[lbo-talk] Tea Party Numbers (and Chomsky's citation of polls)

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 3 08:09:12 PDT 2010


According to the right wing media, President Obama is a Muslim who favors the interests of Muslims.

That doesn't play well in racist Peoria.

Can't believe that Obama doesn't have the cojones to come out swinging against this crap. Are his advisers telling him just to rise above this crap?

Chuck

^^^^^ CB: Hi Chuck. Welcome back.

I don't know for sure what he's thinking or what his advisers are telling him. My guess is as follows:

His whole election campaign had a very heavy and necessary emphasis on creating his image as mild mannered, nice, very non-combative, compromising, friendly, lovable, warm and fuzzy, non-threatening. This was for the obvious reason that there was no way that a majority of white voters would go for an "angry, argumentative, fighting Black man". He had to be clearly not Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Rev. whathisname from his church in Chicago. In other words, he had to counter the stereotype of Black men as having ... well, big cojones. You know the Good Ole American castrate-the-Black-guy thingy, cause he tends to rape. Americans could handle a Black Eunuch as President. It worked (smile)

As President he has continued this approach - bipartisanship , nicey nicey with Republicans as they spit in his face, turn the other cheek, rise above it as you put it, denying that the Tea Party is racist, nicey with Blue Dog Dems etc. He especially has not come out swinging against racism and being called a Muslim, 'cause anti-racist militancy is really a no-no. It hasn't worked :>( . The American Character Jekyll's racist Hyde has come out.

In hindsight , it seems like he should have tried to do at least some kind of personality switch to "tougher" , if not angry. Hey, easy for me to say that. It would have involved a complete change of public character, as well as going against the "no Black man with cojones" rule. He would have to suddenly grow balls in mid-administration.

Together with the fomenting of racism, there has been heavy duty red-baiting by the right. That started during the election campaign , calling some ridiculously mild liberal proposals "socialism", etc. If everything collapses as bad as now predicted for November, it seems, again in hindsight, might as well of gone for the gusto to the left, go for broke. But it is not at all clear that that would have avoided the current drop in the polls; and again that is the opposite of their whole strategy of moderation from the campaign onward. Despite ultra-left prevarication, the "change" of Obama's campaign theme was not radical change. He never tried to separate himself from Clintonism, i.e. it implied change. This moderation was consistent with the general "mild-mannered, gentle guy" theme.



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