Scared White

We all knew the facade of civility would eventually come down, but oh how lovely it was for a time, wasn't it?

We knew the Repugs would all have partial birth abortions themselves if only to hurl the gooey bits at the presumptive Democrat (I'm embracing the framing -- and it feels damn good!) nominee. That's basic Repuglican politikkin'. Yee and may I say ha.

But were we really prepared for Hillary's West Virginia appeals to the gun toting, Skoal-spitting Caucasoids, essentially making it okay for Bush at the Knesset to use the original N-word -- Nazi -- and grotesquely imply that Obama is a an "appeaser", triggering all the knee jerk responses he and every enemy to truth could muster? It sets the tone for the course ahead and indicates clearly that the stakes, having been high in the past, have never been this high.

Obama's opponents can't impugn his smarts or his ability to lead so they must -- must -- play to the basest card: race fear. It is all they have, luring the primal white terror of the black man from its dank hole, giving it a quick wash and a seventy dollar suit and sending it out to play havoc. It is a tactic that transcends Atwaterian shrewdness. It is the the true nuclear option making all the lurid attempts to ascribe illicit sexual behavior, bastard children or unhinged spiritual advisors so lame and ineffective that it is used as the last resort, obliterating all things in its toxic, molten mushroom cloud. And those who use it to define the contest are in effect defining themselves as scared and white, no more, no less.

Hillary: just a scared white woman? If it wins her the presidency, she is. Bush we already know is scared. If he were a woman he would have at least something going for him.