Unexpected Racists: Blacks, Hispanics Less Supportive Of Obama

And I do quote noted scholar Jeneane Garofalo: "This is racism, straight-up. This is all about hatin' on a black man as president."

Since I have it on her learned authority that only racism can account for a lack of enthusiasm for Obama, I must conclude our nation faces a new scourge: Black on black racism.

Once monolithic, blacks' support for the first African American president is still....

....immense. But for unclear reasons it's declined about 7% from well above 90% to 85% in March. That's a new low since Obama's inauguration 26 months ago.

Equally ominous for Obama in 2012, his approval among Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing demographic, has also fallen to again tie his term low of 54%. That's a drop of 11 points from its early high of 65%.

Andrew Malcom, citing speculation by Gallup, figures this is either due to the budget squabble or the war in Libya.

I doubt that. Maybe I'm just a cynic and an elitist but I always figure that such issues, being abstract or concerning lands far-away, are generally very second order sorts of things.

It's the economy, stupid. Isn't it usually? I don't think people loved Bill Clinton or his policies. I think they liked him okay, but loved the economy.

I think people (and when I say "people" here I'm just talking about the up-for-grabs middle) had more actual affection for Reagan, but at the end of the day, what they loved was the economy.

His policies? Sure, they liked those, because they figured those created the economy they loved.

We have not had a recession like this in a long time. Not since the actual Depression. And I'm still reminded of Amity Shaes, quoted by Megan McCardle, noting that during the first couple of years of the Depression, people were still pretty optimistic. Sure, it was bad, but they expected the economy would rebound in 12 or 18 or even 24 months, same as it always did.

It wasn't until a little later than that that the unceasing, no-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel grind of it got to them and put them in a properly depressed mindset.

I'm still wondering when that shoe will drop.

I know we're supposedly in a recovery but... the last few recoveries featured very solid growth to kick them off (5% per quarter, annualized, even 6% or 7%) whereas this "recovery" is only around 2-2.5%, not even keeping pace with population growth, and it looks like it can slip down to contraction at any moment.

Another Way the Media Is Biased: Anyone actually working in the media has a job.

That means to them unemployment is a political issue. An abstraction. Just a scoreboard matter, something that is important chiefly as it effects Obama's reelection chances.

It's not an abstraction to someone who's been out of work for 18 months, and it's not just a number on a scoreboard for someone who is losing hope he'll be employable even after the recession ends.

This is something the media can't help, really, but, as with all of their many biases, they really should take a look at it once in a while.

The media is politically biased so they're eager to credit Obama with "AMERICA IS BACK" recoveries that aren't really recoveries (while they insisted that Bush's 6.8% quarterly growth didn't mean anything, because the U6 underemployment figure hadn't fallen yet).

But outside of the political arena and beyond the parochial interests of media partisans... unemployment and a near-depression are very, very real.

The media blows this recession off as a mere hurdle for Obama to argue his way around.

It's not. It's really not.

posted by Ace at 02:59 PM

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