - why - because everyone must eat and they have you by your stomachs, your finances and your fear. The last thing they want is for people to unite. So, they cause divisions, whether its by religion, race, color or origin. In the worst of times they are raising prices so "struggle" becomes the stress factor for most Americans. They say if the black guy or brown guy or red guy or yellow guy didn't have his slice of the pie there would be more for the white guy -- at least they use to say that. Now, according to Cheyney and his ilk, the white guy is just as much a part of the rabble as everyone else. Its no longer about the white guy - its about the wealthy guy. The 1%. So, they distract folks with the stupidest nonsense, the white house dog, calling the president deplorable names so the entire world can look at America and say how racist and disgraceful they are. How stupid, manipulated and blind.
The divine law of what goes around comes around, holds true. There is only so long one can continue a way of being before the penduluem swings to the other side. Despite all the bluster, violence and tears, none can wash
We now see fearing mongering in this country and whenever or wherever fear is incited, panic and ignorance are not far behind. The psychological games played on the "lesser thans," by the elite in order to maintain their financial status is in full force. They divide and therefore they conquer. But now they are not just conquering people of color, they are conquering unthinking whites. Using them and manipulating them to look elsewhere, anywhere but at the elite who are fighting like hell not to be forced into paying however taxes. Lying that to tax them would lose jobs. Jobs are already lost