If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
I've thought all along, with each new round of manufactured outrage, that this is what's at the bottom of the derangement of the birthers, and the teabaggers, and whatever other goon group of the month is making headlines. And I still think so.
America looks less and less like what these folks want it to, and their radio Gods never let them forget that things are getting away from them. That's hard to swallow.
No one ever said this would be easy. In fact, Obama has said over and over that it would be difficult for true change. This is what he means.
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