Four years ago, Barack Obama promised an end to red states and blue states and an end to economic decline and social injustice. America’s economy is instead not only stagnant – it is structurally unsound. American jobs are still “off-shored” with devastating consequences for America’s once robust middle class and Washington DC is committing fiscal suicide by printing money faster than you can say FED. Meanwhile, criminality and chaos continue to pour into the US from Mexico and Red and Blue States are becoming “White States and Non-White States.”
The potency of this politically incorrect reality is beginning to sink in with Americans as they gear up for the 2012 presidential election, an election that promises to be one of the most divisive in American history. In contrast to his previous campaign that at least promoted a post-partisan and post-racial America, Obama’s 2012 election strategy is unambiguously designed to divide America not by class, but by race.
People who thought Obama’s 2008 win would re-unify America should have seen this coming. Take one of the key battleground states in 2008 – Ohio. In 2008 Obama won a huge majority, over 80%, of Ohio’s minority vote while he lost the white working class vote by 10 points. The rest of America’s key battleground states followed a similar pattern. Basically, political divisions were synonymous with demographic ones.
Four years later, the Obama campaign derives its main strength from ethno-centric groups. As New York Times writer Thomas Edsall noted in his revealing editorial “The New Obama Coalition,” Democrats have given up on the white working class vote. Obama’s coalition now consists overwhelmingly of blacks and Latinos with a sprinkling of socially-liberal, self-described “progressive” whites. And, despite Obama’s alleged determination to tax the wealthiest among us, the super-rich that live remote from the realities of everyday life in America are likely to be some of Obama’s most ardent supporters come election night.
To achieve victory Obama will stay on message. He will depict the poor as victimized by the rich in a fantasy land where for every one American to be rich millions more must be poor. Obama’s divisive narrative is catching fire in American cities, where pugnacious radicals like Cornel West are urging protesters and paupers to fight for their “entitlements” in the streets.
Obama’s program for victory in 2012 is pretty clear, as are the dividing lines between left and right. The left essentially advocates more of the same, supporting bigger government, amnesty, and higher taxes to redistribute wealth. On the right, the Tea Party continues to set the agenda, demanding less government, reduced Federal spending, tougher border controls and immigration laws, and lower taxes.
As sharp as these political divides are the groups coalescing on either side are perhaps even starker. Minority groups backing the Left are not just racially distinct from their opponents on the right; they are also economically divergent. Obama’s coalition of Latinos and blacks is heavily dependent on government. Tough economic times have hit these groups the hardest. While white un-employment is still under 10 percent, blacks and Latinos experience unemployment rates approaching 20 percent, and higher among youths. Even after years of redistribution, many in these groups regard unemployment insurance, food stamps, and countless other federal programs as the only lifelines keeping them afloat.
The only good news is that both sides are united in their aim to fix America’s broken economy, something indispensable to softening these festering divisions. But they are diametrically opposed about how to do it, and so are the voters they represent.
It would be a stretch to declare the 2012 election a contest between socialism and capitalism, but not much of a stretch. Obama and the progressives who support him are committed to the radical agenda of the 1960s embodied in the confused and extremist views expressed by the Occupy Wall Street crowd. The New Right has already begun its surge, merging into the pro-market and rabidly anti-government Tea Party Movement.
Meanwhile, race looms uncomfortably beneath the surface with 2012 likely to be much more racially divided than 2008. Obama’s electrifying presidential run in 2008 is transforming into a tinder box of economic, cultural and racial conflict. He’s betting that America will succumb to ethnic tribalism at the ballot box, a dangerous tactic that could take America down a potentially destructive path of no return. But if demography is destiny, the Obama team’s agenda of amnesty and redistribution could well prevail. Demographic changes are dramatically changing America’s political landscape, but if Obama’s politics are any indicator they may also destroy it.
Cameron Macgregor is a former Naval Officer and US Naval Academy graduate. He is writing his first book The New American Nationalism.
