The Death of a Red State

All across America, if you scratch the surface of the current political jousting between the blues and reds, you'll find race underneath. In America it's always about race. Vietnam ended decades ago, but the civil rights movement never had a declared end — at least not according to conservatives, who have been running against it for 40 years, camouflaged in dog-whistle catchphrases like "law and order" (Nixon), "welfare queen" (Reagan) and "border security" (every Republican today). There isn't a half-literate white person alive who doesn't know what Palin is talking about when she says about Obama, "This is not a man who sees America as you and I do."

And that, folks, is why Obama's candidacy is so important. He is a living referendum on the civil rights movement — one might even say he is calling the bluff of the civil rights movement. He has been everything white America said it wanted from black America: Stay positive, work hard, go to Harvard, be more Martin and less Malcolm, and all obstacles will be cleared.

It's happening because on college campuses like the University of Northern Colorado and every other place where progress has been allowed to penetrate, there now lives a whole generation who have been raised to believe implicitly in the virtue of a multicultural society. The election of Obama will prove once and for all the futility of using racism, camouflaged or not, to win elections. If Obama pulls this thing off, it might be a long time before you see a white candidate making transparent, panic-stricken appeals to "you and I" in the weeks before Election Day.

Two days after the Obama rally, I attend an "Old- Fashioned Political Rally" sponsored by the League of Women Voters at the fairgrounds in the town of Loveland, hoping to catch Musgrave live. Rumor has it that she's toned down her act, that she's no longer gay-bashing in the year of the Greatest Depression.

Only four years ago, a Republican like Musgrave could run on a wedge issue like gay marriage. One of the great traditions in American politics is the sudden arrival of a minority-baiting ballot initiative that drives the frustrated residents of swing states to the polls just in time to keep the map red. In 2004, it was gay-marriage bans offered in 11 states that helped turn out enough defenders of traditional "values" to sink Kerry. Two years later, a similar initiative in Colorado helped Musgrave beat her opponent by 7,000 votes.

At the Loveland event, I listen as a woman named Jessica Peck Corry stumps for this year's race-baiting Trojan Horse ballot maneuver, a little thing called Amendment 46. This one actually calls itself a "Civil Rights Initiative" — which naturally turns out to be a law banning all forms of affirmative action.

Peck Corry, representing "the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative," tells voters that affirmative action no longer makes sense. "There's been a twentyfold increase in the number of interracial marriages" — leaving the races too mixed up to sort out who's entitled to government help. She adds that, while her group "accepts the inevitable," it doesn't think giving preferential treatment to anyone is the right path for America after "getting it wrong on race for 200 years."