Four years ago I had reached an insight about who Obama was a month before his election, in part from an interview he gave about how deeply he was moved by Warren Buffet, and then made predictions from that at the time, many of which had proved rather accurate. To me it was very clear even then that rather than being about change, he was very much part of the corporate status quo. I suggested at the time, the problem was, in his mind, that not everyone had been given the chance to be "white". In that sense I saw him as a kind of assimilationist, and it was clear to me why he would never be able to understand why some, especially indigenous, would never wish to live their way, or what was even wrong with living "white", that is, by greed. But this election is not about who Obama is. I think that is already known and discussed elsewhere. I think this election is about who Romney is and wishes to be.
As for who Mitt Romney is, the answer, despite his best efforts to hide it, seems abundently clear. This is especially true when you hear him speak. He wishes to run as the savior of white privilege. Indeed, his primary campaign is focused on convincing white voters that Obama is "taking" their hard earned money to "give" to "undeserving and lazy" blacks living on welfare. This actually seemed all too familiar. Then I realized why; Mitt Romney is actually the new George Wallace!
Probably it is not all that surprising. After all, as a particularly privileged white Mormon, he saw, in his childhood, when the Mormons (in the 1970's) were finally forced by public pressure to accept black members for the very first time. I get the clear impression that he saw this as an affront in a manner not at all unlike how privileged white southerners felt about desegregation a decade earlier.
