The Desperation Strategy

Yesterday I noted an anonymous blogger named Ulsterman who posts "interviews" with an anonymous "White House Insider."   Again, I don't know if these interviews are real or fiction (albeit detailed and plausible fiction by a writer who can write very good, realistic dialogue).   But a recent interview with the White House Insider relayed this supposed Obama re-election plan:

Ulsterman:  How?  What’s the plan?  What’s going to be different from all the other campaigns?
Insider:  You’ve already seen it.  A taste of it.  Race.  The race card.  Racism.  Race-race-race.  It’s all they fucking got to run on these days. 
Ulsterman:  Race?  Hasn’t Obama played that one out already?  It’s become a joke.
Insider:  Played it out?  No, not…you might think so but no…his people are going to raise the issue of race to a level this country hasn’t seen since the Civil Rights movement.  White guilt got Barack Obama the nomination.  White guilt got Barack Obama into the White House.  At least it was a big part of it…they are not sure they can run on the economy by summer of 2012.  Motivation is way down – the people on the ground.  Many of them will be sitting this one out.  The campaign conducted over five internals in the last few months. Each time the one issue that came back favorably for the president was the color of his skin.  People are not comfortable…white people are not comfortable going against a person of color....  Look, you got generations of voters in this country who have been hammered with guilt for being white.  Schools, television, movies…decades of this racism shit coming at them from all sides.  White guilt is very real. I’ve used it-done it myself… countless times in an election campaign.  And for Barack Obama…his re-election team – they are banking on it bringing victory in 2012.  Even if it means the threat of race riots.  They are willing to go that far – go down that road if need be.  If the Obama team can’t guilt enough of White America into voting for them in 2012 – they are just fine with trying to scare the shit out of them to do it. 

Okay, that's certainly scary.   But is it real, or is it fiction?   We don't know, and we may never know.   On the other hand, if that is Obama's plan, there's evidence that it's being put into action already.   Here is an article from Politico today talking about recent comments from a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Andre Carson (D - IN):

A top lawmaker in the Congressional Black Caucus says tea partiers on Capitol Hill would like to see African-Americans hanging from trees and accuses the movement of wishing for a return to the Jim Crow era.

Rep. Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana who serves as the CBC’s chief vote counter, said at a CBC event in Miami that some in Congress would “love to see us as second-class citizens” and “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree.”

Carson also said the tea party is stopping change in Congress, likening it to “the effort that we’re seeing of Jim Crow.”

Speaking from Milwaukee, where we have already had two serious incidents this summer of black-on-white mob violence (on the Fourth of July and at the opening day of State Fair), this is an extraordinarily dangerous brand of demogoguery, essentially an incitement to riot.   If the White House is directing it (as the White House Insider interview might be read to suggest), it's an extraordinarily desperate strategy.   It makes you fear for your country.