Slog

Country, chock full of bigots, misses a chance to really change the world. How very sad.

The democrats haven't had more than 70% support from party members for the past three elections, all of which featured white men.

Um, this is an opportunity, not a crisis. This is how racism is overcome. We've known from the beginning that some percentage of white voters would never vote for a black man. We can overcome that. To say otherwise is to say "oh, a country full of bigots, attitudes will never change, it's stupid to even try". We WILL try, and we'll win, dammit, and blacks will be folded back into American life in yet another way, and we all -- whites, blacks, and frigging racists too -- will be better for it. THIS IS HOW WE WILL BECOME WHO WE ARE.

I don't buy it.
It just sounds like a lot of self-loathing Democrat talk to me.

I mean Dan's post. Way to go, Fnarf! I'm with you.

Well, somewhere between @1's parasuicidal surrender to the rubes of Appalachia and @3's exhoration to teach the world to sing lies the truth - It's going to be another really close race and whoever's got the Diebolds and lawyers dialed in will win. Screw political sociology.

It's nothing but a bullshit hypothetical: if Obama were white, then... what? He'd add support over here and lose supporters over there? Especially since he'd be a completely different guy? It's absurd.

Might as well ask how many Republicans would support him if he were a Republican.

Look. Obama gets all of California's electoral votes no matter how soft his support; he only needs to just win. Then pick up any one of several swing states, and it's all over. You knew that already, right? But you want to forget it and play nonsense games. Why?

Just go to fivethirtyeight.com and stop looking at polls that don't tell you anything about who will or won't be the next president.

Yet another dose of second-guessing and self-doubt? If you act like a loser, you will lose.

Remember, the article was written by the AP's Washington bureau chief and GOP partisan Ron Fournier. The unsaid message: it's okay to be a bigot, it's okay to vote for McPalin.

We got the last seven disastrous years all cause our nation's right-wing morons wanted to have a beer with Caligutard.

Nothing surprises me anymore.

We live in a country of bigots who make big decisions based on their gut feelings about race? I'm not the least bit surprised.

I'm from a blue-collar Democrat town (Buffalo, NY) and I can tell you that many people there, who vote Democrat 9 times out of ten, are not voting for Obama. And it's not because of his health care policies.

Don't get carried away by your hope - at the end of the day racism often trumps idealism.

The renewed mind is the key, people.

Get with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNQ95bf4zU0

Mike Allen is a boob. Notice he says its racism of voters, not his racism. Thier methodoly:
"Other techniques used in the poll included recording people's responses to black or white faces flashed on a computer screen, asking participants to rate how well certain adjectives apply to blacks, measuring whether people believe blacks' troubles are their own fault, and simply asking people how much they like or dislike blacks"

Hardly a measurement of how people plan to vote.

Also its the electoral map that matters.

... and in other news, the Gallup daily tracking poll now has Obama up 50-44.

That's an 11-point swing in the past ten days, when it was McCain up 48-43.

Hey, y'all, you can quit hyperventilating. It's fairly common for people to go though an "acceptance/avoidance" period when dealing with change.

The Palin pick gave everybody a chance to think through an alternative, and it seems as though it's been rejected.

There are witnesses that I was claiming this from day one of his candidacy. It's why I was more for Hillary from an electability standpoint -- racism is more deeply seated in our culture than sexism (sorry ECB...).

I hope people will realize their racist sentiments are less valuable than our opportunity to improve as a country.

Yeah Yeah. Hillary was so much more electable than Obama because she's white. Except: Hillary has high negatives and would have energized the republican base all on her lonesome. Sarah Palin would have presented a chance to vote for a woman, and NOT vote for Hillary. Hillary couldn't keep a cohesive campaign running month after month. Clinton Library donors. Bill Clinton...and maybe, just maybe, all those white Appalachians who would have voted against a black man in the primary would have turned around and voted for a white man (McCain) in the general election. To say that a white Barry O'bama would be doing better in the election than a black Barack Obama in no way validates the claim that therefore Hillary Clinton, who is white, would be doing better.

I really don't see how preferring Clinton over Obama in the primaries solely because you perceive the electorate as racist is no less racist than the supposed racism one perceives in others.

Alas, quit the hand-wringing, y'all. There will be at least another couple freak-out moments before Election Day. Buckle up, hang on, and it will all be over in a few weeks.

@13 "MrEddieFather" omg that's fuckin' hysterical.

@17, It pains me immensely to have that perception of some of my fellow Americans, but I'm laser-focused on SCOTUS and would have supported a potato chip if I thought it had the best chance of winning for the Dems.

If that makes me a racist, then I guess I'd better go pick out my Klan robe.

@11 - Exactly.

Sorry, I had this in the wrong comments.

My mother WAS going to sit out this election, not because Obama won over Clinton (although she is pissed she will not see a woman president in her lifetime and blames that on sexism), she was going to sit out the election (she would rather not vote than vote for a Republican). She was going to skip voting this year because Obama chose "another old white guy" as a running mate. Really, Obama? Another old white guy is the best you could do? There wasn't a woman or another minority that was qualified? Really?

However, Mom IS going to vote and she will be voting for Obama. Want to know why?

Sarah Palin. She hates everything about her. So you should be thanking John McSame, because I doubt my mother is the only Hillary backer who feels the same way.

Fnarf has been my hero for some time - and his post today is a major example of why.

There's nothing wrong with hope, and there's nothing wrong with being realistic.

If Obama loses and if the United States survives... the next black man who runs for president will have a much easier time of it. Attitudes have shifted. Entirely too slowly from my point of view... but that's the way change happens.

Don't let ANYTHING keep you from voting. Talk with anyone you know who is undecided. (Yeah, I'd rather kill them, too. But then *I* couldn't vote.)

Do whatever you can to get Obama elected - and then accept that 'the universe is unfolding as it should'.

Some question this time...

I live in Virginia - one of the most backward places on earth - but in my lifetime, I've seen the shift toward more decency and less bigotry.

The only time I've been to the Northwest was for a dog show (Belgian Tervuren National Specialty), so I know very little about social attitudes in that area.

Does race play an important role in your political decisions? Is it a problem like it is in the South?

Fuck the survey - I'll vote for pigment over pig any day (and by pig, I am, of course referring to McCain's policies). Pigment's only skin-deep, but a pig is a pig through and through, no matter how much lipstick you put on it.

The racist attitudes of white America is a surprise?

The Republican party and it's right-wing religious zealots are proudly racist. Rove knows very well how to manipulate their racism for political gain. Democrats are no better. They just manipulate another direction.

Palin is a race pick not a woman pick. Clinton tried to act as if sexism trumps race. It doesn't. Rove picking Palin proves that arguement is null and void.

Palin is the anti-woman yet white women and men support her. They "identify" with her being white without regard to her behavior or her beliefs.

Palin's comments about "small town values" is nothing more than code for WHITE ONLY.

Small towns (in my experience) are usually racially segregated or completely white and full of ignorant, hateful, religious zealots, who are terrified of anything that doesn't look or think they way they do.

The world will watch as US racism leads to white America cutting off their noses to spite their face with a McCain/Palin vote.

Obama needs to win. Every decision Obama makes will be scrutinized and debated which healthy for democracy instead the usual political sensiblity of "white is right" no matter how much wrong they do.

I'm voting for Obama so there will finally be some good music at the White House.

Hillary made this way worse. She didn't invent racism, obviously. But she attacked Obama in ways that would have been seen as racist had Republicans done it. Her desperate attempts to convince "white working class" Americans that a black man could not represent them in the White House during the last three months of her campaign when it was obvious the she could not win were truly shameful. Because Republicans have been associated with embracing bigotry ever since Nixon's Southern Strategy, only a Democrat could do the kind of damage Hillary did by playing to people's racial fears (without saying so).

Any I told you sos from Hillary supporters about Obama's currently uncertain position have to take responsibility for her scorched earth tactics before she "wholeheartedly" endorsed Obama at the very last possible minute when it was too late to undo the damage she had done. Obama might be strong enough, or the Republicans bumbling enough, for him to overcome it anyway. But the worst is yet to come, in terms of last-minute Republican dirty tricks meant to play to white people's worst racial stereotypes and fears.

@9: Is right to point out that this article is quoting another article (echo chamber, anyone?) by AP's Washington Bureau chief Ron Fournier, one-time McCain campaign job candidate and all-around spinmeister for all things McCain. Here is a picture of McCain enjoying the donuts ("Oh boy, sprinkles!") that Fournier has brought him before they sit down to what will no doubt be a hard-hitting interview.

Seriously, this just sounds like a rationalism for racism, and also a way to seed the ground for election results that don't match poll results. "Huh, that's weird, the polls showed Obama up by five points, the exit polls matched that, and yet somehow we have McCain as a winner. Must be the Bradley Effect."

I'm way more worried about the "Republicans have fixed the last two elections and nobody did a damn thing about it so why in hell wouldn't they do it again?" Effect than the Bradley Effect.

obama should run a bunch of profile ads featuring white-on-white grandma & grampa.

i don't know if it will help much, but he only needs maybe 10% of the bigots to WTFU & this one is over.

Wouldn't it be racist just to vote for Obama because of white guilt?

@30: And the reason you believe that people who would otherwise not be voting for a Democrat are voting for Obama to assuage their troubled white consciences is what exactly? Do you know of somebody who fits this description?

Next tell us how it's racist that there's no White History Month. Wow, fascinating.

Do you cut and paste these insightful rhetorical questions from White Power websites or did you type this all by yourself?

@7(and @30); "It's nothing but a bullshit hypothetical: if Obama were white, then... what?"

A white first term Senator? Barack who?.

I agree with Gurldoggie and I disagree with Fnarf - and the article doesn't really surprise me.

I don't think most white people in Seattle really get what racism is like in the rest of the country - especially the South. It's not the type of racism you can have a conversation with a racist about, or hope that they're going to have some experience that will renew their mind. It's the type of racism that equals - You're black therefore you're not human and you should have your ass beat.

I was recently talking to my mom who still lives in the South. She hates Bush, but she told me she's voting for McCain. I asked her why and she said 'Well, there's a nig&%# running'. The gem after that was that she thinks he might be the anti-christ.

Regardless of how great Obama is there are many people who just don't and won't hear what he's saying because he's black - and that makes me more than a little nervous.