Could Obama's support have dwindled because middle America had become estranged, then appalled, by the spiraling deficits and Obama's health care proposal? Certainly not. It was because the right wing somehow "blackened Obama," informing people who might not have noticed that the president was not all that white. "I started thinking opponents were blackening Obama back in July, after the racial drama of the Sotomayor hearings," Walsh said.
In fact, that "racial drama," such as it was, was the work of Democrats who stressed Sotomayor's ethnic background to appeal to Hispanic voters. But to Walsh it evoked the ethnic background of Barack Obama, which must have ticked off--again--all those evil conservatives. "There's no denying, he got blacker to a segment of the white population," Walsh asserted.
Really? By Walsh's logic, Obama must have been light beige through much of the summer of 2008 (when he held a slight point lead over McCain), then become a bit browner after the Republican convention (when McCain led by a bit), then lightened again at the financial meltdown in mid-September, and become moon-like in his paleness by Election Day, when he carved out a seven-point win.
From then, he must have turned pearl-white by his Inauguration, at which point he was approved of even by people who voted against him and basked in favorable ratings of nearly 70 percent. Then, in late spring, he once more grew darker, a trend that continues. Or perhaps his approval ratings simply fell because he was a man trying to govern from the left in what is and remains a center-right country? Perish the thought.
