Hillary Clinton, exploiting the venue of her appearance in Springfield, Illinois — where Abraham Lincoln warned against “a house divided” — told America that Donald Trump is not fit to lead in times of racial tension. This is rich, considering that she served under the most racially divisive president in American history.

On the very site where Lincoln denounced slavery, Clinton said: “Trump’s campaign adds up to an ugly, dangerous message to America — a message that you should be afraid.” Clinton said Trump is “pitting American against American” when we need “a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart.”

The stinging irony is that Clinton is now the standard-bearer for a political party whose lifeblood depends on stirring racial tensions and alienating blacks from whites. There is no other way for the Democrats to continue garnering 90 percent of the African-American vote.

Under the guise of posing as the exclusive guardians of African-Americans, Clinton, President Obama and the entire Democratic apparatus do far more actual damage to race relations and the plight of American blacks than Republicans are accused of doing in the Democrats’ imaginary world of self-serving, race-baiting propaganda.

Does Clinton think so little of African-Americans that she assumes it’s endearing to them for her to recite black poetry in a grotesquely patronizing accent or to say that she is the spouse of Bill Clinton, America’s “first black president”?

Democratic Party leaders know that neither Republicans nor their policy agenda is anti-black. They know that Republicans believe that conservative policies — including extricating blacks from the enslaving cycle of government dependency and inferior inner-city schools and doing everything within their power to prevent further government-imposed damage to the nuclear family — will help lift black families out of poverty.

But Democrats say otherwise because their lies work. They say George W. Bush denied aid to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina because blacks disproportionately suffered there. They say Republicans support tax cuts and welfare reform because they want to benefit “the rich” and are unconcerned about blacks.

Yet conservative policies have been effective at lifting up black families, decelerating the breakdown of the family and restoring the human dignity of those quagmired in the endless welfare trap. Indeed, empirical evidence demonstrated that Republican-based welfare reform legislation, reluctantly signed by President Bill Clinton the third time it was placed on his desk, inarguably benefited blacks. But Obama deliberately unraveled the program anyway.

Obama’s policies have been disastrous for blacks, whose unemployment levels are dangerously high. But he never accepts responsibility for his failures, preferring instead to scapegoat Republicans and their alleged lack of compassion for African-Americans and the poor. Somehow it’s the Republicans’ fault that Obama has failed — even though he’s advanced his agenda in ways he guaranteed would help, not hurt, blacks.

It’s not just Obama’s policies that harm blacks but also his intentionally divisive rhetoric. You see, Obama is worse than the most race-exploiting Democratic politicians. Obama takes it a step further because he appears to really believe the vile words he spews on race. Based on his books, his policies, his rhetoric for eight years and his unwillingness to discipline himself not to inject race at each and every opportunity, no matter how inappropriate, Obama obviously has deep and bitter feelings about race.

He showed that again in his regrettable remarks at the memorial service for the Dallas police officers murdered by a lone black gunman with racist malice aforethought. Obama’s comments were predictable, given his deplorable track record of insensitivity and agitation, but that doesn’t make them any less repugnant.

You would think that at a funeral of fallen cops — ones murdered by a self-avowed hater of cops and whites — Obama would keep his powder dry. He could have just been neutral — silent on the matter. Instead, he launched into a diatribe about the allegedly unequal treatment of blacks in the criminal justice system.

Let me ask you: If you were the parent of an individual slain at the hands of a certain hater, would you want the eulogizer to shift into criminal defense mode for the killer? Would you expect him to categorically denounce the criminal justice system and law enforcement as racially tainted, to whatever degree? Would you expect him to stump for gun control? To align himself with the Black Lives Matter agenda?

I’m probably too idealistic in this area, but I find it tragic that many refuse to wear color blinders with respect to political and legal matters. To me, it’s sad that people vote for candidates on the basis of race.

Maybe others were just as unrealistic to believe that Obama, because of his race, would usher in a period of racial harmony. But seeing as many Americans did cast their vote for Obama at least partially based on his race — twice — couldn’t we at least have expected more from Obama than his scorched-earth pattern of racial divisiveness?

I pray and pray that one day, a significant percentage of all minorities in this nation will come to realize that one political party is exploiting and damaging them, and it’s not the party they think it is.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament. Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com.

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