I was in Chicago last week. Coworkers knew I had grew up in ND…and expressed surprise that ND would vote for Obama.
No surprise…one candidate was from Illinios…the other from NEW YORK! NEW YORK! Nodakians will NOT vote for someone from New York when there is a viable candidate from Illinios. I imagine the same is for Iowa.
Race/gender are mostly out of this election. If you make predictions based on race/gender, your predictions will likely be wrong (like no way ND would vote for a black man).
I see HC using her gender if it helps her (crying…being emotional on TV)…
OB hasn’t done anything even remotely near taking advantage of his race…
As a middle aged LDS man who has been backing Obama for a long time (and who openly campaigned against Romney), I ask “why is this so surprising?”. I think this point says a lot about existing biases in this country still going strong.
Yes and no. It’s true that a number of vast-majority-white states have strongly backed Obama, but there are also some pretty clear demographic breakdowns - not just race and gender, but age and ethnicity.
It’s not a bias. Anywhere that mormons make a significant portion of the population (Nevada, Utah) Romney is miles and miles ahead of any other Republican. You can’t be seriously trying to deny that Romney has the support of almost every Mormon who votes, are you?
That’s not really true. He knows he has rock solid support from blacks, so he spends a whole lot of time and money reminding them that they actually have to go vote. It’s true that he’s not really pushing race into his campaign, but he knows exactly who’s buttering his bread.
But Romney wasn’t running as The Mormon anymore than Obama is running as The Black Guy. Obama will get 85+% of the black vote regardless. That is, historically, how blacks in the US vote.
There aren’t enough Mormons in the US to make “Vote Mormon in 2008!” a winning strategy. You also can’t make it to the White House by saying, ‘Once you’ve tried Black, you’ll Never Go Back!’ As mentioned, Jackson never got very far with that line.
It will only be a a triumph for America if we elect a black guy, if the black guy we elect got there for reasons apart from his race. Tokenism only takes you so far - to succeed in the mainstream, you have to compete in the mainstream. And to get elected, you have to go beyond your base.
There was never any question but that Romney would have to go beyond his “base”, if you consider his “base” as Mormons. I think the point of the NPR piece was to show that Obama was doing the same. It would be roughly equivalent to an interview with a black person who was supporting Romney.
And, for it to be a triumph for America, the black guy has to be a reasonably good President once he gets elected. If he is a disaster, it is hard to avoid the (no doubt bigoted) assumption that he failed because of his race. And this would be particularly strong a temptation if a candidate ran a racially-based campaign to any significant degree.
Regards,
Shodan
I still can’t help but feel that a significant portion of the Reagan Democrats would never vote for Obama because of his skin color. That may be only five percent of the population (just a WAG) but it would be enough to tip an election.
I hope I am wrong and that we have moved past that, but I’m not so sure…
The kinds of people who won’t vote for Obama because of his skin color wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either, and probably never vote Democrat in national elections.
Racism has never been limited to skin color, at least in the US.
They might not vote for Hillary, either, but I dispute that they never vote Dem in national elections. I’m talking about a blue collar union household who has voted:
Bush, Bush, Clinton/Perot, Clinton/Perot, Bush Sr., Reagan, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, Nixon, LBJ, Kennedy, Ike, Ike, Truman, FDR, FDR, FDR, FDR (this guy is old) in the last elections…
Notice that every winning Dem has had the support of these guys, (and the split support of Clinton gave him two plurality wins), and Obama, and as you say, Hillary won’t have it. A problem for them?
Nor is racism restricted to any particular end of the political spectrum, people. Please bear that in mind.
I didn’t want to bring it up but since you mention it, I remember her referring to her gender during a couple fo debates (something along the lines that her gender represents change).
Its more like tribalism. I have seen groups of otherwise diverse Yankee fans treating an almost equally diverse group of Mets fans like crap.
Ahh the Archie Bunker vote.
Actually it’s the people-who-always-vote-for-the-winning-candidate vote. An important constituency indeed!
He has made surprising gains, but so far only for certain in the Democratic race, where people are known to be more accepting and open minded. After all the disgust for the Republican party over the last eight years, Obama was only 46 to 41 v McCain in a recent poll, well within the Bradley Effect range. I’ve always said a mild, fairly liberal Republican with no ties to the current regime stands an excellent chance of beating Obama or Clinton. And when you open the voting up to Republicans who are generally less racially accepting than Democats, you may well see this result, and you may also see more of the racism that you aren’t seeing now.
Even if you are correct in saying, “…<snip>Republicans who are generally less racially accepting than Democats, you may well see this result, and you may also see more of the racism that you aren’t seeing now”
If Obama get’s the nod, and many are saying it is his to lose now, there is an extremely high democratic showing now during the primaries, and this will continue into the open election…again, making it Obama’s election to lose. Nothing as far as I can see is going to lessen Obama’s poipularity after he get’s the nod. Personally, I’d expect his convention speech this year to blow the entire nation away…again.
Agree, if the Deomcrats get out and vote he has a good chance, but I find it surprising that after the last eight years, he only has a preliminary 46 to 41 poll edge over McCain- you would think any Dem over any Republican would be double digits at least. Five points, if accurate, is nothing for a moderate to overcome- the average Republican is sticking to McCain, period, but McCain could sway Dems and independents who still have doubts about a black President.
I don’t. It’s still a long way before the election, and the majority of people (the ones who don’t vote in primaries, for example) probably have a much clearer opinion of what McCain is than what Obama is.