Say Anything Blog

Last night I posted on the news of Barack Obama pulling all of his staffers out of North Dakota, even after just announcing the opening of 5 additional campaign offices less than two weeks ago.  Today the LA Times picked up the story and suggested that Obama was pulling out of the “embittered” red state (the article also notes that Obama’s pulled out of Idaho, Georgia and Alaska too)...because of race reasons.

That’s right, North Dakotans.  Obama didn’t fail here because North Dakotans don’t like liberal Presidents.  He failed here because North Dakotans are bitter.  And racist, apparently.

Exactly 44 years after Lyndon B. Johnson became the last Democrat to capture the state of North Dakota in a presidential election, it looks like Barack Obama won’t be the next.

The Associated Press reported this evening and an Obama spokeswoman confirmed that the Chicago-based campaign is pulling its 50-some staffers out of the heavily Republican state full of embittered small towns and shipping the workers east to Minnesota and Wisconsin, where the Democrat’s prospects seem brighter and closer.

John Kerry did the best of recent Democrats there, getting 36% of the North Dakota vote in 2004—3 percentage points more than Al Gore in 2000.

The abandonment of at least one Midwestern state by Obama comes as a new AP poll indicates that race could play a significant role in deciding a close national election.  Some experts estimate the first African American candidate of a major party might be as much as 6 percentage points more ahead if he wasn’t black.

“Embittered small towns.”  That sounds like it was lifted right out of the Obama gaffe book.  Remember when The One was talking to a bunch of rich San Francisco liberals about all the bitter, bible-thumping gun-clingers he’d met out in fly-over country?  That is apparently how the liberals at the LA Times see North Dakotans as well.

Bitter.  And racist too, apparently.

Obama giving up in North Dakota, where he’s invested a lot of resources (11 campaign offices, 50 staffers, addressing the state Democrat convention, etc.), is the first palpable loss for his campaign.  And what excuse does the left go to immediately to explain away that loss?

Racism.

Expect to hear that excuse a lot more if things continue to go badly for Obama.