Pat Buchanan: race baiter extraordinaire

I almost apologize for bringing this footage to you, but I felt it was important enough to comment on. [The relevant portion of this footage is from about the 5:00 mark to a little over 7 minutes if you don't wish to watch the whole thing.] Last week, following Obama's victory in West Virginia, and his getting John Edwards' endorsement a day later, the pundits were having a field day hyper-analyzing what all of it means. As usual, Pat Buchanan was worked into a foaming, growling froth over it all.

I deeply resent Buchanan's assertions in this commentary [at about the four minute mark in the footage above], specifically these lines:

What were the African-American community in Philadelphia that gave him 90% voting on if not the fact that Barack Obama was one of them. West Virginia, Hillary, was one of us. That's the same thing. But West Virginia gets trashed, and Philadelphia is wonderful.

I have to give Chris Matthews some credit for his response to Buchanan:

I want to respond to Pat's thought there [Buchanan laughs]. No, no, it's a thought that a lot of people share, and I don't deny that. But when you look at the history of this country - going all the way back over 400 years, in the beginnings of this country, before we had a Republic, white people get elected to all the major offices. We've had three African-American senators freely elected after Reconstruction, and a couple of governors, and that's about it. Doug Wilder and Deval Patrick [the two governors that Matthews mentions]. If you're African-American it seems to me rooting for someone for your community, and when they have a real chance to be president for the first time in history, I wouldn't read that as a negative sentiment. However, when you're white, and you've always called the shots, to say that you're voting against somebody who's had quite an impact in this campaign, I think it's a different way of looking at it. You can always say what's good for the goose is good for the gander, Pat, the way you argue it, it's hard to argue. But there's a difference between negative voting and positive voting.

I find myself agreeing with Matthews a great deal lately, and that's sort of weird, because I normally don't - a shocking number of stupid things come out of his mouth for someone who works on a major network, but I do agree with him here.

Of course, Buchanan goes on to rant about network pundits calling the many West Virginians "racists" who appeared on TV last Tuesday. Nonsense. I didn't hear one network pundit call them racist. But, what I did hear were many West Virginians saying overtly on TV that race played a factor in their votes for Hillary.

For Buchanan to whine and cry about these poor people in West Virginia is the height of hypocrisy. Yes, they do sign up and die in the military in record numbers, no question, but Buchanan rants that "they haven't been running the country," and that's wrong. Since we're talking about race, the race that makes up an overwhelming majority of the state HAS been running this country since its founding, and that's a verifiable fact. Buchanan is simply trying to muddy the waters, and it's a joke.

The fact of the matter is, Obama lost in West Virginia because he's black. PERIOD. And he'll probably lose the state in November, too, which strikes me as tragic, because Obama would do more as president economically as president in one term than McCain would do in five terms.

And I don't buy into the notion that Barack Obama won in Pennsylvania because of the black vote in Philadelphia. That's a vast oversimplification. Sure, the black vote helped Obama in Philly - the numbers don't lie, but that's not the only reason he won in Pa., and to say as much is wrong. For instance, I live in Philadelphia, I'm white, and I voted for Obama because I feel he's the best candidate for the office he seeks.

So, take that, Buchanan.

By the way, I don't think the Edwards endorsement will amount to much for Obama. Frankly, I think that endorsements are overblown. When Hillary drops out and endorses Obama, that will have an impact, but when party leaders endorse a certain candidate, I think it carries very little weight these days.