NYT's Thomas B. Edsall: Making The Election About Race

[Scuba]

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/making-the-election-about-race/

Making The Election About Race

The Republican ticket is flooding the airwaves with commercials that develop two themes designed to turn the presidential contest into a racially freighted resource competition pitting middle class white voters against the minority poor.

Ads that accuse President Obama of gutting the work requirements enacted in the 1996 welfare reform legislation present the first theme. Ads alleging that Obama has taken $716 billion from Medicare — a program serving an overwhelmingly white constituency — in order to provide health coverage to the heavily black and Hispanic poor deliver the second. The ads are meant to work together, to mutually reinforce each other’s claims.

The announcer in one of the Romney campaign’s TV ads focusing on welfare tells viewers:

In 1996, President Clinton and a bipartisan Congress helped end welfare as we know it by requiring work for welfare. But on July 12, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping the work requirement. Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you a welfare check. And welfare-to-work goes back to being plain old welfare. Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement because it works.

...

Sharp criticism has done nothing to hold back the Romney campaign from continuing its offensive — in speeches and on the air — because the accuracy of the ads is irrelevant as far as the Republican presidential ticket is concerned. The goal is not to make a legitimate critique, but to portray Obama as willing to give the “undeserving” poor government handouts at the expense of hardworking taxpayers.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

1. The evil BRILLIANCE of the subtler racism of the Medicare ad

is something to behold. I had picked up on the absolute falsehood of charging $716 billion had been taken from seniors, while the Medicare actuary says cutting $716 billion in Medicare Advantage overpayments to insurers actually extends the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by 8 years.

But I had not picked up on the simultaneous charge that $716 billion was being taken from (predominantly white) seniors to give to (disproportionately minority) uninsured people. Had you?

OF COURSE the fundamental purpose of the Romney Medicare lie is absolutely racist! If 94 percent of African Americans and 68 percent of Hispanics will vote for Obama, then Romney has to get into the 60s with white voters, and this is their most effective tactic. Next to the pittance of welfare, "$716 billion stolen by the African-born carpet-bagger from white grandmothers" is HUGE!

[Scuba]

2. Not to be overlooked: He also has a few strategies to discourage/prevent black voters from voting.