Ruben, you have received support from Cobb previously on these pages, and that carries some weight with me, so, for that reason alone, you deserve the benefit of the doubt. Let me go through your article with a fine toothed comb and see if we can’t come to at least the points of disagreement, if not, isolate out the areas that need clarification.
“In politics, as in life, wishing something doesn’t make it so.
For instance, I wish I could believe that Barack Obama’s thumpin’ in West Virginia — coupled with his losses in similarly working-class and mostly white Indiana and Pennyslvania — had nothing to do with race (as Ari Kaufman claimed here yesterday) and that voters decided those races on the merits, weighing only the issues and perhaps concerns about Obama’s truthfulness in light of lingering questions about his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”
“Weighing only the issues and perhaps concerns….about his relationship with Rev. Wright”
Ruben, you couldn’t have watered down the legitimate reasons why people might have voted FOR his opponent, or AGAINST him…any more if you had a tap directly into the Pacific Ocean.
First, some people may, might or could consider the close embrace of Rev. Wright as an actual, you know…”issue”. Or perhaps as a piece of a larger issue. And that issue being that Sen. Obama has a LIFELONG attachment to extremist and highly partisan voices with long standing histories of hatred toward the USA or Israel. Frank Marshall Davis, his radical college professors, Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Meeks, Ayers & Dorhn, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, Ali Abunimah, Tony Rezco, Robert Malley, Brzezinski, McPeak, Power, Lake.
His closest advisors and a substantial portion of his mentors, and “inner circle”, (spiritual, educational, emotional, political) come from a very far, hard left…screeching, angry, hostile credo of America bashing and Israel hating.
To try to water that down, to ignore its existence and to paint everyone who arches an eyebrow at it as a racist, is disingenuous at best and race-baiting cowardice at its worst.
I will assume for a moment that you simply took shortcuts in your article and you didn’t mean to imply that voting FOR Hillary Clinton or voting AGAINST Sen. Obama…MUST be tied to some form of racism. The argument is a dangerous fallacy, but it may say more about your perspective than that of the majority of voters who are still not convinced that Sen. Obama is deserving of their votes.
“Maybe if Hillary Clinton hadn’t boasted about the support she’s getting from white voters when she blurted out to USA Today that “Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again” and that whites who had not completed college were backing her.”
What about the blacks folks who have and have not completed college voting for Sen. Obama? It seems to me that he is pulling SUBTANTIALLY more votes across color lines than any other candidate.
What do we call the near perfect record of blacks voting for Sen. Obama? Racial pride? Only voting on the “issues”? Let’s not be coy. A greater percentage of blacks are voting FOR Sen. Obama due in part or in whole because he is identified as a black candidate, than whites who are voting against him because he is identified as a black candidate.
Is that “racist”? I would prefer to call it “racialist”. There is a stronger “connection” in identity to that candidate and a weaker identity to another candidate. Is that “wrong”? Well, it’s certainly not voting on the “issues”…that you seem so desperately interested in white voters engaging themselves in, but seem to have little, if any, concern about black voters doing the same thing.
Perhaps what is gravy for the goose is indeed not gravy for the gander, but you haven’t addressed why that may be the case. At all. The non-elite, intellegensia, academia crowd…you know, the guys that leftists call “flyover country”, “trailer trash”, “inbred Jeds”, ….perhaps they are looking at the very hard leftism surrounding Sen. Obama and they have a discomfort with that. Maybe they think that his not wearing a flag lapel pin…because he is more comfortable with a Che Guevara poster is a signal flare about his belief system. Maybe being insulted about “clinging to religion” carries more weight than his thin “apology” and alibi about making the statement. Just maybe…it’s being called a mean, angry, slothful country by his wife that resonates with them, more than hopey-changey rhetoric does. Just maybe.
“Maybe if there hadn’t been that illuminating article in the Washington Post about racist incidents experienced by Obama volunteers in Indiana and Pennsylvania, and if bomb threats hadn’t been called into Obama campaign offices in some parts of Indiana and other offices in the states vandalized.”
How illuminating is any Washington Post, NYTimes, Newsweek, MSNBC article or blurb these days? Are we seeing any threats to any of the other candidates? Exposing things said on Kos Kidz? This anecdotal stuff was dragged out to make the “illuminating” point…that doesn’t really illuminate anything…since it can be pointed out in OPPOSING directions all day long as well.
But the disgrace here…is to try to tie that to everyone who doesn’t vote for Sen. Obama…and then accuse them sub rosa…of racism. What a quantum leap of logic that is. Why are the Koz Kidz not voting for Sen. McCain? Age discrimination?
That’s pretty thin gruel for such a leap. The Koz Kidz aren’t voting for Sen. McCain, because they hold a worldview that is skewed from reality, not because he could be their father or grandfather. If Sen. Obama was 71 and Sen. McCain was 46…that voting pattern would be nearly identical.
If you wish to be suckered into the leftist screed by the NYTimes, Washington Post and the other leftist rags around this country, that is your business. They have disgraced themselves so often at this point, they have no credibility with most readers of these posts.
“Maybe if Mike Norman — a white bar owner in Marietta, Georgia — wasn’t doing a swift business hawking “Obama ’08” t-shirts with a picture of Curious George holding a banana because, Norman insists, he saw a resemblance between the cartoon and the African-American presidential candidate.”
Were you equally offended by the ChimpyBush, BushHitler, AlfredENeumanBush tee-shirts? Or was that funny to you? It’s sophmoric humor, not my thing…but, you seem not to have mentioned it, so I assume you are quite ok with that sort of parody. Were you ok with the things that were said, done and written by the Koz Kidz about Joe Lieberman? Or do your sensibilities only get aroused in one direction or two?
“Maybe if, in West Virginia, Clinton hadn’t beaten Obama by 2-to-1; if Clinton hadn’t won about 70 percent of the white vote; if she hadn’t won – for the first time – the under-30 white vote; if 22 percent of white voters hadn’t said that race was a factor in how they voted; and if 80 percent of those who felt that way hadn’t supported Clinton.”
Would you mind rewriting that sentence, only using North Carolina instead? Or other heavily black populated states? Substitute black for white, Obama for Clinton…and discuss.
22% of white voters said “race was a factor”….how many of the black voters do you believe would answer that “race was a factor” honestly…in voting FOR Sen. Obama? 98% 99%?
Why are you not “bothered” by that? Honestly? If you are bothered by the fact that 22% of white voters considered it a “factor”…would you be bothered 4 times as much if the black electorate had over 80% who said that race was a “factor” in how they voted?
“And maybe if there weren’t still parts of the country where white people are conditioned to think of black people as inferior and have a hard time getting their head around the concept of a half Kenyan/half Kansan Harvard Law School graduate/U.S. Senator/bestselling author who could well become the nation’s first black president.”
And maybe if there weren’t still parts of this country where leftists are conditioned to think of blue collar white people as inferior and have a hard time getting their heads around the concept that they aren’t all mouth-breathing, racist, homophobic, imbeciles who deserver scorn and derision by these arrogant bastards….well, that’s a lot of maybe’s to get beyond.
“And while Obama won the votes of “hardworking white Americans” in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Wyoming, that doesn’t change the fact that — elsewhere — white support has been elusive for the Democratic frontrunner.”
Nor does it change the fact that Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain couldn’t find black votes with a divining rod and a handful of $100 bills. But it does illuminate the fallacy and put the lie to the test that whites are voting on a racist basis.
Ruben, this is your second article here and both of them have been based on fallacious arguments and thin logic. Take the time to do better before you call everyone around you a bigot, which seems to be your building theme.
