It’s no secret that Barack Obama used scare tactics to win a second term as president by persuading voters that his Republican opponent would reward fat-cat donors while turning his back on the 47%.
What is less well known is that groups that supported the Obama re-election campaign also resorted to underhanded methods designed to frighten voters into casting ballots. But these groups didn’t rely on ordinary class warfare. Rather, they used techniques meant to evoke the most basic and fundamental fears in people of color.
The Daily Mail has uncovered election fliers disseminated in North Carolina that depict Klansmen in full 
regalia, lynchings, and an image of Martin Luther King, Jr., wearing a pained look that might be fairly described as the face of revulsion.
One of the fliers is imprinted with the seal of the NAACP. Another intimates that southern blacks would be sent back to the cotton fields if Mitt Romney were elected. Yet a third is far less nuanced, carrying the message, “If you like cotton and want to pick it, vote Mitt Romney on your ticket.”
Readers will recall that the Obama campaign was not above such invidious electioneering itself. When campaign spokesman Joe Biden warned a black audience that Romney would “put y’all back in chains,” the White House declined to comment, let alone apologize. But most people were willing to accept that this was nothing more than the clueless and gaffe-prone Joe Biden being Joe Biden.
What’s the NAACP’s excuse?
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