Race-baiting to the bottom

Worst of all, there is ample evidence that welfare dependency and family breakdown have deeply harmed communities of color while the 1996 reforms have helped.

Illegal immigration has its most pernicious effects on the job prospects and wages of working-class Americans who are themselves disproportionately black and Latino.

Yet none of this complicates liberal chest-beating about race-baiting. While such rhetoric is divisive, ugly and counterproductive, there is one silver lining: liberals have historically paid a steep political price for engaging in it.

As Republicans learned when they started channeling Baghdad Bob in their assessments of the Iraq war, a political party or movement loses credibility when it begins to spout obvious nonsense.