Barack, Trayvon and The 2012 Election

In light of recent events surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin, I’d like to bring up something I wrote a few years back.  I was making predictions about how I thought Barack Obama’s presidency would end.  I think I might have lucked into being onto something.

As Obama spins his wheels, his most vocal and loyal bloc-the American mainstream media-attempt to bolster their candidate.  The White House and the journalist caste create the myth that Obama is the victim of lingering racism.  Nearly any lack of support for Barack’s policies will be explained with charges of bigotry.   

Ironically, the post-racial candidate of 2008 will morph into the most explicitly racialist American politician in a generation…He limps through 2011 and 2012 as a dead duck.  As he goes down, he sows the seeds of racial discord, grasping at anything to get him re-elected.

Now look at what President Obama’s comments on the shooting.

“I can only imagine what these parents are going through,” Mr. Obama said from the White House Rose Garden, “and when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids, and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local, to figure out how this tragedy happened.”

Mr. Obama said he is glad the Justice Department is investigating the shooting and that Florida Gov. Rick Scott formed a task force in response to the incident as well. The president suggested he was sympathetic to suspicion that the shooting may have been racially motivated.

 ”You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Mr. Obama said.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have officially reached the David Dinkins stage of the Obama presidency.

For those of you unfamiliar with old school Empire State politics, David Dinkins was the mayor of New York City before Rudy Giuliani.  Mr. Dinkins, a black man and veteran New York pol, promised racial healing in the five boroughs.  He presided over, among other things, the lynching of Yankel Rosenbaum during the Crown Heights riots by a group of thugs incited to violence by that paragon of ethnic tolerance Al Sharpton.  

Mayor Dinkins’ police commissioner Lee Brown said: 

“Sharpton came close to the line of inciting [to riot] but did not actually cross it.”

Well, thank God Al Sharpton didn’t go nuts or something bad could’ve happened.  [sarc/]

After the Yankel Rosenbaum murder, Mayor Dinkins became a polarizing figure.  Jewish voters, who had supported him in the past, now viewed him with suspicion.  Dinkins’ 1993 re-election effort was marked by racialism.  Black voters were supposed to support Dinkins because…he was black.  The undertone of the campaign was that failure to support the mayor over Rudy Giuliani was a sign of barely concealed racial bigotry.

In the Trayvon Martin shooting incident, we can see the same pattern emerging.  Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are on the scene stoking racial tensions.  The New Black Panthers are offering a million dollar bounty for the capture of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon.

Into this incredibly heated and rapidly evolving situation, what did Barack Obama do?  He could’ve simply declined to comment.  After all this is basically a local matter, directly involving two people in Florida.  Staying above the fray would’ve been prudent, especially as this case has become a lot more complicated than how the media initially portrayed it. 

The President did not choose to do that.  Instead he chose to stoke racial fires.  He didn’t call on the Sharpton/Jackson/New Black Panther Triumvirate of Stupid o tone down their inflammatory rhetoric.  Obama failed to tell Louis Farrakhan to shut the hell up about retaliation.  None of that happened.

The question becomes:  Why did the President take this course?  The unfortunate death of Trayvon Martin’s is being used by Barack Obama to create fear and anger within the black community.  He intends to use this fear to help bolster his re-election campaign. 

Is that cynical?  Sadly, it is.  Then again, why shouldn’t Obama be greeted with cynicism?  It was his administration that asserted that they would never let a crisis go to waste.  He himself asked the Russian dictator regime to give him some space until after the November election so that he could cave on missile defense.  Every time this President makes any move, he’s operating in the most mercenary politically expedient fashion possible.

But in this case, we’re all supposed to assign purely innocent motives to Barack Obama.  Of course.  After three years of watching this clown’s beer summits, non-recess recess appointments and undeclared kinetic military actions that are not officially wars, everybody is supposed to just let this one slide.

Sorry if I’m not in the mood to play along with the dopey ’emperor’s new clothes’ drag act.

The larger point here is that Obama’s actions are the mark of a desperate man.  Just like David Dinkins clung to the life-raft of racial grievance to try to stay in office, Barack Obama is using the Trayvon Martin death as a way to energize black voters.  That’s the only card he has to play.

Consider an alternative:  If Obama had any kind of record to run on, would he have bothered to weigh in on the Trayvon Martin shooting?  Would he be selling Trayvon-inspired hoodies to fund raise for the 2012 campaign if he didn’t feel the need to tie himself to one side of the Martin case?

No, this is a sign of a candidate using the most shopworn hackneyed race card in the deck because he’s got no other trick to play.

UPDATE:  Linked by Smitty at The Other McCain.  Thanks!

UPDATE II:  Linked by The DaleyGator–those guys rule.  Thanks, homies.

UPDATE III:  Linked by the ever-cool Wyblog.  Muchas Gracias, Chris.

UPDATE IV:  Linked by the debonair Bob Belvedere.  Big ups, sir.

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