Condoleeza Rice

Great Debates
21

I ain’t brickbacon, but some of this is obvious.

It’s because the US population as a whole is racist. It was difficult enough seeing a Catholic elected president, and he was white. Blacks consistently poll lower then whites and always have.

Are you honestly unaware of this?

I wouldn never call her a “hottie,” but she’s not painful to the eyes. Again, however, the American voting public has always based their votes on looks to some degree.

Are you honestly unaware of this?

No, it’s harder for the gJtv to get elected than a black woman.

Are you honestly unaware of this?

The American voting public will not elect a gay Jewish transvestite to be their President. Period.

Nice try, but that’s not a racist statement. It’s an opinion based in mounds and mounds of evidence.

Now, as I said, I’m not brickbacon. But I find your deliberate twisting of his words in order to call him a racist to be disturbing and unbecoming.

22

I agree that the combination would be fatal to presidential ambitions, but the Jewish part would be the lest of such a person’s worries. A Jewish candidate would have to be significantly better in otyher ways than a Christian candidate, but it could be done. (Senator Lieberman, the Jew who’s come closest, didn’t get there because he was too conservative for most Democrats, and not a very charismatic figure).

But I would confidently predict that no gay person could get elected, and no transvestite could get elected, just on the basis of those anti-gay-marriage referenda last November. If the voters don’t want gays to marry, they surely don’t want them as POTUS, and the same would go for transvestites.

However, we could see a woman elected in the near future, and we could see a black person elected in the near future – again, they’d have to be significantly better than the white male they’d be running against. Condi has the problem that she’s got both handicaps.

23

She repeated variations of “I’m not interested in the job” and “I will not run” to Tim Russert on Meet The Press in August last year.

She won’t run.

She may accept a VP nomination, however.

24

I agree with the first part of your statement, a black man or a woman could now become president if (and only if) he or she was obviously superior to the opposition, but I wonder if the combination is double the handicap. Black men are often stereotyped as angry and dangerous, even by folks that would not identify themselves as racist. Hell, even by black people. A black woman would be seen as softer and less threatening than her hypothetical male clone (Connor Rice?). The true frothing racists would never vote for her, of course, but a black woman might prove more palatable to the more numerous subconcious racists.

As for Rice specifically, her denials of presidential ambitions mean less than nothing at this early stage. If she says the same in late 2006, then we’ll know. I think the fact that she’s never been elected to anything, her relative youth, moderate social politics, and lack of a family would kill her in the primaries.

Not that I care much. She was and is an important factor in Bush’s foreign policy. I’ll never vote for her.

25

It was a joke. It has nothing to do with her political positions. Was the joke that bad? I thought most people would realize I was joking.

I disagree. While I don’t like the President, plenty of people feel he is charismatic and likable,

Andros, thank you for setting this guy straight. If you are being serious, then your title as biggest dickhead on the boards is not in any danger.

  1. Being black is a problem when running for national office. If you don’t know, you are not paying attention. There have been three black senators since reconstruction (5 total), and 31 women (as of 2001). I believe there has only been one black governor. This is not because women and blacks have not run, it’s because people won’t vote for them. Take your head out of your ass.

  2. People have always voted based on how people look. That’s why people don’t typically vote for short, ugly people. While you may think Condoleeza is good looking, many people do not. A google search for “condoleeza rice ugly” returned 24.900 hits. I looked at a few, and they aren’t talking about her politics.

  3. OK, this is just retarded. I really don’t know what to say other then to implore you not not have children.

What is it with you people? That’s not what I meant at all. Your analysis of her being outside the black mainstream is correct, but that’s not what I said.

26

I have to interject here on a possibly irrelevant note. I was reading *Freakonomics *last night and a point was made regarding black politicians: They actually poll better than white politicians, if you’re talking about pre-election surveys. They cited an election for New York Mayor in which David Dinkins consistently polled at about 60%, yet won the election by a very slim margin. (No specific cite, I’m at work.)

The authors hypothesized that some voters may feel pressure to support a black politician, out of responsibility or guilt, when asked by a pollster about their opinions. But when it came time to enter the anonymous voting booth, they lost all such compulsions and cast their votes for the black politician’s opponent. It’s hard to say what motivated these voters to vote the way they did when it counted, whether it was a genteel racism or whether race was even involved. Nonetheless, this happens often with black candidates.

Which brings me back to Condi Rice. Her support within the GOP may be overstated for these very reasons. Has anyone heard a Republican give a reason other than “She’s black” for her to run as president? With Iraq likely to still be hanging around her neck like a dumbbell, is there any other compelling reason for the GOP to nominate her? Does she have the support of any group of Republican constituents besides the neocons, in any area of the GOP platform outside of foreign policy, her specialty? Will the Religious Right see her as one of them?

If she is nominated, obviously she will get the 35-40% of the electorate who vote straight GOP; however, she has to be nominated first, and she has to win over the independent voters who are likely to be underwhelmed by her involvement in Iraq and her lack of expertise in areas such as the economy.
As a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, I say “Nominate her!” :cool:

27

Yeah, I’m not sure that her being black isn’t a red herring (so to speak). After all, she’s a foreign policy wonk, of all unelectable things. Does she have any experience at all in politics – gladhanding, kissing babies, pandering, raising money? Anyway, it’s a moot point, because I can hardly see her running. VP, maybe, if asked.

28

But significantly better has no meaning in politics. It’s more about how a candidate makes people feel. Senator Lieberman had a 0% chance of being elected, he was not even close. A large part of the problem was the fact that he is Jewish.

A woman could probably get elected in the near future, but I don’t see us having a black president any time soon for a number of reasons. One, the black candidate, who would probably be democrat, would automatically lose the conservative vote. Plus, democrats are having a hard time getting elected lately.

Two, a black conservative isn’t seen as authentically black, and would have a hard time gaining a large percentage of the black vote and the liberal vote (because s/he is conservative).

Three, there are too few blacks on track to have a legit shot. As long as we have a two-party system, there are only two spots for a black person to occupy. There is (I think) one black senator now, no black governors, and three blacks recently in prominent political offices (Justice Thomas, Rice, and Powell). The latter 3 say they will not run for POTUS, and Obama has a long way to go before he could be considered a real candidate. He won his senate seat mostly due to the scandals of his opponents.

Lastly, with the demographic shift that’s occurring in America, both parties are becoming increasingly interesting in gaining the Hispanic vote, instead of the black vote. The safe pick (in terms of a non-white guy) is a Hispanic male.

29

I don’t know. I’d love to see a black president, and I’d really love to see a female president. And I am encouraged by all you who say that electing a woman is a possibility in the near future. But I’m skeptical it’ll ever happen (tho’ I’ll be the first to eat my hat, gladly, if it does).

I’m certainly guilty of thinking that the American public is more liberal than it is, and I think that this board also forgets how convervative John Q really is. Like andros said: The American voting public, on the whole, is racist. Witness the last elections, where equal rights were denounced pretty loudly across the board. And I totally overestimated John Kerry’s chances - while I thought it’d be close, I didn’t feel there was any real way he could lose. Of course he’d win the election, close though it may be. A good many of us were wrong - we’d forgotten how conservative America is.

I still don’t think a woman will be elected POTUS in my lifetime (I’m 28, for reference).

30

Not to belabor this, but how would the joke be funny if it weren’t in reference to her political positions? If it had been said in reference to Carol Moseley Braun, would have been funny? I don’t think so.

Anyway, it’s not a big deal, but you shouldn’t be surprised that your joke was taken that way.

31

Yes, it would be. The joke was the I said I read something that was obvious to anyone that has ever seen her. The fact that she is in the media often makes the probability that I would have read something about her (being black) and not have seen her is unlikely. So yes, it would be funny if it were about Mosley-Braun. It’s also funny because people often try to avoid discussing the race of a minority politicians when it will obviously be an issue. It has nothing to do with politics. I think you are in the minority in your misunderstanding.

32

Even using another poster’s self-identifying words and even prefacing it with an “if” clause, it is not appropriate to call other posters names in GD.

Beyond that,

is wholly inappropriate in GD. Take this warning as an indication that you will not do this again.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

33

WHAT!!! He intimates that I’m the biggest dickhead on the boards and when I use his words to say that he does not need to worry about losing his title, I am at fault? You have got to be kidding me. He called me a name first, are you going to warn him too? This is ridiculous.

34

Really? I find that quite bizarre. To me he has about as much personality as a brown paper bag.

Than again I may be a little weird, because I don’t agree that Condaleeza Rice is ugly. I find her moderately appealing.

35

Different strokes. No big deal.

36

Man, you are **way **too young to be making a statement like that. I’m 59, and I remember pre-1960 when people said a Roman Catholic could never be elected, and pre-1980 when people said a divorced person (or an actor, for that matter) could never be elected.

We could even elect a woman POTUS within my mother’s lifetime, and she’s almost 92.

37

Those of you who are saying, “America is not ready for a black president” might want to consider that in the 2000 pre-election runup, Colin Powell polled higher than anyone else, by a HUGE margin. By such a huge margin that everyone just assumed that the nomination would be his if he were just willing to step up and take it.

Those of you who think Republicans will never elect a pro-choice candidate simply aren’t listening. George Bush I was pro-choice, and he did a wishy-washy conversion to pro-life when he ran for president - almost 20 years ago.

The fact is, Republicans love Condi. They may not like the fact that she’s pro choice, but they LOVE the idea of sticking it to the Democrats by being the first to elect a black woman to the White House. They’d love to peel away black voters, and they’d love an instant answer to the tedious accusations that they are racist, don’t care about women and minorities, etc.

As for her qualifications… She’s been around the highest levels of power for 20 years. She was in the Reagan White House. She’s been National Security Advisor and will have had four years as Secreatary of State. She was also the Provost of Stanford university, and her intelligence is off the scale. She speaks several languages, is a concert-level pianist, and has a Ph.D.

On paper, her qualfications make Hillary Clinton look pretty bad, and I don’t hear people criticising her qualifications…

The big unknown with Condi is whether or not she’s a politician. It’s unclear whether she can put together a fundraising apparatus, whether she can and will schmooze, kiss babies, attend rotaty club luncheons, and all the rest of the legwork that politicians have to do. It’s not clear what her temperament is like, and how she’ll respond when the press starts digging for dirt on her and her family. But the same can be said for many people who run for high office.

Besides, if the primary fight were between her, John McCain, and Rudy Guliani, the religious right wouldn’t have a “go to” guy anyway. Guliani is also pro-choice, and McCain has harsh words to say about the religious right.

38

Polling well and winning an actual election are very different. Someone already spoke about how black candidates poll well, but don’t get elected when push comes to shove.

If being pro-choice wasn’t a problem, then why did Bush do a wishy-washy conversion?

39

It was a sop to the religious right, of course. The thing is, everyone knew he was squishy on the subject, but let it pass. All the candidate has to do is pledge to not make the issue a priority in their adminstration, and all will be well.

Really? How many black candidate have polled well and gone on to lose Presidential elections again?

40

IIRC Condi said she wouldn’t run for POTUS, she didn’t say she wouldn’t serve. There is already a bit of a Draft Condi movement. If she wins at the Rep Convention there’s only about eight weeks to the election. With no clear front runner and the possibility of the Reps being unable to unite behind Giuliani or McCain, it could happen.
http://www.draftcondi.us/