Letters to the Editor
-
Xufapemu
Xufapemu: "It's like a black athelete traing everyday, watching everything he eats, never takes a day off and wins the race and some idiot comes along and says he won because blacks run faster. And you don't see the similarity?"
Uh oh, looks like I have some competition in the "people whose names start with X who make good points" department.
Your analogy nicely sums up what's wrong with Ferraro's comment.
-
I BELIEVE that they wanted to be sure he was electable
Also, many African-Americans had a history supporting the Clintons.
Some just were afraid to believe it was possible for a black man to be elected or even nominated, and didn't want to throw their vote away until they were assured that whites would vote for him.
-
about black voters...to Aka Smith and others
"Why is this? Why were blacks not ready to vote for him? Why did it take "white activists" voting for him to make blacks vote for him?"
* * *
White activists are not the reference. White rural ordinary working class Americans voted for him in Iowa. This was a historic win, and he won among demographics not otherwise supposed to "belong" to him.
The point about Iowa leading to his support among black voters was that he proved his widespread appeal, which has also been proven across the country in ways that not even his most enthusiastic supporters of any color might have guessed a few months ago. He won working class white people voting in Washington, my home state, for example.
Some of it is luck, as much as anyone else, luck helps him. But he also worked to organize people on the ground level in states off of the blue state/red state paradym that other candidates might not have worried about.
People can say what they like about Obama, but he is a good campaigner and a politician with a campaign message that has broad appeal. Obama also might be earning 90 % of the black vote because his campaign uses hope and reconciliation, even some racial reconciliation as part of his message. He is a black candidate and also has the ability to win, and has a message that is good for black people and has widespread appeal.
One further thing is that his work in the red states, while it might not pay off in the presidential election, it might help down the road for Democrats to make inroads into the Congress, and help take over the legislature so that real work can start to begin in rebuilding this country after the past disastrous years under Bush.
-
@ xufapemu
I BELIEVE that they wanted to be sure he was electable
Also, many African-Americans had a history supporting the Clintons.
Some just were afraid to believe it was possible for a black man to be elected or even nominated, and didn't want to throw their vote away until they were assured that whites would vote for him.
Interesting. I have no reason to believe your opinion is not valid. Let us take it as a given. However, what I am getting at is a bit more complex. After New Hampshire, why did they not believe that Hillary was an electable candidate and decide to support her?
-
SO many false assumptions
Let me just take on a couple of them:
"Why is Edwards out, while Obama is still in?" Oh, it could only be because of Obama's race! Funny, but when Edwards was on his way down and out of this race, all I recall the Edwards supporters saying was that his anti-corporate message couldn't get much airtime because of the corporate-owned media (a plausible explanation, I might add). I don't remember Edwards or the Edwards folks ever once bellyaching that he was suffering from reverse racism (or, for that matter, reverse sexism).
"Obama is only doing as well as he is because of African-American support." Of course, here, people cite to the example of Mississippi, where he garnered 90% of the African-American vote. So, oh great, he got 90% of the white vote, but being deemed "the black candidate" appears to have cost him about 75% of the white vote. Don't you think he'd rather be getting voters who are more proportionally representative of the American public? Don't you think he sees the Mississippi results as rather distressing and more than a little sad? See, that's why he's tried his best to position himself as a trans-racial candidate, and why the *Clinton* campaign has tried their damndest to pigeonhole him as "the black candidate." If/when Obama becomes the Jesse Jackson of this campaign, he loses. You can't win an election with just the African-American vote, and conversely, you probably *can* win an election even if nearly every African-American in the country hates your guts (which I suppose is what Clinton is gambling on). As Eugene Robinson at the WPost says, "They don't call us a minority for nothing."
-
Quo Bono
When Cicero defended, I believe, Sextus Roscius he asked the question quo bono, who benefits.
In this case, who benefits in the races to come; who benefits from Senator Obama's race becoming an issue?
Senator Obama already receives maximum support from the black vote.
In order to prevail in the primaries AND the GE he needs to gain in the white vote. So, why would the Obama campaign, a campaign that up until now ran circles around the Clinton campaign, bring the issue of race to the fore?
The logic remains to this day, when one discovers who benefits from an action, most likely you have found the cause.
-
@ xufapemu
In order to prevail in the primaries AND the GE he needs to gain in the white vote. So, why would the Obama campaign, a campaign that up until now ran circles around the Clinton campaign, bring the issue of race to the fore?
Why did he? Could he have thought that it benefited him in the primaries?
-
Sight Unseen
I just want to debunk Ferraro's myth. It might not be the universal experience, but it's one I have in common with several people I know:
What drew me to Obama first and foremost was his DNC speech 4 years ago. Before that, I had never heard of him and I had lived in Chicago, on the South Side (Pilson, near China Town & on the opposite side of the tracks from the Robert Taylor Homes. Very industrial and very Hispanic and, in all honesty, not that far South) from 95-99 while he had been in the heyday of his community activist and state legislative career.
Now, I didn't see Obama's speech (didn't have a TV then), and consequently, didn't see Obama. I heard it on NPR. Caught it while it was in progress and didn't even know who it was I was listening to. But I was riveted--from the first sentence--and thought to myself THEN, from the content, that this person was a better candidate than the one who had been chosen (still, I did my duty and voted for Kerry in the general). I thought that this person was articulating exactly what I had been thinking about back in 2002. And at the risk of bringing on the sarcasm of those who had been duped, I was in no way fooled by the so called "diplomatic efforts", both as a matter of instinct and because I listened to more than just the MSM or U.S. media for that matter. I knew that Bush was pushing Congress for a resolution to use force because his intention, and this was something that just pushed through despite or maybe because of all his nationalistic speechifying, his intention was to use force no matter what Hans Blix and the U.N. inspectors found or, in this case, didn't find. Not to mention the ramifications that would (did) follow the invasion. Point being, Obama saw it too. Laid it out for any American who would take the time to listen and with an insight, precision and understanding that was artful and infused with authenticity. I knew then that I would vote for this person, based on this and many other progressive statements he made that night, barring some more compelling candidate. But that other candidate never arrived.
I thought a few years ago it might be Hillary Clinton. Her vote in favor of the use of force first surprised me and disappointed me. But, and I have never admitted this to anyone before, it also made me doubt my own understanding and perception of what the Bush administration had been doing and saying for the previous several months: the steady, incremental ratcheting up of fear and propaganda and ultimately the outright lying they did to weasel our country into this Shakespearean Tragedy of a war. That doubt would not, could not have been possible if I had not respected Mrs. Clinton, who is clearly a very intelligent and connected person. Probably far more intelligent than I am and certainly far more connected. I entertained that I could have misread events. That I was allowing my contept for Bush & Co to color my reasoning and instincts. But, you know, that doubt did not last; the evidence against Bush was overwhelming. But my disappointment in Mrs. Clinton did last. I wanted very much to believe in her and anticipated that she might indeed run for President and I wanted to support her, because she clearly had much to offer a liberal and progressive agenda. So I waited. Months I waited, years even, for some sort of reasonable explanation as to why she voted the way she did. And it never came! What we got instead was denial. What we got instead was triagulation. And even after Obama entered the campaign, I wasn't sure it was his time. But once Mrs. Clinton began to lose, her true colors began to bloom. Calculating, petty, condescending, ambitious and willing to sell her soul and her principles--were they really ever her principles? re: the Iraq war--to get what she wants. And Obama stayed steady. He made gaffes, or his surrogates did, sure. And he has flaws, e.g. I feel he could do better articulating his positions without a prepared text. But he's my candidate. And if he loses the nomination, I will vote for Mrs. Clinton in the general. Which is more than I can say for that 10-15 percent of Clinton supporters who say they wouldn't support Obama.
So, just because Geraldine Ferraro was picked to run for VP as a PR stunt to help boost a flagging campaign, it does not mean that those of us who support Barak Obama do so out of some Affirmative Action/White Guilt/Rock Star Voodoo. We are more principled than that.