Eye On The Left: Expanding The Race Card

Oh, Kay!

When churchgoers in Cumberland County, N.C., went to their cars after Sunday services recently, they found a flyer with an image of a Jim Crow-era lynching with an overprinted warning of what might happen if Republicans take control of the U.S. Senate, the Fayetteville Observer reported. "[U.S. Sen.] Kay Hagan doesn't win! Obama's impeachment will begin," the flyer said. "Vote in 2014."

Hagan is a Democrat who is in a difficult reelection race with state Rep. Thom Tillis. The implication is if Hagan doesn't win and Republicans gain control of the Senate, President Obama would be impeached (essentially, lynched). This is low, even for campaign spin-meisters who wallow in such trash.

One would hope voters wouldn't fall for something so ridiculous, but those who placed the ad evidently believe they could. The flyer contained no contact information, stated it was "not endorsed by any candidate" and noted it was paid for by "Concerned Citizens of Cumberland County."

History is watching

Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown was expected to walk into the governor's office after November's election as the first black man to hold the position. However, the state's Democratic Party has had to pull out the race card to keep a narrow lead in the deeply Democratic state.

A recent mailer attempts to tie today's Republicans to a racist past of largely southern Democrats, who persecuted Martin Luther King and the civil rights marchers who are pictured. The next page notes, "They've placed roadblocks in our path at every turn," and offer photos of a "colored waiting room" sign, racists marching against civil rights and Donald Trump in front of a sign that reads "Where's the birth certificate?"

The next page asks residents to "vote for Anthony Brown as Maryland's first African-American governor" and suggests "history is watching to see if we vote."

Brown, according to pundits, has performed poorly in each of his debates with Republican Larry Hogan, is dragged down by the unpopularity of current Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, has been accused of ducking the media and is the subject of a parody song mocking him for his reference to the city of Frederick, Md., as Fredericktown.

Hogan is gaining in the polls, but Brown also is doing his part to turn a blue state red.

Playing the Ferguson card

What does Ferguson, Mo., have to do with the U.S. Senate and governor's races in Georgia? Plenty, according to a recent mailer sent out by the Georgia Democratic Party, and its chairman, Dubose Porter. The mailer, which pictures two black children holding "Don't shoot" signs, says, "If you want to prevent another Ferguson in their future ... vote. It's up to you to make change happen." It goes on to describe the circumstances in August in Ferguson in which a black youth in an altercation with police was killed and notes the town's population is 67 percent black and the mayor, majority of council members and 94 percent of its police force are white.

Still confused about what Ferguson has to do with the situation in Georgia? Porter told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Georgia is like Ferguson "when you don't have people having the opportunity for jobs or to participate in their community and the opportunity to grow." Bad things happen, he implied, when unnamed people "put people in the conditions that they're in" and do things that have "taken the opportunity away from them."

How one-term Gov. Nathan Deal and outsider U.S. Senate challenger David Perdue have wrought those wrongs is still unclear to most voters, but it's probably just the usual -- driving while Republican.

Ill Wendy blowing in Texas

Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis keeps stepping in holes in her effort to win the Lone Star State's highest office. Most recently, she accused Republican opponent Greg Abbott of not supporting interracial marriage.

However, Texas does not ban interracial marriage, and such a ban has not been proposed. Worst of all for Davis, Abbott is married to the former Cecelia Phalen, who is of Mexican descent.

Davis, in the miscalculation, attempted to twist some words Abbott made to the editorial board of the San Antonio Express-News.

Asked a hypothetical question on whether he would have defended an interracial marriage ban (as was asked, with some controversy resulting, of a candidate for Wisconsin attorney general), he said he only "could deal with the issues that are before me. ... The job of an attorney general is to represent and defend in court the laws of their client, which is the state Legislature, unless and until a court strikes it down." He added that he could not "go back and answer some hypothetical like that."

Davis then accused him of not taking a stand on interracial marriage.

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