There's No Racism Left In Georgia, Right? Those Days Are Long Gone In The Heart Of The New South

As you probably know, Blue America officially endorsed Regina Thomas Saturday and started raising money for her primary campaign against conservative Blue Dog John Barrow. Regina has a distinguished record as a state legislator and a tireless fighter for ordinary Georgia families. Her signature issues are education, health care and keeping the playing field level for small businesses and regular folks who can't buy influence from government. Her opponent is a weak and vain little man with a distinct lack of principles and no empathy for the people he's supposedly representing. So I was shocked when I saw some of the push back against our endorsement.

Barrow's camp has basically pushed the nonsense that "she can't win in the general," implying that an African-American can't win in a Deep South district. McCain may be a very flawed candidate but he's a hundred times the statesman John Barrow will ever be and Barack Obama kept his total in GA-12 down to 45%, his worst Georgia showing outside the Atlanta Metro Area. Are the Barrow people suggesting the district has gotten more racist since then? Yesterday the Savannah Morning News mentioned the Blue America endorsement and I browsed through the comments.

I was astounded a reputable newspaper-- the biggest one in the district-- would even publish the kind of racist trash that passed for comments. I suppose in some quarters this kind of blatant, primitive and vicious bigotry is taken seriously instead of taken down. I'm not talking about earnest-- if misguided-- conservative comments like "Any attempt to legislate 'social justice' is of itself unjust because it takes from some to give to others, legalized robbery." That may be a sad commentary on our education system and the prevalence of reactionary propaganda on the radio, but it isn't what I mean by "racist." And I'm not even calling the coordinated efforts by the Barrow camp to equate Regina with Cynthia McKinney and to claim she will be a "puppet" for Obama, "Racist." This however is another story:

Isn't she a member of that ethnic group that walks around their entire life with one hand out and the other pointing a finger?

Read it again. Make you want to vomit? This is the kind of filthy, vile person Regina has to contend with in an attempt to serve her neighbors and her community as a legislator. Please think about it and imagine how this kind of rhetoric has been used by conservative agents of divisiveness against the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Chinese, the Japanese, Latinos, Catholics, immigrants, women in general and then, please think about helping Regina out-- even if only with $5 and $10-- via ActBlue. It's an easy process and you should be finished by the time this song is over:



There's another video I want to suggest as well: this one from C-Span this morning. The conservative or Bircher or KKK nut or teabagger or whatever he is says he's a North Carolina Republican. I guess this is how people like Virginia Foxx, Richard Burr and Patrick McHenry get elected. As you can hear, he's accusing C-Span of taking too many phone calls from African-Americans identifying themselves as Republicans. "You have black folks calling in on the Republican line, independents. And you have so many of 'em I can't believe this is just an accident. If you keep on with the way you've been programming, you should change your name from C-Span to black-span," he said. "I know they have an opinion but I wish that they would be honest and call in on the right line... Everyone one of 'em thinks that Obama is Jesus Christ and they don't like when anybody criticizes him." You know, there still are a few black Republicans. In fact the head of the RNC is probably exactly what this C-Span caller has in mind, although he doesn't realize it. I hate when decent folks get tarred with the same brush that should be used to describe conservatives!