The Great Debate

ILLUSTRATION: MATT MAHURIN

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said in a Wednesday conference call to donors that President Barack Obama won re-election because he promised “big gifts” to voters, “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.” Romney singled out healthcare reform as a “huge” gift to these voting blocs and the working poor.

This echoes what the conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly has been saying. “The demographics are changing,” O’Reilly lamented on election night. “This is not a ‘traditional America’ anymore.” Latino, black, and women voters, he noted, were turning out for Obama. They did so, O’Reilly said, because “they want stuff.”

The audacity of these claims is breathtaking. The Romney campaign promised $5 trillion in tax cuts and a pile of regulatory and other favors to the wealthiest Americans. Over the past three decades such conservative “gifts” have helped the top 1 percent of earners – the likes of Romney and his donors – to nearly triple their incomes and double their share of the national income.

Now, Romney has the steely nerve to tell his bankrollers that he won’t be able to deliver on more tax goodies because Obama made promises to black, Latino and poor voters.

How can Romney and O’Reilly be so blind to the irony of their claims? Both men belong to the $20 million a year crowd, so it could be that they already had a lot of “stuff” in play.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a long-standing racial controversy – without any reverberations on the presidential campaign.  This reveals a lot about emerging racial politics of the Obama era.

The court is deciding whether public universities can consider race in their admissions process, and a broad ruling here could make affirmative action illegal across state and federal governments. That means, among other things, less diversity in the halls of power.

The solicitor general for America’s first African-American president cautioned against that fate. The United States needs affirmative action, he told the court, because it helps groom “effective leaders in an increasingly diverse society.”