Obama '08?

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

edgar... with these obama supporters you're either with 'em or against 'em... that sounds vaguely familiar... :wink:

:wink:

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While there has been a remarkable degree of advancement in civil rights over the last 40 years or so, clearly we are not even close to being a color-blind society.

Because of his political positions, I have never considered voting for Obama, but I did, until recently, believe that his color would not be a significant factor in whether or not he was elected. I thought that his experience would be a milestone in our advancement as a society of which we could all be proud.

What I really didn't expect was that if his race did become an issue in his political campaign it would be in his campaign for the nomination of the Democratic Party.

Initially the only issues Obama's race gave rise to seemed to be whether or not he was "black enough," for the African-American community, and the positive picture his election as a "black man" would paint for the world to see.

Now we see a greater and more ominous complexity in the consideration of his race. It truly has become "an issue."

Now, we are seeing not only the suggestion that to vote for him is a rejection of racism, but that to not vote for him is a reflection of racism. I suppose that was inevitable, but within the Democratic Party?

Most people assume that racism requires a sense of superiority, or expressions of intolerance and even hatred. Dictionary definitions support this assumption. Maybe the term is used too freely or maybe the definition needs to be revised. In any case what is it when someone votes for someone primarily because of their race? Is the concept different when the voter and candidate are of the same race versus when they are different races?

What is it when someone who, by most accounts, has been an identifiable advocate of the civil rights movement, injects race (overtly or otherwise) as an issue into campaign so as to defeat his or her opponent who is of a different race?

If the current rise of the race issue in the Democratic primaries is a result of the Clinton strategy, as Juan Williams has suggested, to recast Obama in the image of The Black Candidate, does that reflect racism? What if, as the Clinton campaign has suggested, the issue has been injected by Obama to raise the spectre of racism? Would that be racism, and is the mere suggestion by the Clintons itself racist? What if it is to the advantage of the Old Guard of the black leadership to preserve their power from the upstart Obama, by introducing issues of race?

There has been a lot of discussion about the breakdown of the Conservative Coalition that has, for years now, driven the Republican Party's political successes. No matter who wins the Democratic nomination, and who wins the election in November, I believe that the traditional coalition of interests within the Democratic Party may suffer a much more significant breakdown by the time the 2008 race is over.

Internecine war is always uglier than open conflicts between known enemies.

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Amigo wrote:

Miller wrote:
Amigo wrote:
Ticomaya wrote:
[

I just told you when I look at Obama I don't see a black man. Does that sound like a racist to you?

Sounds to me like you don't know the difference between WHITE and BLACK...
Thats what MLK wanted. Thats what Tico said.

Exactly. There is a huge difference between noticing that a person is black and seeing a 'black man' as if a "black man' was a whole different species or somebody entirely different from somebody else. I would hope we would get to the point where we would see the color of a person's skin as having no more significance than blue eyes or red hair or a prominent nose. Racism will never be eliminated until we can get to that point and no longer have to consider skin color as something important or requiring different treatment or sensitivity or whatever. It certainly should not be a factor, pro or con, in whether we vote for somebody for President.

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Finn dAbuzz wrote:

I believe that the traditional coalition of interests within the Democratic Party may suffer a much more significant breakdown by the time the 2008 race is over.

Na. There is a bizarre amount of infighting going on, but by December Blatham, Soz and Nimh will be united once again... and BPB, CI and Cyclo will be back to shaking their pom poms to the united party beat. You'll see. Or commiserating together as John McCain celebrates his victory on Dancing with the stars

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line
Honey I'm still free
Take a chance on me

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Foxfyre wrote:

Amigo wrote:
Miller wrote:
Amigo wrote:
Ticomaya wrote:
[

I just told you when I look at Obama I don't see a black man. Does that sound like a racist to you?

Sounds to me like you don't know the difference between WHITE and BLACK...
Thats what MLK wanted. Thats what Tico said.

Exactly. There is a huge difference between noticing that a person is black and seeing a 'black man' as if a "black man' was a whole different species or somebody entirely different from somebody else. I would hope we would get to the point where we would see the color of a person's skin as having no more significance than blue eyes or red hair or a prominent nose. Racism will never be eliminated until we can get to that point and no longer have to consider skin color as something important or requiring different treatment or sensitivity or whatever. It certainly should not be a factor, pro or con, in whether we vote for somebody for President.
Yes, except now for you saying the exact same thing MLK said you can be called a racsist. This is not liberalism any more then Bush is conservative. They are just ways to get us to fight eachother instead of facing what true equality is.

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edgarblythe wrote:

sozobe wrote:
I have to say I don't really get that -- you decided to vote for someone way in advance and then you just don't really pay attention to anything else because you've already decided?

Of course don't change your mind based on color or gender -- but what about changing your mind based on issues, or how a given person conducts his or her campaign, or implications for America's ability to repair relations with the rest of the world, or or or...

If you say that you've examined Obama closely and you still prefer Hillary, that's one thing -- but with "who decided to vote for Clinton before Obama became a factor in the election" it sounds like you've never really given Obama a close look in the first place.

I don't see the kind of difference that makes me change my mind. If I encountered someting earthshakingly new, it would be a different story. Just because I didn't change my mind does not mean I have suspended my reasoning ability.

Of course. The phrasing I quoted seemed to indicate that you just weren't really interested in investigating further once you decided on Clinton, "before Obama became a factor."

If there were a scale of support with 100 being full support and 0 being no support, I started out something like this:

Obama: 90
Edwards: 80
Clinton: 65

Now I'm more like:

Obama: 95
Edwards: (unclear -- I like him more but am even less convinced that he can get the nomination, and I do think that's an important consideration)
Hillary: 50

Hillary's gone further down in my estimation in the last couple of weeks -- my concerns that she would take the tactics that have been used against her and Bill and turn them on anyone she sees as a threat to her White House bid (read: Obama) have seemed well-founded.

However, if we extend it to Republicans, my list looks something like:

Obama: 95
Clinton: 50
McCain: 30
Romney: 20
Huckabee: 15
Thompson: 10
Paul: 5
Giuliani: 0

So while Obama is far and away my favorite, if it's Clinton vs. any of the Republicans, sure, I'd prefer her. That's not necessarily contradictory.

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nimh wrote:

Obama: a bigger problem with gender than with race? Reviewing the latest CNN poll

Obama's white women problem

Interesting stuff on gender and race in a new national CNN poll. It includes an oversampling of African-American respondents, and buried in the crosstabs are some data about the intersection of race and gender that might just be crucial to Obama's fate.

<snip>

But the more interesting part here is that in as far as the lop-sided numbers indicate a problem for Obama, it turns out that it's actually much more a gender problem than a race problem. Because among white men, Obama wholly matches up against Hillary. They both get some 30% of the preferences. [..] But among white women, it's a different story. Here, Clinton leads Obama by a whopping 33 points. She gets 54% of their preferences; he gets just 21%. [..]

Women have more of a problem with Obama than blacks have with Hillary?

The instant interpretation here would seem to be that Hillary simply naturally attracts a lot of women votes by virtue of identification / solidarity. But the poll provides some indications that the preference for Hillary over Obama may have as much to do with Obama as with Hillary.

<snip>

But then the poll asked the respondents to say, regardless of whom they planned to vote, whether Clinton and Obama understood the problems and concerns of women. And on this count there was a big gap. 93% of all respondents said that yes, Hillary Clinton understood them - and the percentage was roughly the same among men and women, blacks and whites. But only 61% of the respondents said that Barack Obama understood, while 37% said he did not. And among women, just 54% said that he understood, and 44% that he didnt. Among white women, the numbers must have been slightly more disadvantageous still.

In short, while Obama is successfully rallying the first preference of black voters, as the top line numbers show, at the moment at least three-quarters of blacks still see Hillary as a candidate who understands their concerns as well -- so you'd think they would be happy enough with her as nominee too. [..] Obama, however, has closed the gap with Hillary among (white) men, but is still miles behind among (white) women - and almost half of all women think he does not understand their problems. So he apparently faces stronger resistance among women than Hillary does among blacks (for now); and of course women are a far larger voter group. So this should probably be a red flag for the Obama campaign.

Read the whole post (on the Polls etc thread)

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With the importance of electability, my rankings are Obama and McCain - as of today.

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C I
I hope the majority of ill-informed or well informed voters cross the street to make use of their legitimate right.
I wish and hope that atleast 67 percent of eligible voters make use of this right.
I care more about the90 percent of the Americans and therebyI reflect the views of90 percent of the globe.
I am quite sure that the American voters will ignore my appeal.

The present occupant of WHITE HOUSE has got around 27 percent of American's approval.
Amen

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Amazing what can change in a few decades. I remember the early days of television. No black person dared to hug a white one on camera. If a black man did not behave, the sponsors canceled immediately.
.
I never understood that. Skin makes no difference; behavior does.

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How can anyone looking at the exit polls in any state claim that race is not an issue? Every single exit poll shows that black voters are voting overwhelmingly in favor of the black candidate.

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But pretty recently they were overwhelmingly in favor of a white candidate (Clinton). They didn't just say "that guy's black, we'll vote for him." If that's how they were thinking, he would've had the numbers as soon as he announced he was running. And he didn't, at all.

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OCCOM BILL wrote:

Finn dAbuzz wrote:
I believe that the traditional coalition of interests within the Democratic Party may suffer a much more significant breakdown by the time the 2008 race is over.
Na. There is a bizarre amount of infighting going on, but by December Blatham, Soz and Nimh will be united once again... and BPB, CI and Cyclo will be back to shaking their pom poms to the united party beat. You'll see. Or commiserating together as John McCain celebrates his victory on Dancing with the stars

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line
Honey I'm still free
Take a chance on me

I don't think that breakdown will be along the only slightly different tracks these individuals follow.

This election has created a fundamental crisis for the Democrats: Two essential components of the Democratic coalition - feminists and blacks - each see a very real possibility that one of their own might actually win the presidency, neither will concede that the other has rightful first dibs on the office.

I can imagine young black activists who are not part of the existing Black Leadership machine walking away from this election utterly disappointed and quite angry, if Obama doesn't win the nomination, and his loss is attributed, in any way, to racism within the Democratic party.

If the candidate who just happens to be black can't get the nomination because he is black, why should blacks continue to believe that their interests and political fate is best served by an intimate link to the Democratic Party?

Keep in mind that Obama's support among black voters has surged since the issue of race came on the scene. Non-committed votes in the Michigan primary where Clinton ran unopposed are widely believed to represent the protest votes of black democrats. In Nevada, Obama won 83% of the black vote, when polls showed much less support just before the racial dust-up started.

Throw in the mix the delicate issue of the latino vote and the strange sort of competition it has engendered, and there are the makings of a lot of resentment among black voters if Clinton beats Obama in an increasingly ugly race.

Of course I can't say this will happen, but I certainly don't think it's a stretch to imagine that it can.

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Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Keep in mind that Obama's support among black voters has surged since the issue of race came on the scene.

The biggest surge was post-Iowa, when it was demonstrated that he was electable.

But yes, I have been reading a whole lot about black voters who are mad at both Hillary and Bill and saying they won't vote for her if she ends up with the nomination. (Not just black voters, though.
Here's something I just read about a white voter who says, "I know 19 white people who showed up today but won't be there in the general election. And if we do it'll be for McCain or Bloomberg.")

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sozobe wrote:

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Keep in mind that Obama's support among black voters has surged since the issue of race came on the scene.

The biggest surge was post-Iowa, when it was demonstrated that he was electable.

But yes, I have been reading a whole lot about black voters who are mad at both Hillary and Bill and saying they won't vote for her if she ends up with the nomination. (Not just black voters, though.
Here's something I just read about a white voter who says, "I know 19 white people who showed up today but won't be there in the general election. And if we do it'll be for McCain or Bloomberg.")

Why are they angry with Hillary?

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interesting, to me, is that there is some element inside meself that gives points to Obama because he is black. In terms of political philosophy I continue to lean in the direction of Edwards. For me, it all comes down to who is on the ballot in New Mexico the day I vote, be it Hillary or Obama or Edwards, one of them will get my vote.

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You are in Australia and I am in Germany.
I think USA has failed to make the product- DEMOCRACY to make use for the local consumption before exporting it to foreign countries..
There are million problems at home which warrant the attention of the administration.

But none confront those unsolved problems.
neither the so called voters( a miserable percentage) nor the leaders.
Enjoy the American waya of exporting Democracy.

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dlowan wrote:

Why are they angry with Hillary?

Whew... I'd like to give a long answer but I need to finish making dinner and find the Packers game... here's a start:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/chris_lehmann/2008/01/race_to_the_finish.html

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debbie wrote:

Why are they angry with Hillary?

basically I have the same complaint I had with Bill; If I wanted a republican I would vote republican. My socialist/communist personality would prefer a liberal.

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people are not nearly as angry with Hillay as Obama's rabid supporters and the media would have you think...

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