John Hinderaker of PowerLine responds to this AP "story", saying:
I think we've exhausted just about all the possibilities. The only non-racist thing McCain can do, apparently, is concede the election.It's funny because it's true.
5 comments:
That "story" deserves several more layers of air quotes. Sad.
These aren't mainstream views. I think if you read the mainstream liberal blogs you'll see that very few accusations of racism fly around. You know, except when they make fun of actual unabashed racists who happen to support John McCain (or just as frequently, Ron Paul).
I'm speaking specifically of people like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ezra Klein, Publius and Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, and finally, the guy who turned me from a talk-radio-listener Hannity fan into a liberal Democrat, Matt Yglesias.
One thing is certain though - my candidate has accused yours of racism fewer times than yours has accused mine of lack of patriotism.
Sorry, I posted this before I had read these blogs' last few days.
They've been talking about this story and condemning the guy as racist. That's not much of a stretch - it does play on all the most negative stereotypes about black people. But the guy is only a county-level officer for the Republican party.
Either way, I'm not going to pretend that the overtly racist voter is a substantial portion of the Republican vote, at least on the national (or even any large state) scale. I'd rather talk about substance and issues about foreign policy and economics.
Well, to admit that an editor of the AP is no longer mainstream is to come a long way toward recognizing something very strange is happening in American media these days.
My point isn't that many people actually believe that the Republicans are racist, but that they're willing to bring up racism in order to score political points. Yeah, there are certainly decent liberals out there who won't stoop to that, but those who will are far closer to the mainstream than those who make an issue out of Obama's patriotism per se are on the right. I mean, I'm sort of in the middle of it, and except for the occasional glurge email, I hear a lot more protesting-too-much on the subject of patriotism from the Obama camp than impugnations from McCain's side.
Incidentally, I'm sort of dreading the possibility of McCain winning by anything less than double the Bradley margin, because I don't think I can handle four years of lamentations over how Obama would have saved us all if we weren't all such filthy racists.
Well what I'm saying is that this AP article is analysis, and I'm pretty sure that the wire services' analysis articles don't enjoy heavy rotation the same way NYT, WaPo, LAT, Tribune, or even Dallas Morning News Op-Eds do. A quick google search shows that he's a partisan democrat, and pretty open about his liberal views. If James Fallows had written that, I'd be by your side pissed off by disingenous liberals.
In this particular case, it's a ridiculous claim. I'm not going to argue that.
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