FWIW, I agree with those statements. Obama is black but not all “YO YO WHASSUP!” He’s a safe black, like Tiger Woods or Colin Powell. He’s polite and well spoken, but if it wasn’t for his race, what would there really be remarkable about him? “Change, change, change, change”?
Have you ever listened to Obama speak? Or his wife? Have you looked at the way he deals with his rivals and colleagues?
To imply that so many people are so charged up about this election year because of his novelty is crazy. Jesse Jackson was black, and well-spoken. Nothing like this ever happened with him. To put Obama up as some kind of nine-days wonder because he’s a “polite and well-spoken” African-American presidential candidate is ignoring everything about the man other than his skin color.
To be fair, don’t you think that this has at least as much to due with his name? I don’t recal other black politicains as being considered Muslim. Michael Steele, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Alan Keyes, etc., etc. In fact can you point to another black pol who was mischaracterized in this way? MInd you, I’m not saying has race played no role in this, just that his name, even without his middle name, played a larger role.
Or if he didn’t go into that sing-song cadence with his voice reminiscent of Jackson and other black preachers. I gotta say, when I hear him speak normally, I’m mightily impressed. But once he goes into that sing-song shit, see ya.
Are you comparing apples and oranges here? I think the Clinton stat you’re citing is 90% for democrat (Bill C.), 10% for the republican candidate. Is that right?
Jesse Jackson??? How can you compare him to Obama? Jackson is unelectable. Too religious, too much of a chip on his shoulder. He has nothing interesting to say, he’s a showboater. He’s one step better than Al Sharpton.
So there is, in fact, more to Obama’s success as a candidate then just being “well-spoken.”
Man, I’m starting to hate this election.
I think a large part of his success is due to his race.
Think of when you first heard of him, I heard something like “he’s a young black Senator named Barack Obama.”
“Starting to hate” it? I’ve hated it all along, there’s no one to vote for.
I hadn’t heard of him at all until Jack Ryan tried to get 7 of 9 to do nasty things in public and the media got wind of it. Until then, he was a state official of a state I didn’t live in or near.
I didn’t really warm to him at all until he started doing good things in the Senate. Then when he started running for president. When this all began, I was good with either one of them getting the nomination, but Clinton’s campaign has really been run dirty, and I can’t get behind that. I will still vote for her if she somehow wins it, because anyone is better than a Republican, but I can’t cheer her on, and I’ll hope that the next 8 years will be better than the last 8, at least.
Well if you put it that way:
Source for African American voting breakdown
That was South Carolina
to be conservative I use 70% instead of 80%
Popular vote to date:
Total…25,446,319
Obama…13,025,003
Clinton…12,421,316
Obama leads by…603,687
African Americans comprise 13 % of the population(Ignoring that most African Americans vote democrat even though their representation would be even higher)
African American Total Popular Vote is .13 x 25,446,319 = 3,308,021
African American Obama vote, .70 x 3,308,021 = 2,315, 615
African American Clinton vote, .30 x 3,308,021 = 992,406
Subtract African American votes from each candidate
Obama would have 10, 709,388
Clinton would have 11, 428,910
Clinton now leads Obama in the popular vote (the norm) by 719,522 popular votes. That is how all the other democratic demographics, the non black demographics in sum are voting. Throw the African American votes back in minus the 20% and Hillary’s lead would be even greater. And if those 20% ignored Barack’s skin colour, her lead would be greater still.
Sure we can argue about the motivation of the 20%, but that is the only category that I can put those blacks who see the only real difference between the two candidates is their skin colour.
But a much larger part of his success is due to his ability to campaign, ability to connect to people, ability to convey his positions in a compelling, thoughtful manner, ability to energize the previously unenergetic, ability to speak authoritatively and intelligently, ability to speak well on the fly, and ability to put forward a vision that appeals to a lot of people. Oh yeah, and he’s also relatively young.
We could just as easily say a large part of Hillary’s success is due to her gender, using the very same rationale that would lead one to say that about Barack.
If Hillary hadn’t voted for the Iraq war, she’d already be the nominee.
Misogynistic spewings about Hillary (see Aeschines last Pit thread) and non-ironic comments about Obama being “safe black” because he doesn’t carry on like a rapper cariacature causes me to wish the inaguration would hurry up and come, yes.
You’re right. Screaming is verbal. I don’t know if you are actually screaming as you write. But almost all your posts come off as strident, shrill, overly zealous, and unpleasant.
And if you think I’d stop supporting Hillary because you think she would be a “terrible, terrible, terrible” President, you must think this election is for Jr. High class President.
Hillary is a very strong candidate and an accomplished person. I don’t think she will win the nomination. But I’m not going to be upset by it, because my second choice is is also a very strong candidate and an accomplished person.
I’ve said this before, and i’ll probably say it again, its a good thing Obama can see this election and himself with much more objectivity and perspective than many of his supporters do.
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It’s misleading to-
Wait, we’re in the Pit. It’s complete stastical bullshit to do this with one demographic group and not others. What about the significant advantage among Latinos or older voters, for example? Basically it sounds like you are saying black voters support Obama because he’s black, but everybody who supports Clinton has a real reason. Let’s call this a flawed analysis. It’s been obvious from day one that different groups favored each candidate. Interestingly, Obama has been successful in eroding or reversing Clinton’s leads in most of those categories, while Clinton hasn’t really managed to do the same. I guess that’s because he’s black. 
Look, I’m not denying that other demographics favour Clinton. But they aren’t race based except arguably for the Asians. My point simply is that Obama owes his lead to the anomolous 20% of the black vote. It isn’t really much, but given that Obama supporters are calling for Hillary to drop out because she’s behind, that 20% has to be really significant and supports Ferarro’s statement.
OK, this is a side issue, and please don’t mistake me for Flying Dutchman here; I disagree with the contention that Obama would not be as successful if he were white. As a matter of fact, I consider this to be an almost comically silly thing to say on its face.
But to say that the calculus wouldn’t change isn’t true, either. It would. Barack Obama’s race is a part of him, a part of his experiences in life. It is one contributor to the man he is now. If he were white, everything about his life would have been substantively different. His experiences would have been different. Dutchman wants to argue that he might have been less popular among black voters, which is possible. It is also possible that he would have been more popular among Dutchman’s so-called “normal” (which apparently is a word for “not black”) voters.
But the thing that makes this so ridiculous is that we will never, ever know. To try to reduce this primary election to a single factor, and say “If this one factor were changed, the results would be different,” is to pretend to knowledge that no one has - and to demonstrate either utter disingenuousness or an extremely simple mind.
- storyteller, 30-year-old white male who would have voted for Clinton ten months ago, but who voted for Obama, for reasons having nothing to do with his race.
Indeed. If Hillary being married to a president makes her presidential material, then Ferarro being married to a crook makes her criminal material.
Last I heard, she also held leads among Latinos and Jews, but now we’re getting into details that are far removed from her actual point.
It’s pretty much only in your head that this qualifies as an anomaly, and as I said, the fact that you don’t consider any other demographics as potential anomalies makes it irrelevant.
[Translation: What you’re saying is stupid.]
You’ve repeatedly proved you don’t understand her point in the first place, because she’s not talking about black voters. She’s talking about voters and the news media unfairly favor Obama because he is a black man. Her point applied to white voters and others, not just black voters. She is saying that if he was white, white voters would prefer Clinton.
Comical hey? What happened to the other established white male democratic candidates ?
Oh dear, lets attempt to indroduce a racist element to my contributions in this thread. Your statement is a lie. A word search will reveal that you are the first person to introduce the word “normal” in this thread. I’ll put you in the same camp as Shayna who can only argue by falsly infering racist motives to their opponents.
To discuss a factor does not imp it stands alone.
But but “Barack Obama’s race is a part of him, a part of his experiences in life. It is one contributor to the man he is now.”
ywtf, this is an excellent post, and it made me laugh because of the absurdities it highlights in Ferraro’s position.
A long time ago I heard an interesting question on KAOS, a left-coast radio station. It’s a question for white folks: how much would you pay for an operation that would turn you irreversibly black, so that you could gain the benefits of being black in America?
It puts paid, IMO, to the ridiculous idea that being black confers an overall advantage in material terms in our society. That’s one of the stupidest ideas that’s still running around.
When I read that Ferraro was taking credit for the superdelegate system, I lost most of the respect I had for her. Shayna’s OP took away the rest.
And:
Yeah, but you’re a racist jackass who DOES make decisions like that; it’s not appropriate to assume that all black people are racist jackasses like you.
Shayna, he’s not worth your energy. You’re consistently one of the best-informed posters around, who takes great care to post from a position of solid information; if you ignore dumbasses who post with nothing to support them but base contemptible instinct, nobody will fault you.
Daniel