It wasn’t seven years ago. Barack Obama, once hailed as the “post-racial president,” didn’t exactly say (this time) “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” And he didn’t specifically mention that “they” referred to “mostly white voters,” though even the reliably left-wing Washington Post wrote that such people are precisely about whom Obama was talking. But when the president said in a Monday National Public Radio interview (see video below; remarks in question begin around 26:20) that Donald Trump was exploiting “blue collar” fears, he was, as the Post’s headline informed, reviving his “‘cling to guns or religion’ analysis.”
The Gateway Pundit was even more blunt, writing “Obama Plays Race Card Against Trump,” while radio host Michael Savage echoed this with the recent observation that “blue collar” is a code term for “white men.”
Here is the relevant portion of Obama’s remarks, as related by the New York Times:
Demographic changes and economic stresses, including “flat-lining” wages and incomes, have meant that “particularly blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck,” Mr. Obama said….
“You combine those things, and it means that there is going to be potential anger, frustration, fear — some of it justified, but just misdirected,” the president added. “I think somebody like Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that. That’s what he’s exploiting during the course of his campaign.”
It’s not surprising Obama would focus on blue-collar Americans. He carried only 36 percent of non-college-educated white voters in 2012 (four years’ less indoctrination makes a difference), and among the men in that group his numbers were even worse. Some could question his analysis, however, as it has long been noted that women, not men, have actually been hit hardest in the Obama economy.
Yet the reality is that what Trump is supposedly “exploiting” is the handiwork of statists such as Obama. Why, for instance, are blue-collar men now unable to support a family on one paycheck? A major factor is that confiscatory taxation shrinks that paycheck and increases the cost of goods and services due to the phenomenon of “tax incidence.” As for the flat-lining of wages and incomes, it’s largely a result of various statist policies implemented by the federal government over the last several decades. Another factor is the increase in illegal and legal immigration, which has long flooded the market with workers, decreasing their “value” by increasing their supply. Note that 1965’s Immigration and Nationality Act increased immigration from a previous average of 250,000 yearly to approximately 1,000,000; add to the mix illegal migrants — whose entry Obama has aided and abetted — and that number is even greater. Moreover, Congress’ recent spending bill, which the president is poised to sign, will increase H-2B visas (for low-skilled workers) fourfold. Now, with more than 94 million Americans already out of the labor force, can a politician be taken seriously when he complains about joblessness and stagnant wages while supporting such a policy?
Not surprisingly, “post-racial” Obama also talked explicitly about race in his interview, attributing much opposition to his policies to bigotry. As Fox News reported, “Obama suggested there are ‘certain circumstances around being the first African-American president that might not have confronted a previous president.’ He also pointed to ‘specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, etc., which unfortunately is pretty far out there and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party.’”
Whatever one thinks of the specifics, Obama is much to blame for the suspicion surrounding his background. Note that a 1991 Obama bio used by his then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, stated he was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii” — and was undoubtedly provided by Obama himself (he was likely trying to market himself as exotic). There was also the mostly ignored investigation of his birth certificate by a group of experts assembled by Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpiao, which found that the document presented by Obama was “definitely fraudulent.” So Obama might want to ponder what Walter Scott observed about tangled webs.
Then there are the cobwebbed perceptions of culture. While Obama clearly believes the hoary leftist narrative that his race is a political liability, a 2008 Gallup study found just the opposite. While six percent of voters said they were less likely to vote for Obama because of his race, nine percent said that factor made them more likely to vote for him; in contrast, six percent were also less likely to vote for his 2008 presidential opponent, John McCain, because of McCain’s race, with only seven percent stating that it made them more likely to vote for him. The explanation for this is something I long ago dubbed “cultural affirmative action,” which is “when people in the market and media privilege others — sometimes unconsciously — based upon the latter’s identification with a ‘victim group.’”
As for playing the race card, that’s a race Obama has long been leading. And one could think here of the president’s 2012 statement “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” or his stoking of racial unrest during the Mike Brown/Ferguson incident. Yet none of this compares to a speech Obama gave to a mainly black audience at Hampton University in Virginia on June 5, 2007. As Dr. Thomas Sowell reported in 2012:
In his speech — delivered in a ghetto-style accent that Obama doesn’t use anywhere except when he is addressing a black audience — he charged the federal government with not showing the same concern for the people of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina hit as they had shown for the people of New York after the 9/11 attacks, or the people of Florida after hurricane Andrew hit.
Departing from his prepared remarks, he mentioned the Stafford Act, which requires communities receiving federal disaster relief to contribute 10 percent as much as the federal government does.
Senator Obama, as he was then, pointed out that this requirement was waived in the case of New York and Florida because the people there were considered to be “part of the American family.” But the people in New Orleans — predominantly black — “they don’t care about as much,” according to Barack Obama.
The reality? None of this was true. As Sowell explained, “Less than two weeks earlier, on May 24, 2007, the United States Senate had in fact voted 80-14 to waive the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans, as it had waived that requirement for New York and Florida. More federal money was spent rebuilding New Orleans than was spent in New York after 9/11 and in Florida after hurricane Andrew, combined.”
Yet there’s more. As Sowell pointed out, Obama could claim to not have been present in church during even one instance when his former pastor, the bigoted Jeremiah Wright, used hateful rhetoric. But the U.S. Senate actually takes attendance.
And for the May 24, 2007 vote to waive the Stafford Act — the action Obama claimed never happened — Obama was present.
Present and accounted for but never held accountable for engaging in demagoguery, dividing people, and rubbing wounds raw in the name of political power and “fundamental change.”
So the president can accuse Donald Trump of exploiting “resentment.” As far as creating it goes, though, Obama is in a class all by himself.
Image: screenshot from YouTube video of NPR interview
