Dobbs

The Times’ Dave Leonhardt does a pretty decent job today of surveying Lou Dobbs’ fact-free mental landscape (though it should be noted that
nothing Leonhardt has to say couldn’t have been discovered three weeks ago at Orcinus — see Dave Neiwert’s posts here and here).

Taking Dobbs’ disgusting leprosy fables as a starting point, Leonhardt explains why this case is emblematic:

For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality. He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

Second, Mr. Dobbs really does give airtime to white supremacy sympathizers. Ms. Cosman, who is now deceased, was a lawyer and Renaissance studies scholar, never a medical doctor or a leprosy expert. She gave speeches in which she said that Mexican immigrants had a habit of molesting children. Back in their home villages, she would explain, rape was not as serious a crime as cow stealing.

Leonhardt is certainly correct as far as all this goes — it takes about five minutes of viewing to realize that Dobbs’ ears ooze with whatever offal remains in his head after his mouth stops moving. But this point continues to miss the larger, more consequential one. As I think Neiwert is right to argue, Dobbs is a venal, race-baiting blowhard who doesn’t simply outsource his arguments to white supremacy sympathizers but instead allows the fantasies of geniune white supremacists to guide his program content. Moreover, he’s the worst kind of American populist — waving his thick fists incoherently about the corporate overlords while devoting three times as much energy to fighting the weakest, most vulnerable and most despised fractions of society.