‘Don’t Vote’ ad riles pundits, raises questions on identity politics, double standard

A commercial some are calling the ‘Don’t Vote’ ad is riling pundits because the message tells Hispanics not to vote. A politics writer with The Las Vegas Review-Journal called the ad “the most despicable and offensive political ad of Nevada's 2010 season…”

The ad tells Hispanics not to vote based on Democrats’ failure to pass immigration reform in two years despite a supermajority in Congress and a Democrat in The White House. The newspaper columnist suggests the ad was created by a group headed by a Republican but not related to the official GOP.

As a voter dedicated to the idea everyone should vote, I think the messaging is controversial.

But fact is, we have a double standard.

The Democrat Party readily segregates voters into groups, calling us ‘Blacks or Whites’ or ‘Hispanics’ depending upon messaging. Even President Barack Obama’s economic adviser did that, stating publicly Recovery jobs should not go to ‘White male construction workers…”

In mid-October, our president delivered an impassioned campaign speech somewhere for some Democrat. Obama adopted the tone and presentation of a Pentecostal preacher running long on a Sunday and he told the crowd Republicans were counting on "black people" and "union people" and others to stay  home on Election Day.

A mostly Black organization just issued a report attacking the looseknit movement we call The Tea Party—those who don’t like taxes and big government are, of course, racists.

If you do a search with ‘NAACP Tea Party Report,’ you’ll have to go to a British newspaper to find more than one conservative response about that NAACP report. There are pages of progressive responses, all negative to Tea Party people.

Point is the NAACP is doing some blatant political posturing two weeks before a critical election and the organization is solely focusing on the Black-White meme.

Result is the NAACP and Democrats may suffer more from that report than the Republicans. Democrats really don’t get that a lot of Tea Partiers aren’t card-carrying GOPers. A goodly number of those folks are Independents and some are Democrats. That’s why Nov. 2 might really be a lot of fun for a Republican. For once it’s the Dems who are clueless about part of their base. Tea Partiers who are Republicans are disgruntled Republicans. That’s worth thinking about.

The newspaper pundit wrote, “What's next? Ads targeting black people, women and gays, urging them not to vote either? Shall we go back to pre-Civil Rights Act of 1965? Or maybe the Reconstruction Era?”

The pundit should recall the government has long divided our nation via policy, legislation and politics.

Thing is if you are a political Party pitching your message to groups you identify by their skin color, you should probably expect to hear the pitch reversed.

That may be “despicable” to some, but it’s the government sport we call politics and I suspect it predates the November election by at least 1,000 years. (Commentary by Kay B. Day/Oct. 21, 2010)