Andrew Cuomo in 1998: Subprime Lending "Affirmative Action;" Proudly Hails Mau-Mauing Banks Into Reducing Loan Requirements as Great Advance for Nation

On the one hand you don't want to demagogue the issue.

On the other hand, the issue inherently underscores a major tension between the parties, and the races, since 1998: The Democrats' overarching drive to do certifiably insane things, like letting murderers out on weekend furloughs from prison, in response to constant agitation from minority pressure groups. And all the quite predictable consequences that flow from such policies. No one would ever suggest letting murderers out of jail for weekend rape-fests if almost all prisoners were white. There would be no reason to suggest such a lunacy. It is only when race is a factor do we begin seeing such insane policies not only proposed seriously, but enacted.

And no one would have thought it was a good idea to eviscerate all prudence from the mortgage process had we only been talking about poor whites. The answer would have been, "Um, duh, they can't afford these loans, that's why they're not getting them; what are you, insane?"

And again, once race is injected as a factor insanity becomes government policy.

Yes, the Democratic initiative did help minority homebuyers (and lots of white credit-poor homebuyers too, who wound up being the main beneficiaries of the push, simply because there are more poor whites than poor blacks in the country).

But at what cost? (Incidentally, Ed's post is Must Read All the Way Through.)

Our politics is constantly being distorted by this issue. And note that, as usual, many politicians were willing to go along quietly with a risky scheme with perfectly foreseeable consequences for fear of being called "racist" if they objected.

Well, here we are now.

We really did lots of good putting credit-poor homebuyers into homes they couldn't afford, didn't we?

And the kicker: Because this issue necessarily raises racial issues, McCain and the Republicans have been afraid to call the Democrats out on it, permitting Barack Obama -- who actually sued CitiGroup to ease its lending requirements in order to get credit-poor minorities mortgages -- to actually profit from the disaster he himself made.

There is some tiny hope that this information is getting out there a bit. Since McCain finally began fighting back on this issue -- rather half-heartedly and incoherently -- Obama has backed off of the polling highs he'd seen earlier. McCain is still behind, but it's no longer a blowout.

But McCain cannot expect talk radio and bloggers to carry this message. If he actually wishes to win the election -- something that has seemed in doubt of late -- he's going to have carry this message himself, forcefully, and note every day that Obama actually sued CitiGroup to compel them to make these awful loans.

posted by Ace at 11:08 AM

| Access Comments