By: DeWayne Wickham
The lead to a recent Associated Press story about the declining influence of black lawmakers in the South reads like something written by the late Lee Atwater, the race-baiting former Republican Party chairman and GOP spin-doctor.

“(An) overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party has left them (black lawmakers in the South) without power in increasingly GOP-controlled state legislatures,” the AP said, citing a report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Racial politics

In the early 1980s, Atwater was a master manipulator of the news media and crafty manager of the GOP’s Southern Strategy, which uses racial fear to herd white Democrats into the Republican Party. He — like Richard Nixon before him — understood that a subtle appeal to racism would, over time, change the political landscape of the South.

This is what he said during a 1981 interview about how the Republican Party could marginalize blacks:

“You start out in 1954 by saying ‘—-, n—–, n—–.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n—-’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now (that) you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic … because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,‘ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘—–, n—–.‘”

The AP story, which was published by news media outlets across the country, left out this critical context. The constant is the allegiance of blacks to the Democratic Party. That isn’t news. It’s the impact on these black lawmakers of the mass migration of Southern whites to the GOP that is the news.

Joint Center report

David Bositis, a political scientist and the author of the Joint Center report, seemed to make just this point:

“In most Southern states, the 46-year transition from a multiracial Democratic (Party) political dominance to a white conservative Republican political dominance is almost complete.”

PLAYLIST: The Southern Strategy

Marginalized

But while this change has taken place over nearly half a century, it has moved at warp speed over the past two years. Before the 2010 election, 51 percent of black legislators in the South were a part of a state legislative majority. After elections that year and this year, the number dropped to just under 5 percent, according to Bositis.

These changes have come in a political climate in which Republicans have craftily used the abstractions of “states’ rights” and calls for lower taxes to bring more white voters into the GOP fold.

2008′s impact

An even bigger missed story in the analysis of Bositis’ report might be the connection between the 2008 election of Barack Obama and the increased pace with which Southern Democrats lost control of state legislatures — and nearly all black legislators in the old Confederacy suddenly became members of the minority party.

Instead of ushering in the post-racial era, the election of this nation’s first black president has seemingly widened racial fault lines, most noticeably in the South. The Joint Center report is just the most recent evidence of this.

But just as the unchanged voting habits of black Southerners aren’t responsible for the loss of political influence for black legislators in that region, Obama’s election didn’t forestall the end of the Jim Crow era that Republicans made an integral part of this nation’s politics with their Southern Strategy — and which they continue to use as a political abstraction.

Somewhere, Atwater — who offered a suspect apology for his bad acts before his death in 1991 — must be smiling.

By: Paul Harris in Williamson, West Virginia

“Bigot” Democrats in rural strongholds refuse to give backing to Obama

The conservative Appalachian heartlands voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton – and will switch to McCain in November

Johnny Telvor was not happy about Barack Obama becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Not happy at all.

Standing outside the sturdy courthouse in the sweltering heat of a West Virginia afternoon in the small town of Williamson, Telvor smoked a cigarette and bluntly gave his opinion of Obama’s historic mission to be America’s first black president.

‘We’ll end up slaves. We’ll be made slaves just like they was once slaves,’ he said. Telvor, a white Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in West Virginia’s primary, said he planned to vote for Republican John McCain in November. ‘At least he’s an American,’ he added with a disarmingly friendly smile.

Such racist opinions are a rough antidote to the giddy optimism that has swept through much of America’s chattering classes over the past week. Since Obama beat Clinton and finally became the Democratic nominee liberal pundits from New York to San Francisco have eagerly discussed how Obama’s unique candidacy will put America’s racially charged past behind it. The United States, they have argued, is finally prepared to elect a black president and absolve its historic sins of slavery and Jim Crow. But the uglier truth is that part of white America remains secretly – or sometimes openly – deeply distrustful of the idea of a black president.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the vastness of the Appalachian mountains that run from Maine through West Virginia and all the way down to Georgia. Here Obama faces his greatest problem in convincing poor white citizens to vote for him. They certainly have not backed him so far. In West Virginia Clinton trounced Obama by more than 30 points. It is a place of deep poverty and astonishing natural beauty – and it is overwhelmingly white. Outsiders deride it as ‘hillbilly’ country. But it is also somewhere that has a special place in America’s heart. Appalachia is where the TV series The Waltons was set. It is a place of deep family values, where clannish folk have created a vibrant mountain culture of God and guns. It is also a place not used to voting for a black politician. ‘McCain will win here,’ said Telvor. ‘No doubt about it.’

Williamson is a typical slice of Appalachia. The town of 3,000 souls lies on the banks of the Tug Fork River, overshadowed by the mountains that surround it. A railway runs through the centre of town, which has long been used to hard times as the coal industry faded away.

The town is in the heart of Mingo County in West Virginia. In last month’s Democratic primary, a staggering 88 per cent of people in Mingo County voted for Clinton – the highest number in the whole state – compared with just 8 per cent willing to put a cross by Obama’s name. Those are landslide numbers that even some third world dictators would be embarrassed to record. And, as went Mingo, so went the entire state. ‘This state is white, elderly and working class. This is not natural Obama country. People are not used to having black politicians on the ballot,’ said Professor Allan Hammock, a political scientist at West Virginia University.

The sheer scale of Clinton’s win in West Virginia – repeated from Pennsylvania to Georgia – took many pundits by surprise. But it did not shock people in Williamson, Jack Spence among them. The elderly retiree, enjoying the hot weather on a street bench, said he voted for Clinton and, now she has lost, he plans to sit out the November election. ‘I can’t vote for a Republican. My daddy would just roll over in his grave,’ he said. But nor can he bring himself to vote for Obama, though he insisted it was not because of race. ‘That does not matter to me. Though it might to a lot of folks around here,’ he said.

Was there anything Obama could say during the coming campaign to convince him? ‘Nope,’ Spence replied. Then he broached the one issue many Americans consider off-limits: the potential security threat to Obama. ‘Look, someone will kill him. Whoever Obama picks as running mate will end up being president.’ Spence’s ready smile and chatty manner on the thorny issue of Obama’s possible murder gave little clue as to whether he thought it would be a bad thing or not.

   An Appalachian HillBilly — Clinging To God, Guns, and “MoonShine Liquor!”

Often such sentiments are dismissed as the ramblings of a few diehards, carrying with them the prejudices of a by-gone age. After all, Iowa, a very white state, was the place Obama first won. But the fact is Obama’s Appalachian problem is very real.

Williamson and West Virginia are far from alone in rejecting Obama. Take Pikeville, Kentucky. It welcomes visitors with a cheerful sign that boasts it is one of ‘the 100 best small towns in America’. But it is not friendly country for Obama. On Pikeville’s main street, just outside a now abandoned Obama campaign office, Stanley Little laughed when asked if he could support Obama. ‘I will vote for McCain,’ he said. Little, a maintenance man for local offices, had one simple reason why he too was rejecting his long family history of voting Democrat. ‘McCain is one of us. Obama ain’t,’ he said, leaving little doubt as to who he meant by ‘us’.

Pikeville’s rejection of Obama in Kentucky topped even Mingo County’s. Pike County, a huge stretch of forest and hills in the east of Kentucky, voted for Clinton by a thumping 91 per cent versus a mere 7 per cent for Obama. Only nearby Magoffin County (where Clinton scored 93 per cent) is even less friendly to an Obama candidacy.

It is not just an Appalachian issue. There are pockets of this sentiment across America from the working class white suburbs of Philadelphia to the rust belt towns of Ohio and Michigan. Many poor, white Americans are prepared to flock to McCain rather than face a black occupant of the White House. No public courtship between Obama and Clinton – carried out on the nation’s TV screens – is likely to change that. In Georgia a local bar owner has been selling T-shirts featuring Obama being endorsed by a cartoon monkey eating a banana. The sale prompted outraged coverage in the local media but the T-shirts quickly sold out. In Vincennes, Indiana, an Obama campaign office was vandalised on the eve of the state’s primary, its windows smashed and its walls spray-painted with the words ‘Hamas votes BHO’ (for Barack Hussein Obama).

The difficult truth is that Appalachia is unusual mostly because many people here are willing to openly talk about what some of their fellow citizens are secretly thinking. In exit polls of the recent primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia, one in five Democrats confessed to pollsters that race was a factor in their voting choice. ‘West Virginia and Kentucky were just more honest than other parts of the country. A lot of other people know it’s not socially acceptable to mention that sort of thing,’ said Professor Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University and expert on racial politics.

Indeed much of America’s media has been resolutely focused on a ‘post-racial’ vision of America despite the clear evidence that race remains a huge divide in American life. Obama’s own bi-racial background and his campaign’s language of inclusivity have conjured up a beguiling image of a race-free America. It has built on other recent black political successes in America, such as Newark mayor Cory Booker and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who have won on the back of black-white voting alliances. There is truth to it too. Obama has run a remarkable campaign, winning many white states such as Kansas and Montana. He has attracted vast, racially diverse rallies, especially of young people who seem open to putting racial divides behind them. And indeed there is much hope that Obama can change things. Gillespie points out that recent studies have shown that white voters in US cities that have elected a black mayor for the first time prove far more willing to elect one for a second term. ‘They realise the sky has not fallen in. That life went on,’ Gillespie joked. If Obama does win the White House, that experience could be repeated on a national scale for all Americans. Few things could be more important in finally drawing the poison of racism out of American life.

But behind such optimism, another America looms. It is an America far from the headlines that have proclaimed Obama’s candidacy a revolution that will atone for a race-tinged history. This is the America where outrageous rumours that Obama is a Muslim are readily believed. It is the America where Telvor is able to voice a sentiment that ‘Obama might actually be the antichrist‘ without apparent irony or fear of contradiction. It is a slice of America trapped in the dreadful history of race relations and the legacy of slavery and segregation.

On the streets of towns such as Pikeville and Williamson, and in the minds of people like Little and Telvor, that past lives on. It is kept in the present by poverty, joblessness and a fear of the different. It is also a powerful force that should not be underestimated. It could even decide who will be the next President. ‘McCain will beat Obama. There’s a lot of Democrats around here that will be switching side to vote for him,’ Little said. Behind him a white-washed message in the closed Obama Pikeville office read: ‘Vote Obama 08: change!’ In the brutal summer heat it seemed a forlorn hope. It was asking for the overthrow of generations of entrenched prejudice. But, come November, a black president might finally be pulling up a chair behind the desk in the Oval Office. If he does, that slogan of change might just end up being a prophecy. Even in Appalachia.

By: Jonah Goldberg

True or not, the Clinton campaign has been accused of playing the race card. The irony here, of course, is that Bill and Hillary only have themselves to blame for employing the kinds of political tactics now being used against them.

As the Barack and Hillary Show extended its tour to such off-off-off Broadway primary states as Indiana and North Carolina (coming soon to Puerto Rico!), it was inevitable that both sides would dust off the "playing the race card" script.

Recently, Bill Clinton was asked whether he had played the race card when he compared Barack Obama’s South Carolina victory to Jesse Jackson’s in 1984 and 1988. "No," he said in one of his typical outbursts of enraged self-pity. "I think that they played the race card on me, and we now know â?¦ that they planned to do it all along." Then Clinton added to an aide — without realizing he was being recorded — "I don’t think I should take any s— from anybody on that, do you?"Oh, the ironies. First, Clinton’s initial comments were entirely valid. Obama boasts enormous black support, more than 90%, and that’s what put him (and Jackson)over the top in South Carolina. Second, while it’s arguable that the Clinton campaign has, at the margins, played the race card against Obama, it’s hardly been with much gusto, effectiveness or racism.

Where’s the racism?

Indeed, Obama’s spinners must be yoga masters considering how far they have to stretch to make their case. Betsy Reed, of the left-wing magazine The Nation, cites the Clinton campaign’s reference to Obama’s past drug use (raised most prominently by black Clinton surrogate Bob Johnson) and Bill’s belittling of Obama’s claims of anti-war purity as a "fairy tale" as examples of invidious racial politics.

Huh? Bill Clinton’s marijuana use was an issue in 1992 and, in 2000, the press went bonkers over allegations that George W. Bush had used drugs long ago. So why should it be racist to mention Obama’s even more significant drug use? Likewise, the use of the phrase "fairy tale" wasn’t racial. Even Hillary’s entirely valid, but now-infamous, observation that it was Lyndon Johnson, not Martin Luther King Jr., who secured passage of the Civil Rights Act can be described as racist only if the standard for racism is reduced to anything that hurts Obama. Dubbing inconvenient truths as "racist" is poisonous to U.S. politics. Which is why I have so little sympathy for the Clintons because it was the Clintons themselves who mainstreamed crying racism (or sexism or, in the case of Chinese fundraising scandals, anti-Chinese sentiment) in response to criticism.

Throughout his tenure as both "the first feminist" and "first black" president, Clinton Inc. routinely ascribed political opposition to bigotry. At a conference on race in 1997, Bill Clinton famously wheeled on Harvard scholar Abigail Thernstrom
– a high-minded critic of racial quotas — and bullied her with the question: "Do you favor the United States Army abolishing the affirmative action program that produced Colin Powell? Yes or no?" The tactic was no less brilliant for its cynical dishonesty. (Among the problems with Clinton’s ambush: Powell didn’t benefit from any affirmative action programs, which weren’t in place when he joined the Army nor even when he became a general.)

In 1999, when the Senate rejected his nominee for a Missouri judgeship, Clinton exclaimed that "the Republican-controlled Senate is adding credence to the perceptions that they treat women and minority judicial nominees unfairly." The Clintonites reflexively lamented how "angry white men" were standing in the way of progress, and even resorting to violence. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton fingered the real culprit: Rush Limbaugh.

Then, of course, there was Bill Clinton’s double-dealing of the race card during his impeachment struggle. As my National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger noted at the time, "Whenever Clinton gets into trouble, he reaches for black people, as if for a shield."

Impeachment defense

The first weekend of the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton suddenly invited his old nemesis Jackson to become the family’s spiritual adviser. He summoned black pastors, radio personalities and a battalion of black lawyers. Slowly — but oh so deliberately — the message went forth: Impeaching the first black president was racist. Rep. Charlie Rangel compared him to Martin Luther King. In response to the Starr report, Rep. Maxine Waters said that she was "here in the name of my slave ancestors" to thwart the racist assault on this honorary black man. When asked on BET whether Republicans wanted him impeached because of his affinity for blacks, Clinton responded, "It may be," wink wink, "that that’s a source of anger and animosity toward me."

Newsweek‘s Eleanor Clift, the Clinton’s reliable water-carrier, got the memo, saying of the all-white Republican impeachment handlers, "I mean frankly, all they were missing was white sheets. They’re like night riders going over. This is bigger than Bill Clinton."

Hillary Clinton played similar games, of course, insinuating sexism when convenient. But even if she didn’t, it’s worth remembering that she wants credit for being something akin to a co-president in the ’90s. Fine, it’s her record, too.

It’s no wonder the Clintons don’t like it when Obama and his supporters cynically complain that attacks on him are racially motivated; they’re dealing his own race card back at him. This surely stings as Bill no doubt sees this as ingratitude from a constituency he has long taken for granted. And we’d all be better off if this card were tossed from the deck. But make no mistake: Nobody should shed any tears for the Clintons.