Americans Are Racist

Another Mexican commentator, César Cansino, tells us that Americans are too racist and conservative to elect a black man: 

But just as I anticipated Obama's triumph [in the Democratic primaries] a year and a half ago, I now put forth that the candidate will have a difficult time getting to the presidency of the US, whether its because the Americans elect next November his Republican opponent, or because the hidden forces and the interests behind the power in the United States block it. Certainly, envisioning catastrophic scenarios leads nowhere, but there exist an abundance of reasons to doubt that the whole of the American people, Anglo-Saxon and protestant, is prepared or predisposed to elect a black president, although his mother's white, or if the powerful influential ultraconservative sectors are willing to tolerate it.

Is this the silliest thing I've ever read? Hmmm. Pretty close. Good Christ, what is he talking about? Most glaringly, if the conservatives are "willing to tolerate it"? What? Put aside the fact that leading and cosmopolitan conservatives are as excited as anyone about the idea of a black prez (I'm talking about David Brooks, Jonah Goldberg, Ross Douthat, etc.), what are the racist conservatives going to do? Is Cansino suggesting a coup? An assassination? And what does he mean by catastrophic scenarios? I shudder to think, and Cansino never, ever should have written it. 

Cansino, who fancies himself a soothsayer for recognizing Obama's potential 18 months ago, also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of conservative power, which leads to that ridiculous comment comment about Obama's rise relying on their willingness to tolerate it. The conservative movement isn't a monolith pulling political strings, an idea that more cynical Mexicans often leap to embrace. Bush did not win in 2000 or 2004 because it was the will of Pete Coors or Richard Mellon Scaife. He won because he assembled a coalition of many different conservative groups (evangelicals, tax hawks, neocons, security moms), but that coalition is in disarray, and it wasn't going to be there for John McCain anyway. The conservative success of the past generation isn't some conspiracy, it's a broad-based, above-board, pseudo-populist phenomenon. And it's also a phenomenon whose time has passed. To the extent that there is a group of super-rich, super-powerful figures pulling levers in the US, it's Wall Street, which is inclining toward Obama, and Silicon Valley, which always leans left.  

I imagine that Cansino thinks that because Bush won the presidency in 2000 thanks to chicanery, the conservatives would be willing and able to do it again to prevent President Obama from taking the oath. That fantasy ignores the extraordinary singularity of Florida in 2000: an extremely close vote, the chad thing, the controversy over absentee ballots, a very dirty Bush campaign combined with abnormally accommodating Gore campaign, and the willingness of everyone to basically accept one of the worst Supreme Court rulings in our nation's history.