Dog Whistle Politics

So President Obama released his long form birth certificate yesterday, and now Donald Trump is puffing himself up, crowing that he got "that guy" to release his birth certificate. Saying that now he can call off his investigative team, the team that he previously said had told him the birth certificate was "missing." Of course, he immediately implied that the document might not be real. "I haven't seen it," Donald Trump said skeptically during an airport tarmac press conference. That's because, when a reporter pushed a copy in front of his face yesterday, he refused to look at it, claiming he would "examine it" later.

I'm sort of speechless.

Joe Scarborough this morning: "Donald Trump's birther campaign wasn't about helping Donald Trump win the presidency, it was about helping another candidate win, maybe his friend Mitt Romney." Someone else observed that a "rogue candidate" like Trump could whip up the Obama-hating right while allowing the real GOP candidates to stand back and not look too politically marginal, because you still have to capture the political center to win the presidency. 

Some people will never be convinced. Some birthers are already saying that the just released document is photoshopped. And then there's the question raised by my husband's coworker, a dipped in red right winger. "Why did Obama spend two million in legal fees to try and fight the release of his birth certificate?" Well, he didn't. He released the official document during the campaign as soon as the question was raised, the first time such a question had ever been raised in a presidential campaign (you draw the conclusion). But the official document didn't quell the madness, which is why he has now released the long form document, to try and put an end to the sideshow. The two million dollars of which my husband's coworker speaks, a number thrown out by conservatives, was the amount Obama paid his lawyers for the entire presidential race. 

People tell such lies. They just say anything they damn well please and ignore the evidence that disproves it. And now, the puffed up frog Donald Trump is blowing another dog whistle for the haters. Now he he saying no one knew Obama when he was at school in Hawaii, no one has ever come forward remembering him there. How do people get away with this? I have read so many articles in which Obama's boyhood classmates were quoted, heard his teachers from that time speak warmly of him, seen class pictures of him, seen photos of him playing basketball. Oh right, I forgot. The birthers claim those photos are photoshopped, too. 

And Trump is also saying that our president was a terrible student at Occidental, and yet he got into Columbia, where he was also a terrible student, so how did he get into Harvard? Why, Trump continues, won't he release his college transcripts? How did he become president of the Harvard Law Review, Trump wants to know. There's definitely something fishy there, he says.

Now he's calling for Obama to release his college transcripts. Are you kidding me? Trump really is, swear to God, saying these things. Based on nothing. Now that Trump can't beat the birth certificate drum any more without looking like an idiot (except to imply it is a fake, an idea that some people will no doubt quickly latch onto), he's implying the president got preferential treatment. Really, the whistle he's blowing for those who can hear it is that if it weren't for affirmative action, we wouldn't be saddled with a Black president.

This hurts my head. It does.

Never mind that Obama is fucking brilliant. The man is quicker of mind than most of the population of the country of his birth that elected him president. And he has more grace and charm in his little finger that Donald Trump has in his whole blowhard body. At a fundraiser in New York last night, Obama flashed that famous smile and greeted the crowd thus: "Hello, my name is Barack Obama and I was born in Hawaii, the fiftieth state. I am president of the United States, and I am running for reelection. By the way, no one checked my ID on the way in." The crowd laughed as Obama winked and added, "But just in case, I do have it."