Why Race Relations Have Gotten Worse under Barack Obama

There are three things you need to know about modern American politics: (1) the black vote is hugely important to the Democratic Party, but (2) less than half of black voters actually agree with the Democratic Party’s view of government, and among those who do agree a great many are routinely mistreated by the very politicians they vote for; therefore (3) the only practical way to ensure that the vast majority of black voters reliably and enthusiastically turn out for the Democrats is to avoid debating real issues and focus instead on racial politics.

Roughly one fourth of Democratic voters are black and in some states the majority of all Democrats are black. The implications of these facts are not lost on the Democratic establishment. If, say, one third or even one fourth of black voters voted for a Republican, or if they decided not to vote at all, the results for Democrats would be disastrous.

But why do black voters prefer Democrats? That’s not an easy question to answer. Less than half (47 percent) consider themselves “liberal,” not much different from the number who consider themselves “conservative” (45 percent). And even among the self-described “liberals” black voters seem to get a raw deal from the people they vote for. In our central cities, many black parents send their children to the worst schools, they receive the worst city services and they are exposed to the nation’s worst environmental hazards (think Flint, Michigan). In almost all cases, these cities are run by Democrats.

In a previous post, I reported on the remarkable history of my home town Waco, Texas. During the years of segregation and Jim Crow laws, black voters consistently voted for the very Democrats who enforced those awful practices.

Would they have voted for Republican candidates if the Republicans had campaigned for black votes more aggressively or approached them in a different way? I don’t know. I do think that Democrats today sense there is a danger of losing the relationship. After all, one of the three blacks in the US Senate is a Republican and more than one-fourth of black voters in Ohio voted to reelect Republican Governor John Kasich.

Roughly 90 percent of blacks identify as Democrats. But how can the party ensure that they will stay that way and continue to vote that way? The answer Democrats have chosen is what I call racial politics.

Racial politics is identity politics and that has been a mainstay in the Democratic Party for almost 100 years. People are treated as members of groups and they are encouraged to believe that they are victims of bad behavior by those outside the group. In voting for the Democrats they are encouraged to believe they are getting back at, or protecting themselves from, those who are oppressing them. Identity politics is the politics of division. It is the politics of pitting one group against another. All too often it is the politics of hate.

During the Franklin Roosevelt years, labor was pitted against management. The poor and the middle class were pitted against the rich. In the modern era, more groups have been added: blacks, Hispanics, gays, women. In each case the message is the same: “Vote for us because you are a woman; vote for us because you are gay; and vote for us because you are black ...”

According to a raft of liberal commentators, the Republican Party has been sending racist messages to white voters for years. Both conservative and liberal commentators have accused Donald Trump of the same thing. However, these charges require us to sift through all sorts of subtleties. On the Democratic side, subtlety has never been a problem. After all, if you are subtle some voters might miss the point.

I’ll bet every reader of this column has heard about the Willy Horton commercials that George Bush (41) ran against Michael Dukakis in 1988. They are supposed to be an example of Republicans playing on racial fears, even though the issue was first raised by Al Gore in the Democratic primary. But, have you ever heard about the James Byrd commercials?

On the eve of the 2000 election, the NAACP ran television and radio ads aimed at black voters implying that as governor, George W. Bush was indifferent to the death of James Byrd, a black man who was chained and dragged to death behind a pickup truck by three white racists.

To my knowledge, Al Gore never condemned these commercials and no member of the mainstream media ever pressed him to do so. Race baiting by Democrats was ignored then, just as it is today. (See here, here and here.)

In 2012, George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch coordinator for a Florida gated community, fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a young man with a checkered past, during an altercation. Ordinarily, no one who lived more than 50 miles away would have ever heard about the case. However, “watch coordinator” sounds sort of like “police officer” and it was initially reported that Martin was black and Zimmerman was white. The national news media pounced. Virtually every news report suggested that racism was a factor and that the incident was an example of a national problem.

After it was revealed that Zimmerman was Hispanic and from a multiracial family (that included blacks), the mainstream media didn’t back off. They doubled down. Several media outlets, such as CNN and The New York Times, began describing Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic.” NBC doctored an audio tape in a way that suggested Zimmerman’s wrong doing. Before long, nearly 90 percent of African Americans called the shooting “unjustified.” When Zimmerman was acquitted, that was even more fodder for the race baiting fire.

So how is Trayvon Martin different from the 13,000 other people who are murdered each year, including about 6,000 African Americans? Was he a talented artist? A musical prodigy? A budding entrepreneur? It’s better than that. In the middle of a tough re-election campaign, President Obama announced that “Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago.”

So there you have it. The person George Zimmerman shot and killed could have been a future president of the United States! (Provided voters could overlook his criminal record, that is.)

Barack Obama is the most partisan president in our life time and he seems to understand almost instinctively that racial polarization is essential to the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy. In the aftermath of police shootings in St. Paul and Baton Rouge, the president said, “These are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”

Did those comments cause Black Lives Matter marchers in Dallas to chant “Pigs in a blanket; fry ‘em like bacon”? It certainly didn’t discourage it.

And although the president’s speech in Dallas on Tuesday was supposed to be unifying and conciliatory, he again brought up the totally fraudulent case of Trayvon Martin and had nothing but praise for Black Lives Matter.

All this is being echoed by Hillary Clinton, whose campaign commercials shamelessly mention Trayvon Martin and who now decries “systematic” and “implicit bias” in police departments.

I believe there is a problem in the interaction of police and black males. Even black policemen seem to say there is a problem. But Hillary isn’t talking about solutions to a problem. She is stirring up a problem. There is no “Trayvon Martin Law” that she is proposing.

The national Democratic Party has a stake in the problem, not in its solution. The national news media is only too happy to help meet their needs.

PS. A new study by a team headed by an African American Harvard economist finds there is no bias against black civilians in police shootings.

SOURCE

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The DNC's Grand Illusion

Democrats kick off convention week with a huge and inconvenient email leak

What’s in store at the Democratic National Convention beginning today? Be ready for four days of illusions to hide the party’s dysfunction, as well as truly delusional rhetoric meant to secure a third term of Barack Obama despite almost eight years of American collapse.

Following the earthquake of the WikiLeaks publication of 20,000 emails from key Democrats, Bernie Sanders and his campaign were completely vindicated in accusations of unfair treatment. The Democratic National Committee unquestionably interfered with the voice of the voters throughout the entire DNC primary to assure Hillary Clinton’s ascension to become the nominee. More leaks will continue as details emerge throughout the week.

So clear was the trail that, on the eve of the convention, DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation. It’s more than ironic that the party led by the woman FBI Director James Comey called “extremely careless” in her handling of Top Secret communications is forcing out another woman who was extremely careless in DNC communications. It’s also ironic that Democrats blame Russia for the leaks after Clinton’s (ahem) successful “reset” there.

James Carville, a longtime Clinton friend and operative quipped, “In politics, you need to not only know when to draw your sword, but also when to fall on it.” It was also clear that Clinton was grateful. She named Wasserman Schultz “honorary chair of my campaign’s 50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country.”

Still, this is not how Democrats wanted to kick things off in the “City of Brotherly Love.”

The topics and copy of these tens of thousands of electronic pieces of evidence ranged from a Politico writer sending his pre-published articles to the DNC for approval to actual sabotage of Sanders' campaign. There was evidently a mole working within the Sanders campaign, and emails were uncovered plotting an attack on Bernie’s Jewish religion so as to scare southern Democrats.

Bernie was right. If not for the clear orchestration by the Leftmedia, Sanders might very well have beaten Clinton to become the Democrats' nominee. Hillary’s winning formula for coronation, however, included a tag team of superdelegate status awarded to hundreds of Clinton machine political insiders and the inescapable power of the media. Presstitutes who masquerade as journalists created an echo chamber of supportive stories and press for Hillary during her Benghazi failures and her law-breaking personal email scandal.

So much for organizational bylaws, transparency and fairness from the partisans who screech about rights, civility, oppression and disenfranchisement.

This week’s partisan proceedings were meant to only be a formality and a huge pep rally to launch Hillary’s second presidential effort. It was supposed to show how unified Democrats are in contrast to the GOP. Now, the smoke, mirrors and every ounce of pixie dust they can sprinkle are needed to cover up the unindicted felon’s standard operating procedure: Winning through corruption.

More than 1,000 protesters mobilized Sunday evening chanting, “Hell, no, DNC, we won’t vote for Hillary” in the streets of Philadelphia as they waved a flag with the Democrats' donkey in distress — flying upside down. Without question, Wasserman Schultz’s resignation was aimed to stem any uprising by the energetic groupies of Sanders still feeling “the Bern.” But just as those who felt betrayed by elected Republicans ended up supporting Donald Trump, Sanders' supporters are likely fueled by the same treachery on display.

By the way, in sharp contrast to the low-key protests in Cleveland’s RNC convention, the City of Philadelphia expects 35,000 to 50,000 protesters a day, with marches supporting of Sanders daily that may even feature a mock trial of Hillary Clinton.

As part of the Democrats' stage props, every effort will be made to blame the Republicans in Congress for the slowest and weakest economic recovery in history. A pathological processional of lies and liars will be featured that say nothing about “black-on-black crime” as black unemployment is at 8.3% — almost double the rate of white unemployment. Instead, mothers of police shooting victims will be featured to continue the absolute untruth that blacks are disproportionately shot by law enforcement. Will there be any reference to the Washington Post’s data collected that of the 990 fatal police shootings in 2015, some 50% of those victims were white, while about 17% were Hispanic and 26% were black?

More irony to chew on is the response of the media to the Republicans' convention that featured the incredible stories of heroism offered by the family members' of the deceased who were abandoned in Benghazi. The collective harem of Presstitutes pitched a fit when Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith who died at the hands of terrorists, offered her emotional story of how then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood before her son’s flag-draped coffin and blamed a YouTube video.

Please don’t allow the historical backdrop of Philadelphia, America’s first capital and the seat of our Founding Government, to hide the blatant disregard for America’s Supreme Law of the Land by this political party. The blatant disregard for America’s laws involving the enforcement of legal immigration, the sale of unborn infant body parts, the socialization of our health care (a sixth of our economy) and the pure corruption on display — including the IRS’s political targeting of conservative groups and the weaponization of our government against its people — are the hallmarks of this Democratic National Party.

As these four evenings pass, stay fixed on this reality: America cannot withstand a third term of Barack Obama. Therefore, the defeat of Hillary Clinton and her less-than-centrist VP candidate Tim Kaine must be the top priority.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- mainly about Muslims, murders etc

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