I want to talk to you not as the Chairman of the Democratic Party, but as an American. Last week, we witnessed tremendous acts of courage and heroism, of people coming together, opening their hearts to one another trying to reach out and help one another. That was America at its best.

But that's not all we saw. We saw people desperately trying to survive in conditions we could not imagine in an American city.

As survivors are evacuated, order is restored, the water slowly begins to recede, and we sort through the rubble, we must also begin to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not.

Nah, nice try, Howie, but you were absolutely talking to that group as the Chairman of the Democratic Party. You were shamelessly playing politics with a national, non-partisan tragedy, doing your best to win the support and votes of the largest black religious denomination in America. And how best to do that? By using race to win 'em over. To say that so many died because they were black.

I love Power Line Blogger John Hinderaker's response to Howard's diatribe:

Note how Dean seamlessly merges age, income and race. Age could have been correlated, to some degree, with the death toll, in that elderly people might have had more trouble obeying the mandatory evacuation order, and the local authorities failed to provide buses or other means of transportation to escape the city before the hurricane struck. Likewise, perhaps, with income. But race? There isn't a scrap of evidence that race had anything to do with it. What is Dean trying to imply? That the Louisiana authorities kicked black people off buses? Barricaded the streets and stopped black people from driving out of town? Is he saying that National Guard helicopters flew over black people on rooftops and rescued white people or Hispanics or Asians instead?

Labels: David C. Price