Obama Wins, No Matter What
When so many states are at stake and so many voters go to the polls, one is tempted when summing up Super Tuesday to go overboard and try to overwhelm the reader with numbers and story lines.
I am going to assume that most of you have already absorbed the statistics and many of the headlines that give us the big picture of what happened last night. So instead of summarizing who won and who lost, there is a small corner of the story that I would like to highlight.
An extraordinary statistic jumped out of the jumble of numbers and percentages that pulled me up short and caused me to reflect on the past as well as the future. In the exit polls from the Democratic party primary in Georgia, nestled in with indicators of age, income, and religion was the vote cast by white males. When you think about it, this is startling:
Vote by Sex and Race Clinton Edwards Obama
White Men (16%)
Clinton – 48%
Edwards – 6%
Obama – 45%
Within Obama’s lifetime, a black man in Georgia has gone from being prevented from exercising his right to vote to capturing a near majority of the sons and grandsons of his former oppressors in a run for the highest office in the land.
I suppose it’s no big thing for many younger Americans who weren’t born and raised with the idea that there were limits inherent in the American political system that would prevent a black man from achieving what Mr. Obama has achieved. It is a shameful thing to believe in those limits – bred to it by history and circumstance as we of my generation were.
And it is hard to throw off the chains that limited our vision and stifled our imaginations which for 300 years has viewed the African American race as an uncomfortable appendage to America – better seen and not heard while demanding they accept first slavery, then second class citizenship, and finally the tyranny of low expectations that both liberals and conservatives have been guilty of fostering.
I don’t care for Mr. Obama’s politics. I devoutly hope he is not elected President of the United States. But I do care very much that whatever success he enjoys is a good thing for America despite our disagreement on the issues. And in the long skein of our remarkable, troubled history as a people, we have had precious few moments when the original sin of slavery has been redeemed in some small way by the actions of both whites and blacks, united the only way that counts; in the voting booth where southern white men were willing to grant the enormous power of the presidency to a black man.
And lest I cast too many aspersions on southern white males by highlighting the historical relevance of Obama’s achievement, I need not remind readers of history that northern urban centers were not very welcoming of African Americans when the great migration occurred from south to north in the early decades of the 20th century.
While not suffering the nauseating indignities of Jim Crow laws, blacks in the north were taken for granted by the Democratic party political machines while being denied opportunities that whites were routinely granted. It may not be as historically significant that Barack Obama won 70% of the vote in Kansas, one of the whitest states in the union. But it is still a signpost that points the way to a very different kind of future than the one those of us of a certain age imagined so many years ago.
Obama has won 12 primaries of the 22 contested races. He won in the west, the south, the north the east, and the Midwest. He won in big states and small states. He was much more competitive in states like New Jersey and Massachusetts than could have been imagined a few short weeks ago.
He has transcended party and ideology, attracting droves of young people and those who have never participated in the political process to his banner. And he has excited Democrats and elicited admiration from Republicans as no other candidate in recent memory.
It is an achievement that beyond his race and compelling personal story, reminds us that America is still the land of opportunity for those willing to embrace the dream and live it to your fullest potential. Obama has made the most of his opportunities, climbing the ladder of success, his talent recognized at every level which led to, in turn, other opportunities. He is not a sudden success but rather he made it the old fashioned way; hard work and maximizing his chances for advancement.
And now he stands as a candidate with as good a chance of winning the presidential nomination as Hillary Clinton – a politician perhaps not as gifted but the inheritor of the most efficient and professional political machine in modern political history. No matter what happens from here on out, Obama’s place in history is secure.
As a conservative and nominal Republican, Obama is an anathema to everything I believe. But watching him has cheered my soul and given me hope that future generations of America will, in the immortal words of Dr. King, judge people “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Rick Moran blogs at Right Wing Nut House.
Rick Moran is inspired by Obama’s rise? He should be frightened after a look at his razor thin resume and vacuous speeches. The visual of such a green bean sitting across the table from Vladimir Putin – or just about anyone else who has the semblance of a spine should scare the hell out of anyone who has a clue.
Time to sober up, Mr. Moran!
You know darn good and well that when Obama loses the media and the Left will pin it on racism, racism, racism. There can be no other way, because race is the ONLY reason Obama is standing up there where he is right now.
Please. Dear God. Stop – STOP this talk.
Obama’s numbers, his exposure, his media treatment, his education, his career, all irrefutably demonstrate that this USA which he is laboring mightily to overcome HAS ALREADY BEEN OVERCOME.
The fact is, he’s bright man who perfectly fulfills the Archetypal Being required by the media – right down to that great faux-South Baptist inflection and cadence in his speaking style.
Look at this man’s career. He wants to be a politician. He wants to be President – just like a little boy from Hope did. He’s running the most substantively empty campaign I’ve ever witnessed. He’s also running the most auto-contradictory campaign: on the one hand, the “Republicans are running on the politics of the past…”
HAAA! Did Barak Hussein Obama – “I’m not running on race, please stop talking about my blackness, and my ability to cure America of its shameful racial past” – really just say that?
Bah – I’ll stop right there. If you think Obama’s anything other than an empty suit, you’re a buffoon. Go thou, and marry a stripper.
Rick Moran is inspired by Obama’s rise? He should be frightened after a look at his razor thin resume and vacuous speeches. The visual of such a green bean sitting across the table from Vladimir Putin – or just about anyone else who has the semblance of a spine should scare the hell out of anyone who has a clue.
Time to sober up, Mr. Moran!
You know darn good and well that when Obama loses the media and the Left will pin it on racism, racism, racism. There can be no other way, because race is the ONLY reason Obama is standing up there where he is right now.
Baloney. “willing to embrace the dream and live it to your fullest potential.” is pure hot air. Snake oil pitch to the Dumbed Down Electorate by an out and out Communist. WAKE UP you numbskulls!
Yes, the underdog can win if they have style and money……
Also they if they appeal to the Culture of which ours is becoming Secular and Obama fits the niche for the #1 left wing Politician who will give them what they want.
We all will suffer.
As for the white man vote I wonder if it is a more about Hillary than it is about Obama. How did reaction to Hillary’s pandering to Hispanic voters go over? Are white males more suspicious of Hispanics now over blacks? Does Hillary’s “no woman is illegal” comment make them more wary of the minority they don’t know as opposed to the minority they do know? Or could it be that white males view her as not candidate material because of their revulsion of her as marriage material? I would love to know people’s opinions.
Obama has won States in the South that are traditionally difficult for Dems to win. By beating Clinton in those states, I believe Obama has demonstrated that he is the more Nationally electable candidate, as he will surely carry the normally Dem states in a National election. This is also bad news for Reps, as Obama has a better chance of drawing Southern states away from McCain.
While I don’t disagree with the spirit what you have said above, Rick, I do think that the results you point out in relation to the candidacy and campaign of Obama is more akin to white teenagers buying gangsta rap cds, than an actual transcendence of racial issues.
Obama’s campaign preys on the naive, the inexperienced and blindly idealistic. He has, what we would call on the street, “a good rap.”
His campaign also appeals to a desire to “be a part of history.” Like the youth of Germany tearing down the Berlin Wall, the youth of this country can be vapidly drawn to “being a part of something.” What do you think are the drivers for all of these socially-based, rapidly growing (but mostly intelligent-thought-free) websites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc.? Obama’s campaign is MySpace for Politics…vapidity wrapped in “unity.”
In the end, Obama is merely an icon of an unrealistic Utopian hope.
All of those issues aside, Obama represents a real danger for this country. Because there is so little substance behind him, he is the perfect tool for special interests to control if he were to actually gain the office. The naivety that surrounds him will be (properly) perceived as weakness.
My Super Tuesday Autopsy
http://oldgloryradio.podbean.com/2008/02/06/super-tuesday-autopsy-john-mccain-hillary-clinton-barack-obama/
Barack Obama is a leftist Uncle Tom. He is an extremely ill educated and shallow human being. The man is being taken serious by many Americans only because they want to prove “I’m not a racist.” Obama knows only how to put his wet finger into the air and see which way the leftist establishment wants him to go. His speeches are all about style over substance. Obama couldn’t hold a decent conversation concerning foreign policy or economics if his life depended on it. He is truly an affirmative action candidate.
I’d like to see him transcend demagoguery. No one has commented so far on Obama’s “condolences” last night for the tornado victims, which was immediately followed by this rehearsed-sounding hope: “that our federal government will respond quickly and rapidly to make sure that they get all the help they need”.
The crowd responded with “oohs” to the obvious Katrina reference, but today I can find no mention of this unseemly and cold use of others’ tragedies for political gain.
Not the first problem Obama has had with a tornado victims comment, but this one goes unnoticed anyway.
I think you and many others are fooling yourself. The question you should ask yourself is if a white man were saying these things would you feel the same? I think not, we have heard it from Edwards and all the others and we didn’t like them but we love Obama? Obama is like Oprah, they are deal makers. You give Oprah money and Obama the presidency and he won’t make you feel so bad about being white. It is that simple.
Mr. Moran.
Possibly off topic, but your self-application of the label “conservative”, while spouting the self loathing crap about the offspring of a Kenyan and a white woman “in Georgia” and “of his former oppressors”, has a more progressive smell to it than not.
No American, now living, owned slaves. No person now living, though they be descended from slaves, has ever been himself a slave. The only bondage in evidence is the continued thralldom of some of these descendants to perpetual victimhood. Obama is just cashing in on the self loathing of the left. He, himself, has no family history of slavery in this country, although men of his father’s religion have conducted most of the slaving raids in Africa over the last four centuries.
I am not buying any of it.
So, are you are conservative or are you a leftist agitprop troll?
I also do not like Obama’s politics, but I recognize his appeal as a candidate nevertheless.
I also hope the success of his candidacy, along with that of Hillary Clinton, put to bed the ongoing notion that America is so poisonously racist or poisonously paternalistic as always depicted by our detractors here and abroad.
White Dems voted overwhelmingly for Obama — if “racism” still exists and is alive and well in America — it is certainly among the Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics. They are the ones who voted overwhelmingly along racial lines. But the fact that most of the non-white cultures on earth are still immersed in overt racist culture is a tale never revealed by the white-loathing media of the world. America — at least white America seems to have moved beyond this if voting patterns are any indication (and they certainly ARE an indication — one of the best).
Give me a break. Obama is as white as he is black. In fact, he was raised by white and Muslim families, attended the finest schools and lives in a rich white town. He gets the support of rich white guilt-laden liberal. Rick, I always enjoy your writing, but as someone from Chicago, don’t you know more about Obama than this cliche “hope” junk?
Last night was a DISASTER for Obama. The media won’t say it, but it was. He won NO important states, sans a tiny win in Missouri and lost in CA, which is very representative of American. The Asians and Latinos don’t fall in love with an Empty Suit with naive rhetoric.
“The Asians and Latinos don’t fall in love with an Empty Suit with naive rhetoric.”
I don’t think this is the reason why Obama is not popular with Latinos and Asians. Minorities, oppressed or otherwise, usually posit themselves against the mainstream majority and seek to establish an understanding and mutuality with it. Latinos, Asians, Afrian-Americans, are all competing against each other for attention, recognition, acceptance, and prominence. They are not likely to be too eager or motivated to boost one minority leader. They are not likely to give the “other” minority the gift of prominence. They are very conservative in the way they exercise their relative power vis-a-vis the majority, and calculate how best their interests can be augmented.
Most people usually end up doing and choosing what is in their best interests, not what is fashionable or glittering.
I haven’t waded through the comments, but the numbers discussed do reflect Ga Dem white males, right? Almost by definition, a southern male white Dem sees himself as progressive on race. And there aren’t that many of them.
Doesn’t that kinda vitiate the post’s point?
Obama might stand for the freedom of opportunity in America. He also stands for the facile shallowness of a population that thrives on fantasy and denial, that will not educate itself on history, economics, or international issues, but will deign to vote for a candidate because he seems “inspiring” or has a “nice presentation” or because Oprah’s in his favor. Unfortunately for democracy, the “Airhead Factor” might be the determinate one if Obama gets nominated – millions of Americans will temporarily disengage from their TV sets, video games, chat rooms, and couches to vote for a guy who makes them “feel good” while the man has not a shred of substance, except the Marxism implied in what policies he has dared to specify and as blatantly promoted by his church. And the shallow credulity does not extend to our growing uneducated sector, but academia is, not surprisingly, shelling out for him. One prof, when asked why he supported Obama, said, “he makes me feel like the 60′s again.” wish the interviewer had then said, “You mean like on LSD?”
The rise of Obama is nothing more than liberal males (and females) attempting to expiate their collective – quite unnecessary – guilt with regards to blacks.
Alas (as an outsider watching American politics) what strikes me is the general inadequacies or inexperience of the candidates with the possible exception of Romney.
Good heavens, 300 million people and this is the best the system can produce.
Truth is Hillary would never be in the running if she had not been married to Bill. Huckabee is a buffoon with a twickle in his eye. McCain is over the hill and, one suspects, sometimes far away.
And, of course, Obama would be nowhere without his black face and the frisson of excitment lefties get when thinking that they are helping to elect the first black president. A fine product of affirmative action I suspect.
A white man with Obama’s lack of experience, vacuity of ideas and far left tendencies would never have been so indulged. (Read his book – Pomposity of Title – and see for yourself.)
Even white right wing scribblers as this article attests are being suckered by the Obama nonsense.
Sadly there is no finer example of the decline of America than the current crop of presidential candidates.
Ellen,
Give us some names of worthy candidates please. In your opinion no black man can rise up without being a “fine product of affirmative action”. Obama was the first black president of Harvard Law Review. Quite an accomplishment I would say and one based on merit. Then he rises quickly to become a US Senator and someone who is bringing Americans together. Were you on law review? Are you a fast riser to that degree? Give me a break you probably voted for Bush twice. I would call that name recognition/socio-economic affirmative action.