"White People are the Problem"

To whom to attribute this? Well, the post seems to be by Nia-Malika Henderson. I don't know whether people still generally write their own columns when they achieve a fair-to-middlin' state of notoriety--but either she wrote it or at least endorsed it by putting her name on it. But columnists, we're told, don't generally write their own headlines. So she may well not have written the sub-headline...which isn't even all that bad:

African American men aren’t the voters the former president should be worried about. It’s White men and White women.

Then there's a tweetquote from Wendell Peirce:

The party has to stop scapegoating Black men. Black men aren’t the problem. White men and White women are. No other group votes at 87-90% for Dems but Black folk.

Here's the two most important 'grafs from the body of the essay: 

As a candidate, this type of condescending approach to Black voters, who overwhelmingly backed him and still adore him, was a balm to White people, who saw in Obama a figure who could fix the problem that Black America has supposedly posed to the body politic. Columnist Jonathan Alter wrote in 2008 that Obama’s “most exciting potential for moral leadership could be in the African-American community.” Because, of course, Black Americans needed this the most. (Speaking of moral leadership, fast forward eight years to when the majority of White Americans would cast their ballots for Donald Trump, something they are poised to do again.) 

But as Harris, who has run a nearly flawless race in a compressed timeline, tries to take her turn at history, it is Black voters, specifically Black men, who are being scapegoated. Remember that in a state like Michigan in 2020, Black men were 5% of the electorate, and 88% of their ballots went to Joe Biden. White people were 80% of the electorate. Are there any lectures for them on racism or sexism from Obama? It’s true that Obama, at times, was speaking to all men, but he landed most harshly on Black men, the most pro-Kamala group and one of the smallest voting blocs of the electorates.

Now, I can't help but ridicule the bit about Harris running "a nearly flawless race." You've got to be deeply enchambered to even be able to type that sentence. And the compressed timeline is to her advantage. It's not some burden she is overcoming. Without it, she'd be in even worse shape.

   But the point I've been building up to is this: 

   It's not really clear how bad the claims of this essay are, nor who's really responsible for them. To some extent NMH, of course. To some extent someone else's tweet. To some extent an anonymous headline-writer.

   And Real Clear Politics shows its rightward lean (IMO) with its inflammatory headline: 

"Dear President Obama: White People are the Problem."

Nice work, RCP. Way to help calm everybody down.

   Not sure it's even worth moving on. But I will anyway.

   This is part of the whites suck and men suck projects of the left. The overlap ('intersection' being another handy word ruined by the left) of the two classes is a group they really love to hate...but to avoid stepping on their own faction's toes, they really want/need straight white men as the enemy. But NMH doesn't shoot for the trifecta here.

   The particular way we suck, according to this post, is: 

(a) We don't vote overwhelmingly for Democrats

(b) (Too) many of us are voting for Trump.

   No doubt these are in addition to our other myriad flaws.

   Now, the obvious response is that it is a matter of some disagreement, and less than perfect clarity, whether (a) and (b) are bad or good. I think that the preponderance of evidence indicates that (a) and (b) are good...

   And imagine that I wrote a piece for a national opinion outlet titled something like: White women, black men and black women are the problem.

   That'd go over great.

   I don't like that kind of shit, but I do have to admit that, if I'm right about our current cultural and political strife...well...white dudes would get credit for voting mainly for the lesser evil. If we're eligible for blame here we should also be eligible for credit. Though I'd rather we not play that game.

   To repeat myself: Trump doesn't belong anywhere near the Oval Office.

   But Trump, together with his agenda, is a lesser evil than the progressive/Democrat agenda together with whoever their candidate is. Harris is largely irrelevant, IMO...though she is a bit of an extra negative given that she seems to be (a) a hard-core lefty at heart and (b) a minimally competent DEI candidate at best. (Though one could argue that she's better than a much-diminished Biden, I suppose.)

   Finally, Obama's alleged concern--that black men not voting for Harris is caused by sexism--well, bullshit. There are clear and cogent reasons for not wanting to vote for the Democrat ticket. Those are sufficient to explain such a decision. Undoubtedly some people are motivated by racism and sexism...some people are motivated by just about any motive you can think of. But there's no reason to take the left seriously about this anymore, given that it's boilerplate for them now: anyone who disagrees with them about anything is motivated by one or more components of the Standard Litany of -isms and -"phobias". It's a joke at this point. It was a joke 40 years ago when this nonsense was mostly limited to academia. If you're still taking them seriously, that's on you, bud.

   And probably Obama's just trying to apply rhetorical pressure to get more votes for Dems. Does he really believe that sexism is a significant factor? Maybe. I don't know. But it's at least as likely to be campaign-season bullshit as it is to be a serious claim. I still have certain fond feelings for Obama. And to some extent I want to excuse him thusly: don't hate the player, hate the game.