From Pat Buchanan's October 20 WorldNetDaily "Commentary":

Progressives are the folks who, in the 1960s, could easily understand that urban riots that took scores of lives and destroyed billions in property were an inevitable reaction to racism, poverty and despair. They could empathize with the rage of campus radicals who burned down the ROTC building and bombed the Pentagon.

The “dirty, immoral war in Vietnam” explains why the “finest generation we have ever produced” is behaving like this, they said. We must deal with the “root causes” of social disorder.

Yet, they cannot comprehend what would motivate Middle America to distrust its government, for it surely does, as Ron Brownstein reports in the National Journal:

“Whites are not only more anxious, but also more alienated. Big majorities of whites say the past year's turmoil has diminished their confidence in government, corporations and the financial industry. ... Asked which institution they trust most to make economic decisions in their interest, a plurality of whites older than 30 pick 'none' - a grim statement."

Is all this due to Obama's race?

Even Obama laughs at that. As he told David Letterman, I was already black by the time I was elected. And he not only got a higher share of the white vote than Kerry or Gore, a third of white voters, who said in August 2008 that race was an important consideration in voting, said they were going to vote for Obama.

With black voters going 24 to 1 for Obama, he almost surely won more votes than he lost because of his race.