Nigger Haters for Clinton:
The Rude Pundit was speaking with a fellow lefty blogger about two months ago - really speaking, face to face, not IMing or any such shit. A Hillary Clinton supporter, she was concerned with Left Blogsylvania's sexist attacks on her candidate (although, as so many people sigh and say, she prefaced her comments with, "I wanted Edwards"). She offered the Rude Pundit insight into her contact with people in the campaigns of Clinton and Barack Obama, and she said, flatly, that Obama will lose a general election because of how racist America is. At the end of the day, it was one of the major factors making her support Clinton, the whole "electability" thing. One can't afford idealism in the face of reality, she was saying.
Having great respect for this blogger, the Rude Pundit agreed but also, not rudely, disagreed. No, he did not have the inside information and knowledge that the consultants had, but the Rude Pundit has a kind of hard fought-for optimism that things have reached such a nadir in this nation that at least some voters would be forced to put aside old prejudices in order to grab America like a drowning man and drag him to shore.
This morning, the Rude Pundit was watching the "best political team" on CNN contort themselves like Miss Julian in the sawdust in Barnum's tent in order to avoid saying that the reason Clinton blew Obama out of the blue grass in the Kentucky primary is because racist crackers hate black people. They said every fuckin' thing they could, comparing how Obama more or less split the "white people without college education" vote in Oregon with Clinton, yet Clinton overwhelmingly won that demographic in Kentucky. How can that be? they puzzled. It was kind of sadly hilarious, how they tried so desperately to not offend their white racist viewers. But sometimes, yes, sometimes you have to state plainly that motherfuckers fuck their mothers.
You ever been to the mythical "rural communities" of Appalachia? The Rude Pundit has, hanging out with mule farm owners and miners and others. And they are xenophobic, suspicious, and poor - hell, these redneck fuckers hate white outsiders. Just about every Deliverance-style, Hatfield and McCoy, Ma and Pa Kettle inbred backwards ass country fuck stereotype you ever imagined exists there, complete with their trashed front yards and about a mouth of teeth for every three or four households. And they have every right to hate people who have ripped away the jobs and kept them in deep poverty and ignorance. There's been so many promises broken to the people of Appalachia that they may as well be Indians. Hell, the last time anyone in the federal government gave a happy rat fuck about the region was in the LBJ administration.
When you talk about how Democratic they are, you are talking about the post-Civil War Democrats, when the party fostered and relied on racism and division in order to maintain power. You're talking Dixiecrats and Reagan Democrats. "Rural whites" in places like Kentucky and West Virginia wear their racism as a badge of honor. Because it's the perpetual ignorance of racism that keeps them from rising up against the whites who are actually keeping them racist, ignorant and poor.
By the way, out in Eastern Oregon, where you have your fine militias and white supremacist organizations, Obama stayed within two or three points of Clinton, winning some counties there. So, really, there is something about Appalachian white people.
Clinton's final appeal for the Democratic nomination is this: "America is a racist nation. While there's a lot of black people who will vote for me, there's way more white people who won't vote for Obama because they think he's a Muslim nigger." (This, of course, leaves aside the fact that the Rude Pundit's mentioned before: when those racists no longer have a black guy to be prejudiced against, who's next to receive their rage? The woman who's friends with black people.)
It's a compelling argument, one that has at times made the Rude Pundit think twice about his hard-on for Obama, but in the end, he has dismissed it because it is a line of thinking that is based on one thing: perpetuating racism. And here's that optimism poking its head through the nearly crippling cynicism one needs in order to survive these savage political times: maybe, just maybe, the majority of the country is sick and tired of letting the yahoos have their way. This ain't just about Clinton. For the better part of the last thirty years, the country has been led by bubbas and wanna-be bubbas. Perhaps we are sick of that, and we're sick of seeing politicians say they are appealing to a monolithic white working class when they're really appealing to the nigger haters (and spic haters and kike haters and a fag basher or two).
Now, you can say, and, indeed, you should, that that's why Democrats lost to Reagan and to the Bushes, because they were not appealing to the nigger hater demographic. But it's different this time, because Obama ain't Dukakis and he ain't Kerry. And if Obama campaigns hard, going on the poverty tour that he's promised to take with Edwards, maybe he can change a few minds, and that in itself would be a small victory.
Yes, this country has proven itself intolerant and small-minded time after time, and there's always a chance it may do so again in this election. But maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, the reign of the nigger haters is over. Racism is a form of idiocy. The country may be deciding that it's time not to let the stupid people run the joint, that, being stupid, they actually need to be led, maybe even out of their stupidity.
