Worst Democrat of the Day: Andre Carson

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I appreciate the anti-Teabagger sentiment, but this sort of unfounded hyperbole only hurts the cause:

A top lawmaker in the Congressional Black Caucus says tea partiers on Capitol Hill would like to see African-Americans hanging from trees and accuses the movement of wishing for a return to the Jim Crow era.

Rep. Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana who serves as the CBC's chief vote counter, said at a CBC event in Miami that some in Congress would "love to see us as second-class citizens" and "some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me... hanging on a tree."

Carson also said the tea party is stopping change in Congress, likening it to "the effort that we're seeing of Jim Crow."

This is certainly a good deal of racism in the Tea Party (for example, this) and perhaps a tiny, tiny minority hate blacks in a Mississippi Burning sort of way, but... seriously.

This just makes Carson -- not to mention the entire CBC, if not Democrats and all of us who loathe the Tea Party -- look bad. It undermines their, and our, credibility. It's like when conservatives call Obama a fascist, or like when the Nazi label gets thrown around. Except that this isn't a label that obviously doesn't apply but an unsubstantiated accusation of homicidal, if not genocidal, intent.

It's not just a statement that there's racism in the Tea Party, which would have been fine (and correct), but that the Tea Party generally, including its GOP members in Congress, wants to lynch blacks. Unless you can back that up, you shouldn't make such an accusation.

There are many good reasons to criticize the Tea Party. There's no need to make anything up, and certainly not like this.

Thanks, Andre Carson. Thanks for undermining our efforts.