Taki's Mag

Barack Obama with the Congressional Black Caucus

The Congressional Black Caucus found out that if you’re gonna cuss the boss, first you’d better saddle your horse. They threw Obama a campaign party and Obama made it a roast…of the CBC!

Obama saw his window of opportunity and threw a brick through it. Sounding like a black Southern Baptist minister, Obama lectured the CBC, essentially calling them a bunch of bellyaching babies, when he said:

Stop crying….I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain, I’m gon’ press on. I expect all of you to march with me and press on.

It is clear that Obama expects blind faith from black liberals. There will be no defections. E’rybo’y must press on.

Obama took his shellacking in 2010, while the CBC came out unscathed. The CBC retained all their Congressional seats. Next Obama lost the NY-9 Congressional seat that had been held by Democrats for 88 years. In both cases Obama was left twisting alone in the wind. That’s what elections are for.

While Obama was reviving the new and improved strategy of “Spend Our Way Out of Debt II,” CBC Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) offered only token love, saying that if Obama were not black, the Congressional Black Caucus would have “marched on the White House.”

The CBC is about as handy as a golf club in a tennis match, which is why they expected Obama to create jobs for black people, to pay black people’s bills, and to redistribute the wealth to black people, for goodness’ sake. Obama proved useless toward these ends.

In an article titled “The Paradox of Hope,” Gary Younge speaks on Obama’s impact on blacks since his election:

But for all the ways black America has felt better about itself and looked better to others, it has not actually fared better. In fact, it has been doing worse. The economic gap between black and white has grown since Obama took power. Under his tenure black unemployment, poverty, and foreclosures are at their highest levels for at least a decade.

Millions of black kids may well aspire to the presidency now that a black man is in the White House. But such a trajectory is less likely for them now than it was under Bush. Herein lies what is at best a paradox and at worst a contradiction within Obama’s core base of support. The very group most likely to support him—black Americans—is the same group that is doing worse under him.

That’s gotta hurt. Black people were better off under the supposedly stupid white president? Holy ghost of Ronald Reagan!

To the CBC’s chagrin, Obama didn’t deliver his typical “feel good” speech—one of those orations that sounds good but commits to nothing. Obama was supposed to blame Bush. Tell America that it was the obstructionist Republicans’ fault. Tell them he needs more time or that the Tea Party is racist. You know…the usual memes.

But Obama told the CBC to man up! “Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes…shake it off.”

Obama must have been thinking:

It’s not all my fault, and don’t make me call you Negroes out. Who’s been “leading” black people the longest? Remember, CBC, I inherited your mess!

The CBC has been responsible for black jobs—or the lack thereof—for decades, so why are black people’s problems suddenly all Obama’s fault? And Obama picked this fight on the CBC’s turf. How significant is that? He peed in their Kool-Aid, then made them drink it.

Obama is determined not to be the black community’s fall guy, and he all but dared the CBC to do something. And Maxine Waters, who earlier this year asked her constituents for permission to go after Obama, obviously got the message.

On CBS’ The Early Show, Waters commented:

I don’t know who he was talking to because we’re certainly not complaining. We’re working. We support him, and we’re protecting that base because we want people to be enthusiastic about him when that election rolls around.

We are witnessing firsthand the open fear on the left. They are more scared than a Chihuahua passing a peach pit. If you think it’s bad now, hang in there. By election time, the CBC and Obama will go together like a pierced tongue and dentures.