Talk about voting against your economic and class interests in favor of racial fears. The unrelenting torrent of code words and innuendo about President Obama’s heritage, competence, intelligence and legitimacy to hold the nation’s highest office is giving license for many Americans to surrender to the demons in to the dark recesses of their racial paranoia.
The Washington Post reported it this way:
The 2012 election is shaping up to be more polarized along racial lines than any presidential contest since 1988, with President Obama lagging behind Republican Mitt Romney among white voters by 21 percentage points, a steep drop in support from four years ago.
The clearest loss for the president is among white men. In 2008, Obama lost white men by 16 points, according to the exit poll. This year, Obama trails Romney double that margin — 33 points — larger than any deficit for a Democratic candidate since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide win over Walter Mondale.
After splitting their votes 47 percent for Obama and 49 percent for McCain in 2008, whites who identify as political independents now favor Romney over Obama, 59 to 38 percent. Nearly half of all of those who supported Obama in 2008 but Romney in 2012 are white independents. (Overall, whites make up more than 90 percent of “switchers.”)
A key element of Romney’s advantage among all whites is that by 55 to 39 percent, more white voters say he, not Obama understands the economic problems people in this country are having. Among whites without college degrees, Romney is up 58 to 35 percent on this score, expanding what was a narrow gap just a few weeks ago. This advantage comes even as 48 percent of white voters say Romney, as president, would do more to favor the wealthy; 37 percent say he would do more to for the middle class.
Most non-college and college-educated whites alike see Obama as doing more to favor those in the middle, not the wealthy.
via 2012 voters: The deepest racial split since ’88.
The wealthy interests that are funding the Romney-Ryan machine have sat on their hands for four years. These global plutocrats refused presidential entreaties to revive the nation’s economy and to put unemployed Americans back to work.
Despite money being the cheapest it’s ever been. Banks were not lending to small businesses or new homebuyers. Manufacturing plants were closed, not because the products were inferior or unprofitable. Those factories were shuttered and left to rust by owners and investors who preferred to have money they could invest overseas and hide from federal taxation. Yet, displaced white workers blame the President.
Many Democrats complain that unlike FDR, President Obama failed to excoriate and blame the wealthy for their rapacity. FDR was able to effective denounce the plutocrats who caused the Great Depression and fought his efforts tooth and nail precisely because he was one of them. President Obama is an “outsider” in every sense of the term. His denunciations would have carried little weight. Americans rallied to FDR’s side because he had turned on his own kind on behalf of the suffering and dispossessed masses.
President Obama will win a second term because in the remaining ten days Americans will reject their racial demons.
