2008 Primaries Thread

"Obama's lead over Clinton among black men is more than 50 points, and among black women, once a Clinton stronghold, Obama has an 11 point advantage," said CNN polling director Keating Holland.

in october, hillary had a 24-point lead over obama among black voters nationally. i don't have any idea why the numbers have changed so much but the clinton campaign must be aghast at this.

xp For that to be true, it would mean that more than 16% of whites are racist.

(Whites make up 80% of U.S. population, blacks make up 12.8%. 16% of 80% = 12.8%.)

of the 120 million people voted in 04, 12 million were black, 93 million were white

i don't have any idea why the numbers have changed so much

campaigning!

well yeah. but specifically.

ethan's point is indirectly proven by the continued practice of race-baiting. politicians will stop using such tactics to appeal to white racism when it ceases to be politically expedient to do so.

xposts

and for the millionth time we've had this argument on ilx i dont mean racist in the cross-burning kkk membership sense, just in the subliminal 'i dont want to vote for a candidate who wants to help blacks as much as whites' sense

did y'all hear Donna Brazile's comment that part of Obama's success can be attributed to the fact that he's the first American presidential hopeful to talk to white and black voters the same way? a friend reported this to me; it struck me as kind of profound.

i think thats true - really i think why the clinton tactics in SC are doomed to fail with anyone who doesnt already dislike obama is that he's one of the first politicians ive seen who doesnt treat the 'black vote' as this big alien voting bloc outside of the real voters you need to win elections

bill of course is the worst example of this - play the sax, sing in a gospel choir, eat some soul food, then gut welfare & smack sister souljah around

yeah, she didn't say as much, but it seemed like a pretty direct indictment of Bill Clinton.

one of the interesting things about presidential campaigns in the 24-hr-cnn/blog/youtube/etc age, is that increasingly you can't play to different independent factions of voters without those other factions finding out, and obama's doing the best at actually having a consistent message & persona that appeals across all those barriers

my support of Obama basically boils down to this: he doesn't scare or embarrass me, which I can't say for ANY of the other front-runners. As far as his presumed inexperience, a lot of the same people levying this critique likely supported a no-name governor from a no-name (no offense, Arkansans) state back in '92, yeah?

and i guess of mitt "who let the dogs out" romney. and, oh, lots of people, i guess.

xposts

i wonder sometimes about like presidential campaigns in 1890 or whatever - candidates really could just go from town to town saying absolute contradictory things and there wasnt really a mechanism calling them out on it!

brazile's thing about obama makes me worry that pundits will take this as a sign that we live in a post-race america

the mitt video reminds me of jack donaghy & his little league team - 'hey look, its that king we met!'

one of the interesting things about presidential campaigns in the 24-hr-cnn/blog/youtube/etc age, is that increasingly you can't play to different independent factions of voters without those other factions finding out, and obama's doing the best at actually having a consistent message & persona that appeals across all those barriers

^^^ agreed

xp max i hear you, but i dont think obama is necessarily moving for 'post-race' as much as just not using race as a political wedge or a bargaining chip

i think that's true about obama being able to speak to different blocs in the same way; it's also true that he has the opportunity to move into that space because of people like jesse jackson and stokely carmichael and mlk and bob moses -- obv

my dad's arg for obama is that he's going to bring a lot of new people (including howard dean) into the powerbase of the democratic party, put fresh new people in all kinds of positions up and down the party as well as in all the various federal agencies he gets to influence; with clinton it's the same old gang

ya i guess its also abt not marginalizing the black vote--actually appealing to them instead of just doing enough to not piss them off and starting a press shitstorm

he doesn't want terry mcauliffe calling the shots for the dems for the next 8 years

xpost

basically every politician wants things to be racialized when its good for them and non-racialized when itll be bad for them

and here goes bill clinton, making things racialized exactly when it's bad for his wife!!

max, I hope not, but I don't think that's what Brazile meant.

I think her point was mostly that people are smart enough to know when they're being cynically pandered to and politicians do that at their peril.

yeah, Obama's discourse about race is more people are complicated, rather than race doesn't matter.

what brilliant legerdemain

xpost

are you fucking kidding?

he tried to make the SC campaign about race so white voters would abandon obama, it backfired, and now he's crying foul and saying it doesnt matter

Tracer, not brilliant, just fucking predictable and old as the hills.

so, basically, exactly what i just said

haha ok sure

'hey maybe i can use some of this "racism" to get white people to vote for my wife instead of the black guy.... oh no, it's getting out of hand!'

guys just fyi obama went to my school before he transferred to columbia and helped initiate a set of college policies that led to us being (at least numerically) one of the most racially diverse lib arts schools in the country

xpost isn't that what your analysis suggests??

max what's your school?

well yeah tracer... actually the more i think about it the more it seems like the michael richards thing to me, this indignant 'how can you DO this, i'm WHITE!' appeal met with unexpected shock & disgust and then backpedaled away from

i mean what was the point of hillary's lbj/mlk comparison if not to say 'blacks talk pretty but whites get things done'

0cc1dental college in los angeles

his "mentor" was one of my least favorite politics profs tho

which was an unfortunate truth in 1964 but is not in 2007

toni morrisson endorsed obama!

i think you're attributing way more to these comments than they merit

how uncharacteristically relevant of her

ah, the save-a-racist's cry against analysis

'i dont know what the big deal is, it's just a word!'

trent lott just meant that strom thurmond would've enacted firm republican policies

please

by the way, william kristol agrees with you guys and is eager to write about it -

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/opinion/28kristol.html

my question for you: who benefits from this endless tea-leaf reading about bill clinton's secret vile racist soul?

millions of voters who actually have sense

kristol was a rumsfeld basher too - i guess i should start liking rumsfeld since bill kristol doesnt!