It appears that unless every white person in this country votes for Barack Obama next November, Chris Matthews will believe it's because they're racist.
On this weekend's syndicated program bearing his name, the host smelled racism in the declining number of whites supporting the President (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRIS MATTHEWS: First up, the very fact of President Barack Obama is a resounding affirmation these two generations later of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. It was 48 years ago today that Dr. King talked of an America that could truly be called a shining city on a hill. That dream seemed to be coming true three years ago today when the newly-nominated Barack Obama wove the promise of Dr. King into his appeal for the votes of all Americans.
(VIDEO CLIP OF BARACK OBAMA’S NOMINATION ACCEPTANCE SPEECH ON AUGUST 28, 2008)
MATTHEWS: Obama went on to win 43 percent of white votes in that fall’s election, and that may sound low but Democrats really never win a white majority. Bill Clinton got 43 percent of votes, of white votes back in ’96. Al Gore got just 42 percent, and John Kerry got only 41 percent of white votes in 2004. So Obama’s 43 percent of white votes in 2008 was on the high end.
Exactly. Obama got more white votes as a percentage than Gore and Kerry, and the same as the incumbent Clinton, but Matthews can't reach the logical conclusion that this means racism wasn't a factor in the 2008 elections; if it was, Obama should have received less white votes than recent white candidates.
Unfortunately, as the goal of liberal media members is always to paint conservatives as racists, Matthews opted to present typical left-wing talking points rather than the obvious:
MATTHEWS: But last November’s shellacking of Democrats in the midterm elections came with a dramatic retreat. White voters deserted Democrats running for Congress. Democrats actually got only 37 percent of white votes last November – 37 percent.
It’s all very worrying for the Obama reelection campaign because in the most recent NBC poll, he, the president, is down to just 36 percent of whites.
So, in 2008, Obama got more white votes as a percentage than white candidates Kerry and Gore in the two preceding presidential elections, but his current lack of white support is because of racism.
Nowhere in the next nine minutes - as he and his guests discussed how Republicans are going to use race in the upcoming campaign - was there any discussion about why Obama has lost support of white voters.
Could it have something to do with his performance the past 31-plus months? Seems like a logical question, doesn't it?
But that wasn't important to this discussion. Neither was a recent Gallup poll finding that black support for Obama has dropped from 95 percent to 81 percent.
Have fourteen percent of African-Americans suddenly started hating African-Americans, or is there something about Obama's policies that is turning them off too?
This also wasn't discussed. Instead, Matthews and his guests spent over half the program talking about white racism and how it's going to impact the 2012 elections.
For liberal media members like these, any white person that doesn't vote for Obama next November is a racist. Which means that white people need to prepare themselves for constant accusations of racism in the next fourteen-plus months.
With unemployment guaranteed to remain high, and the economy teetering on a double-dip recession, the President isn't going to be able to run on his record.
This means his minions in the media are going to be playing the race card at every turn - they've got nothing else in their hand.
