I was thinking Gov. Bev Perdue of North Carolina, who is a fresh-ish face from a significant state. What you’re saying is correct in general- people didn’t elect Black Men president, they elected a specific guy who is black. So demographics have little predictive value here, but considering women are a full half of the population and that a woman came close to winning this time, and the idea that these barries are falling, I think that suggests a female president is probably next. There’s nothing that suggests it’ll happen specifically in 2016. That’s my own prediction from another thread here.
Didn’t Obama speak at the Dem Convention in 2004? And weren’t some thinking of him as a potential candidate back than, more than 4 years ago?
Yes. That was his first big moment in the national spotlight. One Doper - I forget whom - posted here the very next morning, predicting Obama would be the next President.
Wasn’t Herbert Hoover also Quaker?
Lemur866 writes:
> Religiosity ebbs and flows.
Exactly. The following is taken mostly from Head and Heart: American Christianities by Garry Wills, but you can find this in any good history of American religion. The U.S. has gone through four periods of religiosity. It has about a 90-year cycle. The following is an approximate timeline:
The First Great Awakening - peaked about 1730
The Second Great Awakening - peaked about 1820
Fundamentalism - peaked about 1910
The Religious Right - peaked about 2000