some guy in lebanon

“In this economy, racism is officially a luxury. How is John McCain going to win if he can’t win those voters? -

FiveThirtyEight.com has an amazing story out of Western Pennsylvania. A polster, traveling block by block attempting to learn more about working-class America’s election leanings reports:

“A canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”"

Wow.

You’re voting for the what? I suppose this is where we’ve arrived in this country, where economic realities are perhaps finally putting into place the final vision of Booker T. Washington. Washington believed that economy, not law, would be the major force behind the conclusion of American racism. Now, phrasing it the way our friends from Pennsylvania are putting it, that is to say, crassly (horrendously), is not exactly what Washington envisioned, but perhaps he of all people could see it coming.

People are scared – The economy is putting everyone, no matter what color or creed, in a dangerous place. Half of Americans spend more every year than they take in. Middle Class wages have remained stagnant for the past decade. Credit-schemes (we used to call them mortgages and home equity) have forced vast portions of America into potential insolvency.

My father always railed against the “Nascar Dads,” because in the new “Ownership Society,” (George Bush’s nightmarish agenda to force homes down the throats of Americans over the past eight years) lower-middle-class conservatives were psychologically empowered by money that they never really had. Nowhere has the credit/housing/sub-prime/adjustable-rate-mortgage(ARM) crises hit harder in America than in the Nascar world. Dad was right – These red-blooded Americans, who should have been the next step in American progressivism as they mixed their hard-working conservative values with a new Globalized world, instead were fantasized by McMansions and 0% APR loans on Humvees. Their eyes were dazzled, and they were convinced that Bush and the Republicans has produced for them wealth from the heavens itself. They voted for Bush in 2004 in droves, and were easily manipulated by Karl Rove tactics, especially by Anti-Abortion and Gay Marriage amendments that cris-crossed the nation in ’04 elections. Oh, how those scary gay and baby-killing “others” scared the living hell out of Nascar dads back then, largely because they didn’t have a damn thing better to worry about.

But as our friends in Western Pennsylvania demonstrate, that dream has turned into a nightmare. While Bush and his cronies at the Treasury handout billions to Wall Street, a stroll down lower-middle-class American exurbia reveals foreclosure after foreclosure. $300,000 homes two years ago are now $200,000 “upside down” prisons. Hence, six weeks ago Barack Obama was “that n***er who will drown us all in socialism,” whereas today Obama is now “that n***er who hopefully has a God Damn plan to get us out of this mess.” That extraordinary racism is evident in both statements is relevant, but as poll after poll demonstrates, the economy whitewashes (for lack of a better term…) a fleeced America, especially when America realizes it’s been fleeced.

Joe Nascar didn’t realize five years ago the trouble he was getting himself into with all that paperwork from the bank. All he saw was a new home, a new truck, a new boat, a fridge full of steak, meals out twice a week, $1.25 a gallon gas, and American hegemony over that Saddam jerk who Bush declared blew up the Pentagon. Who can blame him for voting Bush in ’04 while fearing the other, the terrorist, the strange, the different, the un-patriotic disbeliever.

But now, well. Need I even rehearse for you how extremely opposite the situation is? The house is under foreclosure, the fridge, boat and truck are repossesed, the credit cards are maxed out, gas is $3.60 a gallon on a good day, and America’s is getting beaten-up by a bunch of “sand n***er Muz-lams” with 20-year-old Russian rifles and cell-phone bombs. Newsweek is hollering about the end of the American Empire, Bill O’Reilly doesn’t think McCain can articulate, there’s something fishy about that Sarah Palin woman, and suddenly “that n***ger” is “maybe our last best chance to pull this American thing around.”

The sad reality of the past eight years is that a whole bunch of moron marginally poor conservatives voted to keep big-government fascists in office because the little guy was under the ridiculous impression that Bush, Cheney, and the like were “their men” in Washington. What could go wrong? Even as stories floated around that Cheney snickered at the Christian-Right, accepting one truth would debunk the whole thing as a lie. Only when an entire paycheck only pays off the interest of a maxed out credit card does the writing appear on the wall.

Racist or not, hopefully this story demonstrates that America is awakening to the horrifying truth, that this economic crises is, by design, going to ruin anyone who borrowed money with even relatively bad credit over the past ten years. While it might actually end up empowering the middle and upper classes, it’s literally going to destroy everyone on the lower end up the spectrum, especially those who would be so crass as to use a racial slur to define their candidate for the President of the United States in 2008.