If "No" Is Racist, then Race Must Be an Ideology

Jerry Landay provides an inkling as to why the Left is so viciously anxious to destroy any successful minorities who do not carry its water: They scuttle a semantic game that otherwise allows disagreement to be portrayed as bigotry. Consider:

Race determined the primary outcome in three industrial swing states. Hillary Clinton, a white, won by large margins in the Democratic primaries of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Barack Obama, half-black, but self-identified as an African-American, lost. Some 15 to 20 percent of voters confessed to post-election pollsters that race was a “factor” in their decision. Obama must win these states. ...

A York law-enforcement officer declared that America was ready for a black president. But . . . "I just don't think Obama's the right one." He declared that Palin "has more experience than he does. No one has ever told me what a community organizer is." In fact, in speeches and two books, Obama has repeatedly described his efforts to help the people who live in southside Chicago. "Community organizer" in this context has been made a code word for "black."

I'm sure that in certain company this is treated as high wisdom, but for my part, this "code word" legerdemain is so much gibberish. The officer in the anecdote raises "community organizer" in Obama's biography as a comparison to "mayor" in Palin's. The utility of liberal word games, though, is that any phrase may be made suspect for the purposes of promoting representatives of the ideology.

If Obama loses, many among his supporters will not ask themselves those tough introspective questions that failure ought to inspire. They'll simply blame racism — so simple, so comforting. And if Obama wins, the rest of us will have the opportunity to observe how quickly it becomes a matter of racial bigotry to oppose a far Left agenda.