The Obama Campaign's Racial Slander Strategy

By J.T. Hatter

Originally published at American Thinker on September 19, 2012

 Barack Hussein Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Barack Hussein Obama has always run his political campaigns to exploit racial, economic, religious, and political divisions.  After nearly four years of Obama, the nation is furiously divided, and the political scene is positively treacherous.  Everyone expects this campaign to be the ugliest and dirtiest in our nation's history.  It is certainly shaping up that way.

The most poisonous aspect of this race is the Democratic Party political tactic of racial slander.  The Democrats can't campaign on Obama's stellar accomplishments as president, and they can't attack Romney's qualifications.  Most Americans agree with Romney's policies.  So the progressives are playing the race card.

To the Democrats and the mainstream media, this is war.  They now have the political power to advance their leftist ideology and they will stop at nothing to keep it.  The progressives aren't merely playing the race card.  They are deploying the entire deck in a scorched-earth policy.  If you oppose the Democrats, then you are a racist.

Republicans and conservatives are now regularly smeared as racists.  Their history of being the party and ideology that freed the slaves, overturned the Jim Crow laws, and fought for racial equality is being deliberately distorted.  The progressive left is waging their race hate campaign against the American people as a whole -- not just against the Republicans.  The Democratic Party/mainstream media narrative is that virtually all Americans are racist, except for the enlightened ones who make their home in the Democratic Party.

America's Race Card Media

NBC/MSNBC Media Pundit Chris Matthews

The mainstream news media are reveling in their role as race hounds for the Democratic Party.  Chris Matthews of NBC leads the pack of race howlers.  In a recent Morning Joe show, Matthews viciously attacked Reince Preibus and accused candidate Romney of playing the race card.  Matthews reviled the Republican for using the term "work requirements" when discussing welfare reform.  That's racist, you know.  On his Hardball show on MSNBC, Matthews regularly accuses Romney of leading a racist campaign.  He hears Republicans "dog-whistling" racial code words all the time -- in practically every speech or announcement.  He recently set up Cynthia Tucker, an über-liberal Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist, to declare of the Romney campaign that "[t]his is the Southern Strategy writ large. This is all about appealing to racially resentful whites."

I've got news for Matthews and Tucker.  There aren't enough "racially resentful whites" to matter.  They represent the tiniest fraction of the American population.  Then why are the Democrats and their media stooges woofing so loudly on these racialist hate themes?  They continue to play on rapidly disappearing "white guilt" over slavery, which ended a century and a half ago, and racism, which will never end, according to liberals.

The critical voting demographic for Obama is the white male professional.  They are the target.  How many of these people will flee to the embrace of the Democrats for fear of being labeled as racist, and to secure the badge of racial enlightenment?  Enough to matter, perhaps.  That's what the Democrats are counting on.  Their underlying strategy is to neutralize this demographic since they can't possibly win it.

The Racial Stink Brush

Americans as a people are fairly free from racial prejudice.  This is certainly true when Americans are compared to people living in the rest of the world.  But you would never know that, and certainly wouldn't believe it, if all your information came from American television.

There are few real racists in our country, relatively speaking.  They are considered wackos, out of mainstream thought and belief.  We Americans believe that all men are created equal.  We Christians are commanded to love one another as brothers.  The only way we can reunite this nation is through brotherly love.

And that is exactly why the Democrats are raising the specter of racism in this political race.  The only way they can gain political power is through exploiting social division.  Right now the Democrats and the mainstream media are vigorously conducting a broad-spectrum campaign of racial division across America.

The current mainstream media propaganda sound bite lineup is as follows:

• Voter ID and poll-watching equal suppression of minority votes.  Shades of Jim Crow.
• Racist code words uttered by Republicans will be regularly discovered and interpreted by the media.
• Racist remarks and actions by Democrats do not exist.  And those that do will be ignored.
• Attacking President Obama is racist by definition.
• Supporting or voting for Romney is racist by definition.

This list will grow as we approach November 6.  The mainstream media will repeat these racist political attack themes over and over again.  Repeat the lie often enough, and people will believe it.

The media is also carefully parsing every word of every statement made by Republicans.  The mainstream media are desperately searching for racial slips, inferences, and "code words" they can amplify and wield.  Just ask George Allen how this works.  Allen lost the 2000 Virginia Senate race to Democrat political newcomer Jim Webb by only 10,000 votes -- after an intense media campaign brushing him with racist stink paint.  The racist slander worked, and the media won the race for the Democrats.

The mainstream media will discover racist intent even if they have to fabricate it, as NBC did when it edited the George Zimmerman 911 recording in order to make him appear to be the racist killer of an innocent black boy.  Think about that.  NBC was willing to misrepresent the facts to make the Hispanic man (initially represented as white) appear racially motivated to kill a black man.  No innocence until proven guilty.  NBC convicted Zimmerman in the digital courtroom in which it is judge, jury, and executioner.  Why did NBC violate Zimmerman in this way?  To stir up racial division to enhance the leftist political paradigm.

The media has been doing this for a long time.  Remember the Tawana Brawley rape that never happened -- the one that launched Al Shapton's political career?  How about the Duke lacrosse rape that also never happened?  False accusations of rape against nine white men and a charge of murder against a Hispanic man.  What the media are doing now is not merely a "tragic rush to accuse."  It is a deliberate political strategy.  Think what the mainstream media are willing to do for Obama.

The Ethics and Morality of Race Slander

Congresswoman (FL) Debbie Wasserman Schultz,

Chair of the Democratic National Committee

The political racial attacks are being coordinated between the Democratic Party and the mainstream media.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee Chair and Florida congresswoman, accused the Republicans on television of wanting to "literally [sic] drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally and very transparently block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates." 

This is pure political deception.  It is an outright lie.  Wasserman Schultz neglected to mention that it was the Democratic Party that wrote and enforced the Jim Crow laws in the first place.  It must have slipped her memory that it was the Republican Party that did away with those and other laws that discriminated against black people.

At a recent campaign rally in Danville, VA, Vice President Joe Biden said, with a newfound Southern twang, that if Republicans won the election, "they gawn' to put y'all back in chains."  The vice president of the United States was telling black people that if the Republicans win the election, slavery will return.  What a scurrilous remark.  How low can you get?

According to the Daily Caller, Matthew "Mudcat" Arnold, national campaign manager for the liberal super-PAC CREDO, told supporters in Aurora, CO that calling Republicans racist was a more effective tactic than criticizing their policies.

Americans will pay the price for the racial hatred being incited by the Democrats and their media shills.  The price will be steep and paid in blood.  In playing the race card, the Democrats show that they have no moral scruples whatsoever.  To the progressive, the end always justifies the means.  It is a dishonor and a sin to bear false witness against your neighbor.  But this is the political party that booed God out of the DNC party platform three times before the chair ignored the majority and allowed the Almighty to return.  And this was done cynically to avert political fallout and a possible loss of votes in November.  Even God is a political calculation for Democrats.

There are no moral or ethical constraints on the Democrats or their progressive ilk in the media.  Race-baiting is a strategy they believe will work for them.  We can expect a hellish campaign in the run up to November 6.  If you plan to vote for Romney, be prepared.  The Democrats will call you a racist.  And they won't think twice about doing it.

JT Hatter is the author of Lost in Zombieland: The Rise of President Zero, a political satire on the Obama administration.  JT can be reached at jt@jthatter.com.