I learned very little in this campaign cycle about what we need to do to get our economy out of the ditch, return higher paying jobs to America, what we plan to do to become energy independent and how we intend to rebuild our military capability.
Solutions for meeting, head on, the myriad of problems our nation faces were ignored and drowned out by calumny and bitterness. So sad indeed!
Obviously a president who is incompetent, apparently does not like his job and who has ignored so many of his responsibilities sets a pathetic tone and we have two more years of Obama self-pity.
Governing is not easy but then playing a good game of golf is not easy either. Obama, the media , press and his fawning supporters convinced voters he was exceptional.
Rest assured the same will be attempted vis a vis Hillary and it will only be a matter of days, once Tuesday's election is history, that we will be drowned in two more years of verbal mediocrity and political blasphemy.
When everything you have done and stand for fails PIVOT! (See 1 below.
Did six Democrat Senators conspire with the Obama Administration to assist the IRS in attacking Conservative Organizations with the intent of depriving them of their Constitutional Rights. Most particularly freedom of speech. You decide.
Several of these senators are running for re-election. (See 1a below.)
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Energy price decline produces winners and losers.(See 2 below.)
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Our Manchurian president? You Decide. (See 3 below.)
There are also many ways to destroy and/or subvert our Republic from within. A powerful one is to infect our entire education system, with educators who are not sympathetic to our way of life and want to bring about chaos.
Another way is to create fraud in the voting process and allow illegals to participate. (See 4 below.)
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Obama's racial appeal to black voters is understandable for several reasons.
a) Black voters have remained slaves to the Democrat Party for decades.
b) Black voters have proven time and again they are too dumb to realize how Liberals take advantage of them.
c) Black voters obviously must not understand they would benefit from being more independent thus,forcing both parties to vie for their affection.
d) Black voters have some handouts to show for their obeisance but never balance this against what they have lost , ie. unemployment, dependency, family structure in distress and crime abounds. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) A Most Pivotal Election
Democratic candidates kept twisting away from Obama and changing the subject. Republicans didn’t cooperate.
ByFRED BARNES
President Obama is famous for proclaiming a “pivot” to a new issue—to the economy, to jobs, to Asia. By my count he has announced more than 20 pivots during his presidency, invariably to matters that bring political benefits and away from those that don’t.
The pivot strategy has also been a major feature of Democratic campaigns that conclude with Tuesday’s midterm election. And it is understandable why Democrats have employed it. Redirection is the best response they could come up with to the Republican charge that they are closely tied to Mr. Obama and his policies.
Democrats would rather not discuss their relationship with the president, much less dwell on it. He is unpopular and so are his major policies (ObamaCare, national security, the economy). So candidates pivot to another issue. We saw this strategy at work in Louisiana’s Senate race last week. Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu , trailing Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy in most polls, suddenly raised the explosive issues of racism and sexism. She insisted that racism makes Mr. Obama unpopular in Louisiana and sexism causes her re-election to be a struggle.
Pivoting can be a clever strategy—when it works. And no Democrat has been more effective at adopting it than Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina. Six months ago, she was viewed as vulnerable, even doomed. Not only had she voted for the president’s health-care law, but she had also declared publicly that North Carolinians could keep their current insurance policies and doctors. For a while, she hid from reporters to avoid talking about her vote.
Republicans and super PACs supporting them attacked her relentlessly. But once Thom Tillis won the Republican nomination in July, she pulled off a successful pivot. In TV ads and campaign appearances, she made his controversial role as state House speaker a leading issue in the Senate contest. Ms. Hagan has led in nearly every poll since then. But her pivoting success is the exception.
The story of this year’s campaign in the dozen or so races that will decide who controls the Senate is uncomplicated. Republicans have a single talking point: Their Democratic opponents are partisan clones of Mr. Obama. Democrats often rely on one response: Pivot to an issue that has nothing to do with the president.
To win the Senate, Republicans need to gain six seats. Given that key races are in conservative or swing states, they have a good chance of achieving this goal. Republicans have controlled the House since 2010 and could pick up as many as 10 to 12 more seats in the lower chamber.
Embracing Mr. Obama is not an option for Democrats in either red or toss-up states. He has become the symbol of what’s wrong with Washington. By itself this represents a victory for Republicans. Previously, House Republicans had been held responsible—by the media as well as by Democrats—for the deadlock on Capitol Hill.
Watching Democrats struggle to escape Mr. Obama’s ideological grip was the most fascinating aspect of the campaign. They have tried everything from identifying with prominent Republicans to openly rejecting Mr. Obama.
In Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall has ignored other issues to concentrate on the alleged “war on women” waged by Republicans in general and supposedly with special zeal by Rep. Cory Gardner, his GOP opponent. But after Mr. Gardner softened his stance on abortion and contraception, that issue lost its sting. Mr. Udall’s pivot had failed.
That left him adrift. He claimed to strike fear in Mr. Obama’s heart. He called himself “the last person they want to see coming at the White House.” Meanwhile, Mr. Obama came to Denver to raise money for Mr. Udall. As a campaign tool, Republicans rate the record of incumbent Democrats voting with the president. They pegged Mr. Udall at 99%.
In Alaska, Sen. Mark Begich characterized himself as a buffer between his state and the Obama administration. “I’ll be a thorn in his ass,” Mr. Begich said, referring to Mr. Obama. This boast “hardly squares with a voting record 98 percent in sync with the White House,” noted Carl Cannon, the Washington bureau chief of RealClearPolitics.
Mr. Begich also portrayed himself as a partner of Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and featured her image in a TV ad. Ms. Murkowski objected. She said she wants a Republican elected to the Begich seat. “Sen. Begich should run on his own record and not attempt to deceive the public into believing he has support that does not exist,” a letter from her lawyers said.
Like Mr. Begich, other Democrats pivoted their entire political identity. In Virginia, Sen. Mark Warner ran for re-election as a bipartisan senator eager to work across the aisle. He bragged in campaign appearances about his endorsement by former Republican Sen. John Warner.
In her Senate campaign in Georgia, Democrat Michelle Nunn used a photo of President George H.W. Bush in a TV ad, despite Mr. Bush’s request that she not do so. A Bush spokesman said her defiance of Mr. Bush’s wishes “is very disappointing because it’s so disrespectful.”
In the final debate between Ms. Nunn and Republican David Perdue on Sunday, she went out of her way to associate herself with Mr. Bush, even after Mr. Perdue mentioned that the former president had endorsed him. As Byron York of the Washington Examiner noted, Ms. Nunn seemed unfazed by that information.
When Mr. Perdue tied her to Mr. Obama and his agenda, Ms. Nunn dismissed the notion of a serious connection to the current president, though both are Democrats. “I’ve spent about 45 minutes of my life with President Obama,” she said. “I’ve spent seven years working for President George H.W. Bush’s Point of Light organization.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Obama was still trying to pivot, this time to make the campaign agenda more liberal. In a message entitled “emailing for $5,” he wrote: “The American people are with us on all the big issues. They want to break the gridlock. They want to raise the minimum wage, pass equal pay laws, and close all those tax loopholes for millionaires. You know it. I know it. The polls show it.”
But Democratic candidates in pivotal states—they didn’t know it or show it.
1a) Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was principally involved in a plot with Lois Lerner and President Barack Obama’s political appointee at the IRS to lead a program of harassment against conservative nonprofit groups during the 2012 election, according to letters exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller.
“The IRS is aware of the current public interest in this issue,” IRS chief counsel William J. Wilkins, a White House visitor described by insiders as “The President’s Man at the IRS,” personally wrote in a hand-stamped memo to “Senator Shaheen” on official Department of the Treasury letterhead on April 25, 2012.
“These regulations have been in place since 1959,” Wilkins wrote. “We will consider proposed changes in this area as we work with Tax-Exempt and Government Entities and the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy to identify tax issues that should be addressed” in designing new regulations and “guidance.”
“I hope this information is helpful,” Wilkins wrote. “I am sending a similar response to your colleagues. If you have questions, please contact me or have your staff contact Cathy Barre at(202) 622-3720.”
Shaheen got the inside info from the IRS, making it clear she was the point person in a group composed of six close Democratic colleagues including Chuck Schumer and Al Franken, who joined with Shaheen in quietly writing a letter to then-IRS commissioner Doug Shulman expressing their concern about new nonprofit groups engaging in political activity in 2012.
The Democratic senators’ publicly available March 9, 2012 letter asked the IRS to “immediately change the administrative framework for enforcement of the tax code as it applies to groups designated as ‘social welfare’ organizations” by introducing a new “bright line test” for how much a tax-exempt group can invest in political activity and by setting a new rule that at least 51 percent of a group’s activity must non-political. The senators called for more elaborate disclosures about finances and “undertakings” in groups’ form 990 submissions and sought new rules about how much donors could write off as business expenses. (RELATED: New Poll: Brown Leads Shaheen By A Point And A Half With One Week To Go)
A Freedom of Information Act request from a major conservative super PAC specifically identified “Jeanne Shaheen” as its Freedom of Information Act search term on the IRS scandal (and in Washington, folks, if YOUR NAME is the search term that the conservative super PAC uses in its bid to get public information, then you just might be involved in something).
Editor's Note: The recent drop in global oil prices is affecting economies around the world. This series examines the reasons behind the falling prices and their effects on major energy consumers and producers. Part One discusses the structural changes in the oil market, particularly the growth in supply and the decline in demand. Part Two will examine the countries likely to be most troubled by price drops, while Part Three will look at the countries likely to gain the most.
Since mid-June, the price of Brent crude oil has fallen by nearly 25 percent -- going from a high of $115 to about $87 a barrel -- and structural factors are causing concern among global oil producers that oil prices will remain near current levels through at least the end of 2015. This concern has caused several investment banks to slash their oil price outlooks for the immediate future. Stratfor believes that oil supplies will stay high as energy production in North America increases and OPEC countries remain hesitant or unable to cut production significantly. Moreover, in the short term, the Chinese economic slowdown and stagnant European economy will limit the potential for growth in oil demand. These factors could make it harder for global oil prices to rebound to their previous levels.
Oil is the most geopolitically important commodity, and any structural change in oil markets will reverberate throughout the world, creating clear-cut winners and losers. Countries that consume large amounts of energy have been coping with oil prices above $100 per barrel since the beginning of 2011 as most of the developed world has been trying to emerge from financial and debt crises. A sustained period of lower oil prices could provide some relief to these countries. Major oil producers, on the other hand, have grown accustomed to high oil prices, often using them to underpin their national budgets. Sustained low oil prices will cause these oil producers to rethink their spending.
Analysis
The amount of oil production that has come online over the last four months is staggering. The United States has increased its production from 8.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in July to an estimated 9 million bpd. Libyan oil production has increased from about 200,000 bpd to more than 900,000 bpd. Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iraq have all increased production in recent months, and OPEC's production is at the highest level in two years. To put this into perspective, the International Energy Agency's projection for global oil demand growth for 2014 is only 700,000 bpd -- roughly half of the total production increase mentioned above.
Looking to 2015, the growth prospects for energy production in North America continue to be positive. Even after production grew by about 1 million bpd in 2012, 2013 and again in 2014, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects U.S. oil production to increase by another 750,000 bpd in 2015. Moreover, the Energy Information Administration consistently has underestimated production growth from tight oil (oil extracted from formations that are not naturally very permeable).
Production Cuts Remain Unlikely
The only OPEC members with enough flexibility to reduce oil production voluntarily are the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. None of the other members are in a financial position to take oil production offline. Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela all need maximum oil output and high prices to finance their budgets and social spending programs. Notably, Libya's OPEC governor called on the bloc to cut production by 500,000 bpd to buoy prices but made no mention that his country would take part in such a cut. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, seems to have taken the opposite position, prioritizing a greater market share over higher prices.
Saudi Arabia's status as OPEC's swing producer has historically meant that Saudi Aramco will reduce production to create higher oil prices. But with U.S. production increasing so quickly and prices that are still relatively high, Riyadh has little interest to do so: A significant reduction in oil production might not increase the price of oil enough to make forgoing the additional exports worthwhile. Riyadh found itself in the same position in the 1980s when it cut production only to discover that its control over international oil prices was limited. The Saudis have been hesitant to play the same card ever since, instead exerting a small influence on prices while continuing to produce at high levels. More broadly, during the last four decades the Saudis -- as well as the Emiratis and Kuwaitis -- have amassed large wealth funds, enabling them to simply sit back and weather a period of low oil prices.
This means that if oil prices continue dropping, it will fall largely to U.S. producers to slow production expansion. North America's tight oil production costs vary considerably from basin to basin, but so long as oil prices do not continue falling -- and they appear to have bottomed out in the mid-$80 per barrel range -- almost all tight oil production will remain profitable, and drilling will continue to increase. The U.S. oil rig count, a rough indicator of impending oil production, remains near record levels, indicating that the recent downturn in oil prices has not dampened interest in drilling.
In fact, in the short- to mid-term, production prospects outside North America will be rather bleak. Most of the recent production increases elsewhere around the globe were due to one-off events, such as the revival of Libya's production. There are only a few other changes -- such as Iranian exports becoming unconstrained or Saudi Aramco dipping into its spare production capacity -- that could put significant volumes of oil back on the market. In fact, it is more likely that large-scale production will go offline in places such as Nigeria and Libya. All of these possibilities limit the potential of a more drastic decline in oil prices.
Low Demand is Likely to Linger
On the demand side, a bullish oil market is unlikely. North American oil consumption is structurally in decline and has been since the mid 2000s. Electric vehicles, natural gas and other alternatives will continue to penetrate the North American oil market, albeit very slowly. The European oil market exhibits the same patterns seen in North America, but in Europe the structural decline is occurring amid slowing economic growth; many of Europe's more developed economies, such as that of France, are at effectively zero growth.
Meanwhile, China's economy will continue to descend from the peaks of its post-2008 investment and construction boom. The decline of housing markets and related industries nationwide is at the heart of China's economic slowdown and will in large part determine China's overall economic health during the next one to two years. Although a collapse in China's housing market in the next 12 to 18 months is not expected, should one occur, it would send China's economy into a tailspin and subsequently dampen demand for oil. However, Stratfor does not anticipate that Beijing would allow this to happen. The central government will likely enact more stimulus similar to previous economic measures, such as large-scale public infrastructure projects driven by state-led investment.
China's demand for oil could remain relatively strong in the absence of economic collapse, but China's increases in demand are likely to be more moderate than usual at an estimated 400,000 bpd over the course of the year. Increases in demand in the rest of the world combined will likely be no more than that figure. Meanwhile, global oil supplies do not appear likely to decline in the coming months. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that oil prices will stay lower than $100 per barrel for much of 2015, unless Saudi Arabia and OPEC change their minds about production cuts.
All eyes watching oil markets will turn to OPEC's semiannual meeting Nov. 27 to look for any shifts. If there are none, the lower price of oil will continue to have significant geopolitical consequences for consumer and producer countries alike.
Subject: OBAMA: THE UNANSWERED MYSTERY OF THE CENTURY
It will be interesting to see what they put in his "Presidential Library" about his early years, when he is out of office. In a country where we take notice of many, many facets of our public figures' lives, doesn't seem odd that there's so little we know about our current president, Barack Obama. For example, we know that Andrew Jackson's wife smoked a corn cob pipe and was accused of adultery; Abe Lincoln never went to school; Jack Kennedy wore a back brace; Harry Truman played the piano.
As Americans, we enjoy knowing details about our newsmakers, but none of us know one single humanizing fact about the history of our own president. We are all aware of the lack of uncontestable birth records for Obama; that document managing has been spectacularly successful. There are however, several additional oddities in Obama's history that appear to be as well managed as the birthing issue.
One other unusual item... there are no birth certificates of his daughters that can be found?
It is strange that no one who ever dated him has shown up. The charisma that caused women to be drawn to him so strongly during his campaign, certainly would, in the normal course of events, lead some lady to come forward, if only to garner some attention for herself. We all know about JFK's magnetism, that McCain was no monk and quite a few details about Palin's courtship and even her athletic prowess. Joe Biden's aneurisms and hair plugs are no secret; look at Cheney and Clinton, we know about their heart problems. Certainly Wild Bill Clinton's exploits before and during his White House years, were well known. That's why it's so odd, that not one lady has stepped up and said, "He was so-oo shy..." or "What a great dancer..."
It's virtually impossible to know anything about this fellow.
Who was the best man at his wedding? Start there. Then check groomsmen.
Then get the footage of the graduation ceremony. Has anyone talked to the professors? It is odd that no one is bragging that they knew him or taught him or lived with him.
When did he meet Michele, and how? Are there photos? Every president gives to the public all their photos, etc. for their library. What has he released? And who in hell voted for him to be the most popular man in 2010? Doesn't this make you wonder?
Ever wonder why no one ever came forward from President Obama's past saying they knew him, attended school with him, was his friend and so on?
Not one person has ever come forward from his past.
It certainly is very, very intriguing.
This should be a cause for great concern. To those who voted for him, you may have elected an unqualified, inexperienced shadow man. Have you seen a movie named "The Manchurian Candidate"
As insignificant as each of us might be, someone with whom we went to school will remember our name or face, someone will remember we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us.
George Stephanopoulos of ABC News said the same thing during the 2008 campaign. He questions why no one has acknowledged the president was in their classroom or ate in the same cafeteria or made impromptu speeches on campus. Stephanopoulos also was a classmate of Obama at Columbia -- the class of 1984. He says he never had a single class with him.
If he is such a great orator, why doesn't anyone in Obama's college class remember him? Why won't he allow Columbia to release his records? Nobody remembers Obama at Columbia University.
Looking for evidence of Obama's past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there... but none remembered him.
Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a Political Science major at Columbia, who also graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root said of Obama, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knew him and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia, ever."
Nobody recalls him. Root adds that he was also, like Obama, Class of '83 Political Science, and says, "You don't get more exact or closer than that. Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! And five years ago, nobody even knew who he was. The guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of, as we say in New York , 'the macha' who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him."
Obama's photograph does not appear in the school's yearbook and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends while at Columbia.
Some other interesting questions:
Why was Obama's law license inactivated in 2002?
It is said there is no record of him ever taking the Bar exam.
Why was Michelle's law license inactivated by court order?
We understand that was forced, in order to avoid criminal fraud charges.
It is circulating that, according to the U.S. Census, there is only one Barack Obama, but 27 Social Security numbers and over 80 aliases connected to him.
The Social Security number he uses now, originated in Connecticut, where he is never reported to have lived. It was originally registered to another man (Thomas Louis Wood) from Connecticut, who died in Hawaii while on vacation there.
As we all know, Social Security Numbers are only issued 'once, they are not re-used'
One of the biggest voter frauds may be the idea promoted by Attorney General Eric Holder and others that there is no voter fraud, that laws requiring voters to have a photo identification are just attempts to suppress black voting.
Reporter John Fund has written three books on voter fraud and a recent survey by Old Dominion University indicates that there are more than a million registered voters who are not citizens, and who therefore are not legally entitled to vote.
The most devastating account of voter fraud may be in the book "Injustice" by J. Christian Adams. He was a Justice Department attorney, who detailed with inside knowledge the voter frauds known to the Justice Department, and ignored by Attorney General Holder and Company.
One of these frauds involved sending out absentee ballots to people who had never asked for them. Then a political operator would show up -- uninvited -- the day the ballots arrived and "help" the voter to fill them out. Sometimes the intruders simply took the ballots, filled them out and forged the signatures of the voters.
These were illegal votes for Democrats, which may well be why Eric Holder sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil.
As for race-based "voter suppression," amid all the political hysteria, how many hard facts have you heard? Probably none that supports that claim. Widely available free photo identification cards mean that poverty is no barrier to voting.
Since blacks and whites both have to show photo I.D. for everything from cashing checks to getting on a plane, why has requiring a photo I.D. for voting caused such shrill outcries?
Unfortunately, this is part of the cynical politics of promoting as much racial polarization and paranoia as possible, in hopes of getting more black voters to turn out to vote for the Democrats.
Nothing is too gross when promoting racial hysteria in an election year. Veteran Democrat Congressman Charlie Rangel from Harlem declared that Republicans "don't disagree -- they hate!" According to Rangel, "Some of them believe that slavery isn't over and that they won the Civil War!"
Republicans did win the Civil War. That's why there is no more slavery. It was a Republican president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that voted for the 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery.
In the 1960s, a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If we are going to talk about history, let's at least get the facts right.
Only an utter ignorance of history, in this era of dumbed-down education, could allow demagogues like Rangel to get away with the absurdities that abound in election year politics.
Images of lynching and Jim Crow laws that made blacks sit in the back of buses are used against Republicans, even though the "solid South" was solidly controlled by Democrats during that era.
Bull Connor, who turned police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators, was a Democrat. So were other Southern segregationists. In those days, you could go hundreds of miles through the Jim Crow South without seeing a single Republican official. That is why political observers called it "the solid South."
Perhaps the biggest voter fraud of all is the fraud against black voters, by telling them bogey man stories, in order to try to get them to come out on election day to vote for Democrats.
The most cynical of these bogey man ploys is Attorney General Holder's threats of legal action against schools that discipline a "disproportionate" number of black boys. Unless you believe that black boys cannot possibly be misbehaving more often than Asian American girls, what does this political numbers game accomplish?
It creates another racial grievance, allowing Democrats like Holder to pose as rescuers of blacks from racist dangers. The real danger is allowing disruptive students in ghetto schools to destroy the education of other black students -- in a world where education is the only hope that most ghetto youngsters have for a better life.
Sacrificing these young people's futures, in hopes of gaining some additional black votes today, is as cynical and fraudulent as it gets.
The appeals to racial division mask the lack of economic progress.
President Obama and fellow Democrats have been obsessed with the African-American electorate of late, mindful that the party needs high black voter turnout Tuesday to keep the Senate. The implication is that every black American who votes will automatically pull the Democratic lever, and perhaps they will. What is becoming harder to explain is why black Americans would feel any gratitude for the results of Obama Administration policies.
The last six years have been rough on middle class incomes broadly, but even worse for African Americans. Consider some basic economic statistics.
At the start of the President’s first term, the unemployment rate was 12.7% for blacks and 7.1% for whites. Four years later in January 2013 the numbers were 13.8% and 7%, respectively, which means that the black-white employment gap had widened. Today black unemployment is down to 11%, but it’s still more than double the white rate of 5.1%.
Or take the labor participation rate, which measures the share of the working-age population that is employed. The participation rate has sunk to lows last seen in 1978 for all Americans—62.7%, and for whites it is a tick better at 62.8%. But for black Americans it is a full percentage point lower at 61.7%. In December 2013 the rate fell to 60.2 for blacks.
Then there’s the black poverty rate. According to the most recent Census data, the overall U.S. poverty rate fell to 14.5% in 2013 from 15% a year earlier, but among blacks it was unchanged at 27.2%. When Mr. Obama took office, black poverty was 25.8%. By comparison, the white poverty rate was 11.5% in 2009 and 9.6% in 2013.
Median household incomes have fallen for nearly everyone under this President, but blacks are again slightly worse off than other groups. The median black household income fell to $34,598 in 2013 from $38,409 in 2009. For white households it fell to $58,270 from $62,545. Thus the black median household income was 61.4% of the white median in 2009 but had fallen to 59.4% in 2013—one more racial gap that has widened.
This dismal record helps explain why Democratic appeals to blacks this year play up racial fears rather than economic opportunity. Mr. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have taken to palling around with Al Sharpton to denounce criticism of the President as racially motivated and voter ID laws as a Republican conspiracy to disenfranchise blacks.
After a Democratic pollster circulated a memo noting that more than half of black voters were unaware that an election was coming up on Nov. 4, Democrats took the race-baiting to new lows.
Harry Reid ’s Super PAC is running ads on black radio that accuse Republicans of supporting the type of gun law that “caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin . ” A flyer from Democrats in Georgia pictures black toddlers holding signs that read “Don’t Shoot.” Produced by the state Democratic Party, the flyer urges people to vote to “prevent another Ferguson”—as in Missouri.
We reported on these racial tactics two weeks ago, but they have become so ubiquitous that the rest of the media can no longer ignore them. “The images and words they are using are striking for how overtly they play on fears of intimidation and repression,” reports the New York Times .
The good news is that all of this gives Republicans a political opening to appeal to the aspirations of black Americans who’ve been let down by Democrats. The even better news is that some Republicans have begun to try.
In recent weeks conservative groups have aired several campaign ads aimed at black voters. One especially powerful Internet spot features Elbert Guillory, a black Republican state lawmaker from Louisiana, who hits Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu for neglecting her black constituents and explains why she can get away with it. “Mary Landrieu knows that she doesn’t have to do anything for our community,” Mr. Guillory says, “because no matter what she does 95% of us will line up and vote for her every time.”
In another ad four black activists in Chicago question whether black political leaders, from Mr. Obama down, are addressing the genuine needs of their community. “There’s a black-on-black crime down in city hall, there’s a black-on-black crime down in all the state capitols in America, where black folks are voting against our interests,” says one man while standing in front of a Cook County prison. Another man questions President Obama’s efforts to lift the minimum wage: “We don’t have any jobs. A minimum-wage raise for what?”
Voting habits are durable, but over the years they often do change. President Obama is asking for black votes as a matter of racial solidarity because he can’t make the case based on results. If black Americans decide not to rush to the polls this year to reward Democrats for this track record, no one should be surprised, least of all the President.
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