Counting racists lurking among us
By Wes Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Only bigots, racists, fanatics and right-wing
zealots vote against Barack Obama. This is received
theology in the Church of Liberalism, preached
ad nauseum in 2008, and it’s a major Democratic
doctrine this year as well. Only now it’s
“scientific fact,” not merely accusation.
A
“new paper,” that ultimate authority in academic and
media circles, purports to show that only prejudice
stands between President Obama and a second term.
Americans who cheered Mr. Obama’s success four years
ago as evidence of a new day in America were living
in the kingdom of the dumb, and remain there today.
“If my results are correct,” writes a Harvard
doctoral candidate in the New York Times, “racial
animus cost Mr. Obama many more votes that we may
have realized.” Such bigotry deprived the president,
who won decisively with 53 percent of the popular
vote in 2008, of his due. But for the bigots the
president would have won up to 58 percent of the
popular vote, a landslide.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz peppers his paper with lots
of learned graduate-school jargon and jive –
“rational-choice theory,” “reverse causation,”
“regression analysis” – but it boils down to the
same old stuff Mr. Obama and his designated hitters
peddled in 2008.
“Can we really quantify racial prejudice in
different parts of the country?” asks Dr.-to-be
Stephens-Davidowitz. “Not perfectly, but remarkably
well.” Or at least good enough for the op-ed page.
He
concedes that quantifying the effects of racial
prejudice on voting is “notoriously problematic.”
Indeed, people lie about unpopular beliefs and
politically incorrect convictions almost as often as
they lie about sex (which is always).
But Mr. Stephens-Davidowitz employs a mechanism
above and beyond skepticism, the Google search
engine, to find stuff on the Internet. If you get it
from the Internet everyone knows it’s absolutely,
positively good and unerringly true. He used Google
to find “racially charged material,” using a new
Google tool called Google Insights to pin down the
parts of the country whence that material comes.
Since the typical racist works hunched over a
keyboard in the wee small hours of the morning with
nobody looking over his shoulder, he will type
outrageous words – lots of n-words – into a Google
search field.
“You may have typed things into Google that you
would hesitate to admit in polite company,” says Mr.
Stephens-Davidowitz. “I certainly have. The majority
of Americans have as well. We Google the word ‘porn’
more often than the word ‘weather.’” Ah, the lonely
lives of Harvard doctoral candidates. (He offers
neither explanation nor citation for his assertion
that a “majority of Americans” make such nocturnal
submissions.
He
cites West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, eastern
Ohio, upstate New York and southern Mississippi as
the source of most racist inquiries. Once he figured
out where the baddest Americans live, he could
predict, using the vote for John Kerry in 2004 as
benchmark and allowing for growth in number of
voters, just how many votes the president should
have received in 2008.
What renders all this as malarkey and moonshine is
that mining Google rants and raves doesn’t reveal
who actually voted, or why, or who is likely to vote
again this year. Many, perhaps most, ranters are
satisfied with the raving, and never bother to vote.
“If my findings are correct, race could very well
prove decisive against Mr. Obama in 2012,” he
writes. A big If. But he concedes, grudgingly, the
possibility that "racial prejudice will play a
smaller role in 2012 than it did in 2008, now that
the country is familiar with a black president.”
The most virulent conceit working in politics today
is that America is a nation of racists – except, of
course, the pious and righteous liberals who harbor
the conceit. In this warped view, time has not moved
an inch or an hour since the era of angry Klansmen,
lynch mobs and burnt-out black churches. Even Bill
Clinton, who knew better and had to apologize for
his libel, told whoppers about remembering burnt-out
churches in his native Arkansas. (There was never
even one.)
Rarely in human history has a nation turned itself
inside-out and bottom side-up to make amends for
racial injustice. It’s the essence of authentic
bigotry to ascribe evil motives this year to those
who, with ample cause, prefer someone other than
Barack Obama for president. Many Democrats and their
toadies in the media insist that we must shield Mr.
Obama from the consequences of his incompetence
simply because he’s black. So who are the racists?