Patterns
Ever since Obama became President of Democrats there have been some not so subtle rumblings about Obama’s “issue” with white voters. This line of attack is now being used by Hillary Clinton in the final push to convert super delegates to her side.
This idea that white people aren’t going to vote for Obama in the general election is very troubling. It’s also built on very faulty logic. No Democrat nominee has been able to capture a majority of the white votes in the general election since before 1992. (Read that line again, slowly.) This is because democrats don’t traditionally win Presidential races by getting a majority of white voters. They win by getting a large number of white voters and then winning among pretty much everyone else. In 1992 Bill Clinton only got 39% of white voters*. By the way, the largest subset of “everyone else” is black voters.
Now, it may come as a shock to you, but one of the Democratic candidates is doing better than the other among both white and black voters in the general election. Yep. Even crackers like me can’t get enough of Obama. The primaries may tell a slightly different story. Hillary’s strong support among white female Democrats may be throwing off the numbers vis a vis white voters in the primaries, but Hillary’s numbers among white men take a nosedive when she is pitted against McCain. Also, Hillary is no longer of any real significance here. That ship has sailed.
Keep all of this in mind while you watch the media spin over the next couple of weeks.
Editor’s note: I know, I know. Another political post. I am just waiting for my Simple Shoes hemp slip ons to come in the mail so I’ll have something else to talk about. Just hang in there… this will all be over soon.
Late Update: One of our super-classy readers, who refuses to use his real name, has pointed out that the fact that only 39% of whites supported Bill Clinton in 1992 is a misleading statistic since it was a 3 way race between Clinton, Bush and Perot. This is a fair point. It would have been better to point out that he only received 43% of the white vote in his “landslide” victory against Bob Dole four years later.
Also, I have removed a link to an article about Ed Koch since it really didn’t have anything to do with my thesis. It’s just that Koch and cooch sound so similar and we are really pushing this whole cooch thing right now.
About The Author - Stirling McLaughlin is an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator in New York City. Stirling enjoys vegan baking, expensive sportswear and mustard and relish sandwiches. Stirling lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter. - Visit Stirling's site.
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Cute, very cute.
Let’s cry and whine when Obama’s “bitter” comment is misinterpreted but pounce when Clinton says white working class voters won’t vote for Obama (which both primaries and exit polls have indicated) when we all know that it is an economic issue, not a race issue and that is what she meant. It is so funny sometimes that subtle racism is propagated by the very people that claim to fight against it.
Or is semantic fascism and intellectual bigotry this new politics that Obama supporters speak about as saving the country. Sounds reminiscent of Plato to me.
Dear Mr. Duke,
Please read the above article. I think you’ll find your comments are a little off topic. I also think you’ll find you’ve missed the point entirely. Seriously. Read it.
Also, blow me.
Thanks,
-The Management
I’m confused. Didn’t I use big words and sound passionately smart. I thought that made me right, don’t try to argue this or your entire campaign goes down the toilet and we will be electing someone with substance to the White House.
And seriously, who wants that.
Love always,
Shirley
Okay all joking aside, my comments were no where near off topic.
1. Your first link, unless it has changed doesn’t even mention the topic of Race and makes an argument completely separate from race as to why Obama can not win.
2. Clinton’s quote has been “”that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” Okay, as far as I know she has not run around claiming america is racist and she has for weeks and weeks courted and won over working class white voters. So either she is a secret racist or perhaps stumbled on her words (notice the large number of commas within the sentence, it was not exactly rehearsed).
Since we are branded as racist if we say that Obama wins 90% of the black vote because he is black (see Ferraro, who apparently was allowed to simultaneously claim that she got a large vote bump due to women voters and that wasn’t sexist) we will just assume he does for other reasons. Clinton receives a majority of the Lation vote. I guess we could see if anyone has the Asian vote tied up, but basically that leaves whites as undecideds. Now the white population is sectioned off - educated and not educated. We can divide by economic status, we can divide by age. Clinton’s argument is an economic one, not that “white people ain’t gonna vote for no black president”
This makes the rest of your article for the most part pointless. It is gotcha politics at its finest (of note your 39% of whites for Bill Clinton in 1992 should remind readers it was a legitimate 3 way race to make the figure less misleading)
Also of note, in the effort to create an honest discussion.
There is research to indicate that in many states African American candidates receive a pump of several percentage points in polls that does not translate to the ballot booth. The postulated reason for this is the public stigma of appearing racist.
There has been a large chunk of exit polling that state that a larger portion of Clinton supporters would not vote for Obama, than Obama suporters would not vote for Clinton (PA is a good example of this)
So where does this leave us, really right were we started. Racism and sexism play a huge role in American life. What effect will this have the election, we don’t know. We do know that white working class democrats prefer Clinton and African American voters prefer Obama. We also know that traditionally it is these white working class (often called Reagan Democrats) that determine the outcome of an election. This however assumes that a democrat, as you stated, receives the bulk of the non-white vote.
In the end, sadly, a great opportunity to address racism and sexism in an honest fashion has been almost completely bypassed in this entire primary. Instead we have watched overly zealous “PC” reporters harp on semantic missteps and watched Obama use this to his advantage at every step. In his best moment of the campaign we watched Obama address the issues of race in this country and finish leaving it incomplete and using it to throw political knives at Clinton affiliates.
He runs a great campaign, I will give you that. Then again so did Karl Rove.
Oh and I will get to my intellect bigot comment and why just the title of your post is an indicator of problems in the entire progressive movement in my next post.
I am sure I can work it in when I attach whatever pro-Obama, anti-Clinton rubbish you post up here next time.
Charming.