Tom Piatak

October 25, 2008

Thursday’s New York Times reminded us, yet again, of the abysmal failure of the GOP minority outreach program.  John McCain, despite a long history of pandering to Hispanic groups on immigration, is drawing an abysmal 26% of the Hispanic vote in recent polling, which looks good only in comparison to his share of the black vote, which is likely to end up consisting mostly of those blacks who are personally acquainted with McCain.  None of this should surprise anyone:  since an appreciable portion of the GOP electorate favors limited government, and the number of Democrats who do is roughly comparable to the number of blacks backing McCain, the GOP is ill-suited to outbid the Democrats in any contest for the affection of minority voters.

But the Times article also contained a tidbit that might surprise some of Obama’s foolish white supporters, who imagine that his election will somehow usher in a post-racial utopia.  The article reported that some Hispanics were wary of Obama because his race, but the “more common” attitude was the one expressed by a Hispanic Obama supporter who told the paper that “We need change, so the fact that Obama is not an Anglo appeals to me.  He understands what discrimination is about, and if he gets in there and does a good job, that will make it easier for all the rest of us, whether black, Hispanic, or Indian, to get past that problem.”

Conspicuously absent from this voter’s list of groups that will benefit from an Obama victory are whites.  That is no accident:  voters such as this see whites as the perpetrators of discrimination, and never its victim, even though their preferred solution to discrimination is affirmative action, i.e., discrimination against whites.  The minority voters backing Obama are likely to demand more such preferential treatment from the federal government, and Obama, with the help of a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, and a Supreme Court to which he hopes to appoint new justices, will likely further entrench affirmative action, all in the name of “hope” and “change,” of course.