Racism is only one of many factors driving the backlash against the president in town hall meetings and in demonstrations on Capitol Hill. Obama has been right to discount it, because a white president would feel some scorching heat, too. Just hours before Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) interrupted Obama's address to a joint session of Congress with his brazen "You lie!" shout, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court welcomed arguments against restricting business-corporate funding of "Hillary: The Movie" -- a relic of rage on the presidential primary campaign trail that presaged what Hillary Rodham Clinton would be enduring now were she, not Obama, in the White House.

But sexism isn't the main factor, either; recall the swift-boating of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 campaign and the unending conservative rage against former president Bill Clinton. Republican House leader John A. Boehner got close to the truth when he told ABC News last spring that people he met at "taxpayer protests" are "scared to death . . . about the future . . . and the facts that the American dream may not be alive for their kids and grandkids."

Boehner lacks credible answers for these Americans, who are viscerally and legitimately afraid that they'll never again make $28 an hour, afford health insurance or own a home after losing the one they're in. It's the absence of honest answers, more than racism, that's turned out people brandishing signs that liken Obama to Hitler and demanding, with stupefying illogic, that government keep its hands off their Medicare. Are liberals going to deliver the answers the other side does not -- or will they be sidetracked, yet again, by their constant preoccupation with identity politics.

Jim Sleeper, Washington Post  9-20-09

This is probably a good reminder from Sleeper; Carter's statement about racism against Obama notwithstanding, there is a lot more going on in the body politic. It's a big old country, full of folks who are hurting--losing jobs, losing health care, losing their minds with fear for the future. I would imagine the general attitudes of those who see trouble ahead is that government may or may not help solve the problems. No doubt Obama can be said to be trying, but it now looks, for example, that unemployment is going to be around for a while. And the real solidarity it would take to create a safety net that many European states enjoy is not coming through all of a sudden. Obama and staff were smart to pull back from the racist tag, and keep at the work, which I suspect will not stop being very demanding.  BP