Majority Leader Harry Reid begged Republicans to join Democrats in voting to confirm Sotomayor, warning that opposition would bring some kind of public backlash. But why wasn’t there concern of a backlash when the Democrats blocked Honduran-born Miguel Estrada from the Federal Appeals Court?

The League of United Latin American Citizens said their group is targeting Republicans with local and national campaigns designed to pressure them to vote for Sotomayor, and promised “repercussions” for GOP senators who vote no. Exploiting and fostering racial division is something the political left routinely engages in.

Think about the argument the Democrats are advancing — that race is so important that it should trump all substantive issues surrounding a nominee.

Politicians (mostly on the left) have been using minorities to gain both money and power for a long time now. It can be very profitable as in the case of Jesse Jackson. But most of all, it can be politically advantageous for unscrupulous politicians like Barack Obama. Grievance politics are constantly used to further their agenda while damaging the country in the process.

As Thomas Sowell writes:

The racial profiling issue is a great vote-getter. And if it polarizes the society, that is a price that politicians are willing to pay in order to get votes. Academics who run black studies departments, as Professor Henry Louis Gates does, likewise have a vested interest in racial paranoia.

Gates makes his living off of racial divisiveness. Do you think he would like to see race problems (whether real or perceived) go away? Of course not. Then there would be no need for a black studies department.

For “community organizers” as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama’s background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.

What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.

President Obama’s first nominee to the Supreme Court is, like Obama himself, someone with a background of years of affiliation with an organization dedicated to promoting racial resentments and a sense of racial entitlement.

People should not be fooled by their tactics any longer — playing destructive race politics is a big part of the Democrats’ modus operandi, and they will never stop using it when they have so much to gain from it.