Michelle Obama, NYT Columnist Charles Blow Say Blacks Are Mindless Sheep

Here’s the transcript, with Charles Blow talking to CNN. Note what I emphasized:

LEMON: OK, yes, and I’ve heard a lot of that, having been from Baton Rouge and visited there recently, the thing is this candidate will vote on everything that the president has voted on. You also point out too that among the African-American voters support is still strong for the president, something that “SNL” alluded to this weekend. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Times are looking bleak. Republicans are likely going to take the Senate and many Americans have been disappointed with the president’s handling of the Ebola crisis, immigration, and ISIS. So I’m asking, for real. Should we have voted for Mitt Romney? Hell, no. Hell, no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Then they went on to talk about other scenarios about, no, the president was wrong on this, but would that change your vote? And they say no. The woman who gave you birth feels the same way. Obama can do no wrong. The president has been out of sight in a lot of these key elections tomorrow. He is now playing to the black votes in an effort to keep the Senate. I mean, will this last-ditch effort, do you think, as you call it, will it work?

BLOW: Well, I don’t know. But I think, you know, the idea of politicians trying to play to a particular demographic where they are strong is understandable and he’s doing that. The African-American populations vote overwhelmingly Democratic regardless of who is on the ticket.

There is some suggestion in some of the early voting tallies that the numbers are up from 2010. Will it be up enough? Will more of those people actually show up on Election Day than are being predicted at this point? Who knows?

LEMON: That’s a million-dollar question right there. Can I get this in? I want to get your quick response because I want to play this. This is from News One here, the first lady speaking to Roland Martin. A channel geared toward African-Americans. Here it is.

BLOW: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: And that’s my message to voters. This isn’t about Barack. It’s not about the person on the ballot. It’s about you and for most of the people that we’re talking to, a Democratic ticket is the clear ticket that we should be voting on regardless of who said what or did this. That shouldn’t even come into the equation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: It’s not about the person on the ballot. It’s about you. Is she right?

BLOW: Well, I mean, it’s hard to parse exactly what she means by that. But I do believe, you know, this is a Democratic presidency, the first lady married to a Democratic president. Of course, they are going to be in favor of the Democratic line.

And I think the Democrats have basically been trying to make this pitch that the Democratic Party is the more friendly party for particular populations and trying to make that case. Will it be enough? That keeps becoming the question. Is this going to be enough to make more people come out to the votes? African-Americans do come out relatively speaking in midterms as a decent rate. So you’d have to push that up even higher than it is now. Whether or not this pitch will do that, I’m not exactly sure.

Here’s the entire SNL clip:

We’ll just briefly mention the fact that the first lady is apparently uninformed or dissembling when she says ‘the election isn’t about Barak,’ since the president himself said numerous times that this election was about him and his policies. But the message is unmistakeable. Blow was slightly more nuanced than the First lady, but they’re saying the same thing. They both consider the majority of blacks to be mindless sheep who will vote Democrat and stay on the plantation regardless of who’s on the ticket, regardless of what that person has said and done. And regardless of their interests. That’s exactly what the SNL clip was satirizing.

The contempt they have for them deep down is palpable.