Race To The Finish
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, September 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: The supporters of the first post-racial candidate keep bringing it up. Racism is the new refuge of scoundrels. The real issue is not the color of Obama's skin, but the thickness of it.
Read More: Election 2008
For a time, Barack Obama was riding "the chance to make history" train, garnering huge support on that issue alone. Then came the GOP nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, an outlet for disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters and hockey moms, plus a different way to make history.
Once "hope" and "change" had to be defined as more than a podium sign, and Obama had to speak on occasion without a teleprompter, avoiding the joint town hall meetings he promised John McCain, it became apparent that it was not change for the better Obama was offering.
He offered trillions in new taxes and surrender to our enemies abroad. He was a classic liberal, the No. 1 liberal in the U.S. Senate, and that's a losing argument.
Why do Democrats think McCain has caught up? Speaking in Iowa City, Iowa, on Tuesday, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, another woman Obama did not choose, provided an answer.
"Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?" she asked in response to a question about why the election is so close. "That may be a factor. All the code language, all that doesn't show up in the polls."
Liberals, not being able to understand why The One we've been waiting for could possibly lose, needed a comforting excuse, and racism provided it.
For example, David Paterson, the Democratic governor of New York, recently accused Republicans of using "community organizer" not as a criticism of Obama's tissue-thin resume, but as a racial put-down.
But if anyone has repeatedly injected race into this campaign, it is Obama.
Meeting with donors in San Francisco on April 6, he famously told them of "small towns in Pennsylvania" and the Midwest beset by job losses in a changing economy. He told of how "they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment" to vent their frustrations.
It is Obama who said racism was the reason he could lose.
"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face," he said in Springfield, Mo., on July 30.
"So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, 'he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.'" Who are "they"?
CNN's Jack Cafferty says: "Race is arguably the biggest issue on this election, and it's one that nobody is talking about." Nobody on the Republican side anyway. Cafferty opines: "The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain couldn't be more well-defined. . . . Yet the polls remain close. Doesn't make sense . . . unless it's race."
It doesn't make sense to Time's Michael Grunwald, either. In a piece titled "For Obama, Race Remains Elephant In The Room," he said McCain's "Celebrity" ad linking Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton "had a whiff of lock-up-your-women alarmism about the sexual power of black men."
Speaking of small towns in Pennsylvania, Grunwald tells of a visit to a Manheim Central High School football practice. The coach said his team works hard, plays with discipline and comes through in the end. "A lot like John McCain," said the coach.
Grunwald writes: "If you're familiar with the code words of the sports world, you've probably guessed that Manheim's players had something else in common with McCain: They were white."
So what if Obama loses? Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatimah Ali wrote in her column of Sept. 2: "If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness ? and hopelessness!"
Maybe Team Obama will provide us with a glossary of code words.
Its candidate's very nomination and rise to fame and fortune belie his charges of racism. Martin Luther King once dreamed of a day when people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Sadly for Barack Obama, that day has arrived.
Re: Obama and the "racism excuse"
I just don't get it. A majority voted for Bush last-time. Do they just think we're going to lie down and say, "Oh, yes, most liberal senator, you can have the election? After all, it's owed to you."
Ideology doesn't change that much. If 50+% voted for the conservative candidate last time, why is it so hard to imagine a close election this time? The electorate already had a chance to exercise their pique toward Republicans---it was 2006.
Have to disagree with the premise of this article. Race IS playing a (quite large) role in this election.
For example, during the primaries in Kentucky, post polling indicated that race was a factor for FORTY-FOUR PERCENT of voters. Source: http://tinyurl.com/4r4xvf
Claiming that race plays no part in this election is incredibly disingenuous. And just plain false.
WTH, Julie?
You post this article here, with a major premise that people not voting for Obama aren't doing so because of his race, but because of his lack of presidential qualities, and then post this over on E08?
http://tinyurl.com/4fwzmm
Ambivalent much?
I definitely agree that race is playing a part, but it'd be curious to see (and I doubt this could accurately be measured) how race is helping him vs. hurting him.
Barack Obama won a more than significant majority of African American & black voters during the primaries. Of those who say race is a factor, how many are saying so because they want to vote for a black man, and how many are saying so because they don't want to vote for a black man?
ETA - In general, not just in Kentucky, which is only 8% black.
Teehee
I was just about to add this before you edited.
In Kentucky, I'd wager it's probably hurting him - and that's from having lived close to KY for so long and seeing the prevalence of confederate flags everywhere. Other places, it's probably helping him, at least some.
He offered trillions in new taxes and surrender to our enemies abroad. He was a classic liberal, the No. 1 liberal in the U.S. Senate, and that's a losing argument.
Well this was an unnecessarily inflammatory op/ed. It's very alienating to tell someone they are "surrendering to our enemies abroad" nearly every time they have a different view than you do on how to solve a problem.
From JulieF's article she posted on the other board:
But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.
More than a third of all white Democrats and independents ? voters Obama can't win the White House without ? agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.
That is just depressing.
hmmmmm.
and how Kerry was the "most liberal" 4 years ago...
I am the 99%.
His race is both helping & hurting. The African American vote is expected to turn out in record numbers for Obama.
On the other hand there is no denying some people will not vote for him because he is black.
Any stats on how these offset each other?
Kerry won 89% of the African American vote. Obama is projected to get 91% of the AA vote. This 2% jump won't make much of a difference, especially if you consider AA's make up less than 12% of the electorate.
BUT how many more black Americans (I say 'black' to be more inclusive, not to be inflammatory) will turn out to vote for Obama who didn't vote in 2004? Shouldn't we, based on the numbers who came out for the primaries, expect to see this happen in the general election?
My thoughts are (and I could be entirely wrong here), that,as horrible as it is (and I only say this because I lived most of my life in places where I heard the n-word thrown around quite casually, saw confederate flags painted on barns, houses, and pick-ups, heard "them" comments from even highly educated people...), I'm worried that the negative implications from Obama's race are going to hurt him slightly more than help him.
My logic? It's not as if African-Americans haven't been voting at all before now. And I'm afraid that even the large increase in the number of African-American voters is going to be outweighed by the racist bigots who have always been voting, and those who are driven to the polls by hate this year.
::fingers crossed and double crossed that I'm wrong::
I think one other dynamic will have to be looked at is whether the additional blacks that come out to vote are even in states that will actually matter? For example, I live in MD. Maryland was going to be democratic regardless. So record numbers doesn't really change the outcome here. So for swing states, do they have a significant enough black presence that "record numbers" in that particular state will actually impact the results?
Good point. I think it can make a difference in Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe Missouri.
Unfortunately, the states with the most frequent occurrences of racism also often happen to be the states with the most black people. BUT those also tend to be red states. So many factors!