2008 Primaries Thread

i always wondered why all my friends in south carolina as a kid loved clarence thomas so much

http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1401/5h/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/7210000/7218098.jpg

a few months ago his wife led obama among black south carolinians

a few months ago his wife led obama among everybody -- this has changed big time

i agree 100% that linking obama to jackson was a bad idea -- where i differ from the rest of you is that i think what bill said was barely an idea to begin with, it was a blunder borne of clinton's famously big mouth rather than a calculation

this reminds me of the save-a-kramers on the michael richards meltdown thread who decided that what he was really saying was "as a white comedian i feel marginalized by a PC society who allow you to say words that i cannot, because i wish to deconstruct around with those words as part of my act"

xp yeah that wacky bill clinton, always shooting his mouth off on the campaign trail, with no eye on strategy or coded messages

all he has to say is that hillary's got an uphill battle in such a black state

dude i'm not gonna pile on and call you a dipshit (?!? come on guys), but this statement needs some context. a few short weeks ago, hillary was CRUSHING obama in SC, especially among black democrats. it was axiomatic that obama had 'a problem' with black voters. and now lo and behold, after getting into SC and campaigning there, obama (maybe not black enough, too nerdy, too young, and sure to be assassinated, remember?) does very very well among blacks. even the clinton expectations-setting doesn't account for how thoroughly she got dumped.

so then bill goes out to the media and says basically, 'oh big deal, it's just a bunch of black people! they picked jesse jackson, u guys remember that shit lol"

xps

i talked to a white hillary supporter at my work yesterday who said she had been down at the headquarters and everybody was real bummed about south carolina but 'who cares, it's such a small state and it's not even important'

ugh

democracy in action!

SC's my homestate in case u didnt know

a/s/l

Aw shit. Stop The Presses

Romney, McCain call each other 'liberal':
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_republicans_florida.html?source=mypi

Lieberman's on my campus this afternoon. The Sanctimony Express!

i think one thing thats important to remember is that there are more white racist voters than black voters in america - whenever the republican party wishes they had black voters as a cherry on top of their big white sundae they can never actually do it because any appeal to black voters would alienate a greater number of racist white republicans than it would bring in new black republicans

same for bush/mccain and the strategy of not being a xenophobic race-baiter on immigration - see how well that worked out with republicans

yeah, by accident or design, O is boxed in, even if he wins SC -- all that time and effort to convince black voters he's for real, and coming out of it he becomes the 'black candidate' -- exactly what he has tried (successfully) not to be. meanwhile working class whites and latinos are going with H (if stuff like that ruralvotes post are indicative, this could be pretty nasty)

the attacks on O have been so klutzy and hamfisted it's hard to believe this was the HRC gameplan all along, but who knows.

plus as always, maybe i don't know what i'm talking about.

xps

-- gff, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 2:39 PM (6 days ago)

y i not have job riting for major media??

i think one thing thats important to remember is that there are more white racist voters than black voters in america

link?

(not being a dick, genuinely curious if there was something you were citing)

"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!'