The Color of His Presidency
On race and Obama’s presidency:
This has been Obama’s M.O.: focus on “the more important things.” He’s had to deal explicitly with race in a few excruciating instances, like the 2009 “beer summit” with the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a friend of Obama’s, and James Crowley, the police sergeant responsible for Gates’s controversial arrest. (Obama’s response to the incident was telling: He positioned himself not as an ally of Gates but as a mediator between the two, as equally capable of relating to the white man’s perspective as the black man’s.) After the Zimmerman shooting, he observed that if he had had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. In almost every instance when his blackness has come to the center of public events, however, he has refused to impute racism to his critics.
This has not made an impression upon the critics. In fact, many conservatives believe he accuses them of racism all the time, even when he is doing the opposite. When asked recently if racism explained his sagging approval ratings, Obama replied, “There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president. Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president.” Conservatives exploded in indignation, quoting the first sentence without mentioning the second. Here was yet another case of Obama playing the race card, his most cruel and most unanswerable weapon.
The Plot to Kill Obamacare
Why are Republicans still fighting it? A history of the conservative strategies to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act, and what’s left in their playbook:
“The right’s actuarial guerrilla war begins with the underlying reality that hardly anybody knows about the exchanges. Polls show that fewer than six in ten Americans even know the law still exists, with the remainder believing it’s been repealed or struck down, or unsure. Of those aware that the law remains in effect, few understand how it works. Yet to succeed, Obamacare requires a critical mass of uninsured Americans not only to grasp what the law does but to act on it.”