I have a sneaking suspicion...

[MrScorpio]

...That our first non-white POTUS has always been under one kind of attack or another because those who are attacking him simply want to poison the waters to prevent this county from electing another non-white person in the foreseeable future.

I've had that suspicion and I haven't been able to shake it… Don't know why.

Anyone wanna talk me down?

[Skittles]

1. yup, and they will do the same to the first female president and the first gay president

[JaneyVee]

2. I can't talk you down because....

I've had that exact same thought in the past and just recently, about how the sheer hate of our prez by some is a way to discourage and intimidate future non-whites from ever attempting to run for prez again.

[LiberalElite]

3. I think you're correct -

I voted for Obama twice and unfortunately I feel like I don't want another non-white in the WH for a long time. The constant racism and lying and verbal abuse and disrespect and outright insubordination aimed at Obama, with absolutely no penalty for the offenders has worn me down.

[madokie]

4. thats what I've been saying all along

The old white mans club don't want anyone except one of them to ever hold this office and will work until they drop to keep it from happening again
Every penny they have they'd gladly give to this keep the off white men out of the oval office crusade they're on

[truebluegreen]

5. I think you are correct, and so is Mr Skittles.

The old (white) boys network wants to maintain itself.

[99Forever]

6. With all due respect to you,Mr Scopio...

... my issues are with issuess and BAD policy, not skin tone, but you believe otherwise if that suits you.

[JaneyVee]

7. Kinda weird that you took this OP personally.

[99Forever]

9. What's "wierd" about it?

My opinion of every politician is my personal view, why in the world should it be any different for Obama? That makes absolutely no logical sense.

[JaneyVee]

10. I think OP is referring to pundits and politicians who...

Are able to project their message to the media and sway public opinion, not an anonymous poster on the internet. Your disagreements don't equal hate (as far as i know), asking for his birth certificate and flying confederate flags outside the WH equals hate.

[MrScorpio]

8. Are you constantly attacking him?

And if so, would that mean that you consider ALL of his policies as bad?

[99Forever]

11. Pardon me?

I bbought into his promises, voted for him twice and was an Obama delegate all theway up to the CD caucuses.

Strawman much?

[MrScorpio]

16. I think that I very clear in my OP...

…In which I was referring only to those who attacked him no matter what he's done. But for some reason you've decided to personalize those comments and swing them around to yourself in a reply.

I wasn't aware that my OP addressed your own personal distaste in reaction to his policies, as you've pointed out. Hence why I asked you what I did.

Is there are reason why you're moving the goal posts here?

[butterfly77]

17. With all due respect..

YOU KNOW DAMN WELL ITS RACISM! You can believe otherwise if it suits you.

[onecaliberal]

20. ^^^^ That

Is 100% correct. To deny that is just denying reality.

[99Forever]

21. Are you in the habit of telling others what they think?

If so, we have come to the end of our interaction.

[butterfly77]

55. No,you are..

you say their is nothing racist,when you know damn well it is.

Unless,you are a racist or you are blind to the facts and can't face reality,living in a fantasy world.

[OilemFirchen]

42. Isn't the Internet priceless?

I'm dyin' ovah here.

[jwirr]

12. Unfortunately I cannot talk you down. Was thinking this a couple of days ago. They are even

willing to destroy our democracy rather than see a non-white leader succeed. What a bunch of false prophets.

[HipChick]

13. Racism is core in this country

It's the old white boy club crutch...it will never go away

[Baitball Blogger]

14. Didn't expect them to change tactics just because Obama was president, did you?

I was in a Law class once and sat next to a young kid who was working for a law firm. When we got to the chapter that discussed Title 8 he confided in me that he had seen his employers railroad a young Puerto Rican who had just transferred to Orlando, bringing along his pregnant wife. They didn't give him any training on Florida procedure and intentionally gave him the wrong forms. So he never made it through the probation period. Everyone in the office was notified when the employers planned to drop the boom. The kid in class told me that he was emotionally upset about watching it because the young Latino took it hard and just broke down. He didn't leave right away because he couldn't.

I'll never forget that. I knew that if law firms were breaking Title eight in Orlando, then my suspicions that local lawyers in my community, who always seemed to miss critical information that would have benefited homeowners, were doing it intentionally.

[herding cats]

15. If a person cannot admit any of his accomplishments, but sees all his failures...

Then that person may want to look at themselves as closely as they think they're looking at our president. He hasn't been perfect, not even close, but he has done a lot of good which wouldn't have been done if we'd have had a different person in office. If a person is systematically blind to this basic reality, then that may be a personal failure they need to address. I wish I knew if this was a similar trend to what took place during the Clinton administration, but I'm not old enough or politically enlightened enough to know if it were similar. Historically speaking, I know what the end result after Clinton was, however.

In some cases the issue is race, in others it's because he's a Democrat,and yet in others it's due to ideological purity, I think.

Associated, but not directly on topic; I was watching some old sitcoms from the early 1970's tonight. I'm trying to get a feel for who we were then and who we are now. It seemed like an interesting way to feel out our cultural thinking. What amazed me, and what I wasn't aware of, was that not much has really changed in race issues. I'm sitting here feeling like an idiot thinking we'd made progress, but Archie Bunker, and such, were making the same damn points 40 years ago (!) as we're still trying to make today. I can't understand how this can be possible in this country, but there it is for all to see. We either moved backward, or we never moved forward, and I was living a lie. I'm fortunate to have been surrounded by the people I have been, but they're not the whole of this nation, and I'm realizing that more now than I did in the recent past.

I've been a total failure at talking you down, I'm sorry. I sometimes get too retrospective and just go on and on about what I think.

[OldRedneck]

18. BINGO!!

You broke the code.

[CK_John]

19. I have been worried about the secret service, they seem to be below par for the WH.

[2naSalit]

44. That's something

I have wondered about for years now. And after watching a certain video that popped up today, I think I now why the hair goes gray so fast on the last few presidents, since the early 60s.

I've had the feeling every inhabitant of the oval office get's a rude awakening when they move in for a long time.

[Major Hogwash]

22. Well, now you know why President Obama doesn't respond in kind to their attacks.

Because he knows that the Republicans will use those responses of his against the next non-white Presidential candidate.
They'll say crap like, "See this is what happened the last time a non-white President was elected to that office."

President Obama has not only broken the color barrier for the office of President of the United States, but he has also paved the way for the next non-white Presidential candidate.

And that is why the Republicans hate him so much.

[jwirr]

23. And the good news my friends is someday we are going to be in the majority. And being white

I say we because I can't wait for that day.

[Jamaal510]

24. He's got it rough, for sure.

Everyone in my family doubts that we'll have another black president in our lifetimes because of the hostility. In fact, they don't think anyone who is even darker than Pres. O will win anytime soon, and I actually agree. Even with O being 1/2 white, the haters are still riding him 24/7, and he reportedly lost a handful of would-be supporters to his opponents due to his race alone.

[ismnotwasm]

25. No you're quite correct IMO

Despite the "they're all the same" political rhetoric I see so often-- downplaying race as a factor--President Obama stepped right into a system that wasn't ready/prepared/designed for an AA, along with a public that either flat out was racist or claimed to be "color blind", code for a peculiar blindness to racist factors.
Everything he's done has been a battle in those conditions. Every step.

[steve2470]

27. +1 nt

[steve2470]

26. yep the vast majority of the attacks against him have been "soft racism" (coming from the right)

The rest because he's a Democrat and NOT a conservative, despite what some here claim. He's centrist, at worst, overall.

[gordianot]

28. Wednesday night I heard a Tea Party Knuckle dragger brag about his wife's insurance rates.

My response; enjoy them while you got them you know who wants to get rid of OBAMA Care. He knew exactly what I was saying. In the end Obama will win and Republicans fear him.

[yurbud]

29. for Republican rank and file, yes. But for GOP leaders, their obstruction is next logical step

after the continuous harassment of Bill Clinton about his sex life.

That Obama is black just made their job a lot easier.

But they would have latched onto anything and behaved roughly the same.

Obama's problem for most of his presidency is he has been fighting the last war.

For all their attacks on Clinton, conservatives allowed him to carry their water and passed bills for him to sign.

Obama thought if he put up with their shit and disrespect, things would function roughly as well as they did under Clinton.

They haven't.

[mountain grammy]

30. The foreseeable future? Maybe another 100 years or so

America will be mature enough to accept something other than a white, male president. Holy crap, I remember the abject fear of a Catholic president.
I like what Chris Rock said, something like black people haven't progressed, white people have. It's white people who have to progress because we have the power to end the inequality on every level.
Once we accept that this is on us, we can finally, at long last, address the real and awful truth of racism in America. Affirmative Action was a step in this direction and must be revived and improved.

[KingCharlemagne]

39. OT a bit, but Chris Rock strikes me as incredibly perceptive AND

incredibly funny.

Here's a snippet of his recent Saturday Night Live monologue that grabbed my attention in a major way:

"It's America, we commercialize everything. Look what we did to Christmas . . . Christmas is Jesus' birthday! Now I don't know Jesus, but from what I've read, Jesus is the least materialistic person to ever roam the earth . . . and we turned his birthday to the most materialistic day of the year. Matter of fact, we have the Jesus birthday season. It's a whole season of materialism. Then at the end of the Jesus birthday season we have the nerve to have an economist come on TV and tell you how horrible the Jesus birthday season was this year,: "'Oh, we had a horrible Jesus Birthday season this year, hopefully business will pick up by His crucifixion.'"

That is some seriously funny and simultaneously serious shit, easily worthy of Lenny Bruce or George Carlin.

[irisblue]

46. roman Catholic supreme court is pretty scary as well

[Raine1967]

31. I am gonna sit next to you.

I need to be talked down as well.

[Brother Buzz]

32. That's a big part of the equation

But there are other parts in play too. The men behind the curtain simply want to poison the waters to prevent this county from electing another Democrat/liberal/progressive in the foreseeable future; these nimrods still want to reduce government to a size they can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

[Turbineguy]

33. Mr. Obama's unforgivable sin:

he's incredibly competent. He does fit their desired stereotype.

[daleanime]

34. Sorry, no can do......

definitely part of it.

[helpmetohelpyou]

35. Maybe some but the majority are against his political views

Just think back the attacks Bill Clinton had .

I think he was more hated than Obama by the elite club that runs Washington .

They saw him as some hick governor that didn't deserve the presidency .

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

36. I said this in an earlier thread;

every white person should read two books to get an idea of Mr. S is referring to; "Black Like Me" and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". You cannot come away from reading those books convinced people of color get a fair shake in this country.

Lest anyone think I am America bashing as relates to racial prejudice, I'm not. In the world of Asian people, for example, there is a mindset that says Japanese are on top and Filipinos are on the bottom with about 15 other ethnicities in between. Racial prejudice is part of the human condition.

My point is the President (and his family) has had to put up with far more crap than Jack Kennedy got for being Catholic for example.

I don't know how to fix it, except perhaps person by person coming to the realization that skin color is the most superficial of differences and needn't be something to fear.

[KingCharlemagne]

40. Universal military conscription or civil service conscription might help. My Dad

served in Korea with newly-integrated Marine Corps forces. He was coming from deeply racist southeastern Kansas\southwestern Missouri but he says when you have to fight side by side with black soldiers, the racist scales come off your eyes in a big hurry. He passed along his awakening to his son and so, though I've never seen combat, I've internalized his lessons.

Don't mean to start a flame war about the military draft but thought I would present my Dad's example for consideration.

[mountain grammy]

49. Lot of truth there...

My Dad used to say the same thing and he entered a segregated Marine Corps in 1942 and after the war re-enlisted, so was a part of the Marines when they integrated, something that was long overdue. My husband, raised by racists, entered the Army in 1969. He credits his time in the military for erasing the prejudices he was taught as a child.

[flamingdem]

37. I have a suspicion that they think Obama or others of his color

might do more things for places like Cuba, where the majority are people of color.

And, this kind of leader might stop the militarization of the police and curtail racism in the force.

I never thought they were thinking of the future, but you're right, they do.

[KingCharlemagne]

38. Please allow me to put the case more bluntly: Republicans are sui generis a bunch

of fucking racists and have been since at least the campaign of 1980, if not earlier. So your suspicion is almost Q.E.D. (Nothing personal -- I wish I had thought to put it into words too.)

Only have anecdotal evidence for my assertion but would encourage anyone curious to check out the comments section of any article in the St. Louis online press about Michael Brown to see why I can put the matter so bluntly.

[Hekate]

41. >sigh< KnR, Mr. Scorpio

[onyourleft]

43. I am certainly...

...not in a position to talk you down since I feel exactly as you do. I take solace that having a younger demographic coming into play in the future, as well as more people of color, that poisoning the well won't occur. Republicans can try, and they definitely have been, but I don't really feel it is going to play out as they hope.

[GeorgeGist]

45. Nope. I share your concern.

I suspect President Hilary will face a similar obstruction.

[frogmarch]

47. You may be right, but

I think good people will double down and be even more committed to seeing that a person of color has as much of a chance of winning an election as a white person has.

[baldguy]

48. And it's disappointing to see some "liberals" have take up the cause.

[Gothmog]

50. I agree with your analysis

I am not going to try to talk you down on this

[Frustratedlady]

51. I've always felt the same way.

The GOP isn't too hard to figure out anymore. If something looks like the public is going to glom onto it and Obama gets credit, they slam it with all barrels. When they get horribly upset, you know Obama has done something good.

By Obama taking the high road through most of this mental torture the GOP has put him through, they have to be beside themselves with envy and hate.

Now, it's fun to watch Obama come at them with all these changes. It has to be like watching a pit full of snakes writhing all over themselves. Ewwww!

[brooklynite]

52. Sorry, but you're wrong...

...there are certainly elements of racism in the GOP, but to attribute all Republican opposition as racially based is a simplistic notion that's dangerous to engage in, in that it blurs your understanding of their real motives, which means that your possible responses are inaccurate.

Bottom line is that there are plenty of people who oppose the President because he represented (in THEIR eyes if not yours) unrepentent liberalism. He was bad for business for business people; dovish to the neo-cons and a sell-out of traditional values to the social conservatives. The fact that he was black allowed the more opportunistic opponents to rattle the base, but it was never the driving force of most conservatives.

[MrScorpio]

54. Do you think that Republicans can put forward a non-white candidate of their own today?

One who is neither outwardly crazy or utterly incompent?

Say what we will about people like Romney, McCain and even the Bushes... Yes, all of them are utterly bad choices to send to the White House when you compare them to Democrats. But relatively speaking, all of those white guys were safe choices, representing the serious elements within the GOP.

How many non-whites do they have within that same serious faction who would be willing to make a competent run for the White House?

For the longest time, Republicans wanted Colin Powell to run, because he appeared to be such a serious minded and competent person, however he always refused to toss his hat in the ring. Instead, clowns like Alan Keyes and the Pizza Dude ran, and got nowhere near a nomination, simply because it was impossible to fake the idea that any of those fools were even qualified to be president.

Who's that one Powell-like non-white possible Republican candidate today?

Anybody?

[brooklynite]

56. Yes they can

Mia Love is conservative but not crazy. I think the reluctance of Colin Powell was the fact that he was a moderate, not right-wing Republican and did't feel comfortable with the political philosophy of the rest of the party. Plenty of white moderates don't want to be Republicans either.

[True Blue Door]

53. That's exactly true.

And not all of them are even aware of their racist motives. But it's plain for everyone else to see - they are driven mad by the mere sight of his face or mention of his name, and were from the very moment it was clear he might become President.

What's even worse, not all of them are on the right. The left weaves a more elaborate web of rationalizations, but at its heart you still find people who hate him for reasons they cannot articulate.