You support Obama because he is black

Imagine for a moment that Obama's name was really Thomas Matheson, or something conventionally white like that, and imagine that he had conventional white facial features like John Edwards and that he had a conventional white upbringing. Now let's assume that Thomas Matheson has the exact same experience level as "Obama." Do you believe that this Thomas Matheson character would have clinched the Democratic presidential nomination?

I doubt it. White liberals like Thomas Matheson are a dime a dozen, and they are, quite frankly, boring people--not ones that would necessarily excite the base.

Yeah yeah, well never mind all that. The question is:

Will the voting public reject Obama because they're not having any !@#$!@#$ Muslims in the White House?

PS...His being a visimin is part of the total package. He's selling "I'm the un-Cola, I represent the best hope for change, yay me!"

He's a pretty sharp cookie and a slick public speaker, but part of his ability to sell that particular brand of snake oil is his status as a visimin.

There were only two major political differences between Edwards and Obama: a difference of rhetoric (Obama was inclusive, Edwards polarizing--see: "two Americas"); and what can be best described as a difference of organizational capability. Obama won the early war over the activists, and, thanks to an unexpectedly decisive victory in Iowa, he was able to mount a successful campaign against the Party's contentious heir apparent, Hillary Clinton.

Would Obama have won in Iowa if he had employed Edwards' rhetoric? I don't think so.

Not everything has to do with race, let alone the conservative obsession with "white guilt."

(late edit: added a "s")

Why did I know before clicking on the thread that Codyed was the one who started it?

#4: LT profiling?

I guess the thread fits a Codyed stereotype.

ref #3

Not everything has to do with race

Has America moved on from the old fashioned blatant racism or has it not? There seems to be some reason to think it may have; but on the other hand, who knows for sure?

If Obama doesnt win, that may not necessarily be racism at work, but I think that's where the smart money will be going should it happen. Or course,it may be simple anti Muslim bias. Hey! You never know.

Some things fell into place for Barack--one was Oprah getting behind him. Another was Ted Kennedy. They were early on and both huge. Barack met the challenge of their endorsements because of his eloquence, ability to talk on issues important to a large part of the electorate, and his ability to build a huge political machine which was furthered by being ahead of his rivals in online politics partly due to getting the right people on his side.

It would be absurd to imagine or pretend that Obama's appeal is entirely race-neutral. But it's just as ridiculous to pretend that it's solely a product of race. His youthful style and grace, his charisma and seeming integrity, his political acumen, his intelligence and his rhetorical gifts could exist and would be similarly compelling in a candidate of any race (or gender, or whatever).

I hope most voters are more concerned with the man than the color of his skin. The rest can carry on starting "i is so controvershul!" threads like this one.

#8: Oprah getting behind him. Another was Ted Kennedy. They were early on and both huge.

Hmmm, self-loathing fat people endorsing the skinny dude. I think you've nailed it, lriley.

Most of my neighbors will NOT vote for Obama because he is black. That's pretty much the only reason I can get out of them.

I think he is an excellent speaker and he has the right ideas which we need right now (after 8 disastrous years). So, it doesn't matter if he is black or not.

I will not vote for Obama because he's black.

I'm going to vote for him because he's intelligent, thoughtful, decisive and not divisive, and he doesn't say stupid things whenever he speaks.

#10--I wouldn't describe either Oprah or Ted as self loathing. I don't know them. There are many overweight GOP'ers as well. Former Speaker of the House Hastert for one. Gingrich at times as well.

#12--Anyway I'm an Obama supporter as well.

I do not find it surprising to see Republicans suggesting that people would not support an articulate and thoughtful guy who was white. It's been decades since they've run someone like that for President.

If the only way we'll get an articulate and thoughtful President is by electing a black one, well, then I'm all for it.

#14: more profiling.

Who are these nefarious Republicans?

... in the name of civility, doncha know.

You guys are all sweetness and light.

Smooch. And snuggle.

Anyway, #18, with regard to your previous #15, #14's right: nefarious or not, the Republican Party does not seem to place a great deal of positive emphasis on complex articulacy and public thoughfulness in selecting its presidential candidates. Instead, Republicans have tended to favor politicians cut from plain-spoken, straight-shootin' cloth. This isn't a criticism, necessarily, though it does mean that their candidates seldom appeal to me, personally.

Well, hell yeah I'm voting for O-what's-his-face cuz he's black. In fact, if the Republicans had just put a little picture of, say, Alan Keyes next to W's name on the ballot in the last two prez elections, he probably would've gotten my vote too.

This is the priority of my votes:
Black Transexual Lesbian
Other Minority Transexual Lesbian
Minority Chick
Black Man or White Woman*
Gay White Male
and if I really, really have to...
Straight White Guy, but only if he's admitted to using an illegal drug at some point.

*bonus points if they're gay

Lemme tell you, it sure cuts down on time spent matching the faces to the issues.

but only if he's admitted to using an illegal drug at some point

What do we do with Palin? She used marijuana, but it was legal in Alaska then! :)

Yeah never mind those pesky federal laws against marijuana. They only apply to the United States, not actual states inside the United States.

For what its worth, I plan to vote for Obama; not because I think he's so wonderful but because I count him as the lesser of two weevils.

In most cases, I vote the party, not the person. I can conceive of cases where some overwhelmingly positive character may be running against some overwhelmingly negative character despite party affiliations, but barring magicians cases, its the party that counts, not the individual.

Sadly the democrats are the lesser weevil for me, so they get the nod.

Someday I may get to vote for my party, but I dont see that happening any time soon. I feel a little like Treebeard when he says "I'm not on anybody's side because nobody is on my side" (though of course I'm a bit younger than he).

#24 and like Treebeard, there are some folks whose side I am definitely not on. And they include those who seem to be unable to see that people who disagree with them might just not be evil. That rules out both Huggy Bear and Moose Hunter.

What do we do with Palin? She used marijuana, but it was legal in Alaska then! :)

This complicates my calculus... white woman = black guy, but the white woman smoked pot, which is currently illegal. White guys on either side of the ticket cancel each other out. I can only vote for Obama if he's admitted to using a drug that was illegal at the time he used it. And it should be a hard drug to trump the pregnant teenage daughter.

>26 citygirl: Obama has admitted to using cocaine (as an undergrad). Obama wins.

#12 then you weren't listening to the same speeches everyone else did during the Democratic Primaries. Of course, all of them are covered elsewhere in Pro and Con in the Vice-President Clinton section.

beatles1964

citygirl, I like your calculus. May I borrow it? Certainly does cut down on reading boring position papers, etc. I can cut to the foreign news section of the NYTimes.

As a lurker, I have to say citygirl gets my vote as poster of the week.

Citygirl - where do gay black men rank?

borrow away, maggie. the more people who use it the better, right?

thanks, lg. :-)

Amusing, I think a gay black man = minority woman, but gay black Republican man > minority woman.

Probably somebody has said this before, but I still find it interesting that Obama is referred to as "black" by all and sundry ... despite the fact that he is, technically, just as much white as he is black. It's as if we've never gotten over the old "one-drop" rule ...

"It's as if we've never gotten over the old "one-drop" rule ..."

-- Essa

You thought we had?

Codyed's question wasn't about race, but color.

He knows we'd also go for anyone with a really good tan. It's just the pale nerdy Matheson guy who never gets out that's boring.

For codyed "race" is a minority vs. minority issue. I expect at some time in his life it was/is really important to him.

It's like two dogs trying to settle which one is the top dog, the one that gets the table scraps. His community and another are currently fighting this battle and when it's all said and done, one of them will be able to cozy up to the white man. He just hopes it's him and his.

Meanwhile, a white guy from the Deep South doesn't know what "uppity" means:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/05/congressman-says-he-didnt-know-u...

Weirdest thing isn't Westmoreland's racism or the lies he tells in denying it, it's the embarassing gyrations the Obama camp is forced to go through in order to avoid "racializing" the issue.

Standard-issue bigot makes a racist statement: that's business as usual. But if Obama so much as seems to notice? He's playing "the race card". Funny old world, innit?

>37 Makifat:
I think we should take the Congressman at his word.
"When describing the Obamas as part of an elite class, Congressman Westmoreland also used a synonym for elitist: uppity. He was using the dictionary definition of the word, which is having 'an inflated self-esteem' or 'snobbish.' He stands by that characterization and thinks it accurately describes the Democratic nominee. He was unaware that the word had racial overtones and he had absolutely no intention of using a word that can be considered offensive," Robinson said.

See, he wasn't saying anything "racial", he was just trying to point out that the Obamas have "inflated self esteem" and they are "snobbish". You know, they just don't know their place. Interestingly, dictionary.com says the first recorded use of the word was in Uncle Remus in 1880. No racial context there.

>38 BobStandard:
Obama can't win on these things. If he responds he is playing "the race card", and if he doesn't he is a "girly man".

>39 oregonobsessionz:
Likely the current spin is "black girly man"

ref #38
As with race, so with economic class. The GOP can pound the daylights out of hourly wage and salaried workers to the point where the degree of income inequality rivals that of the "Gilded Age".

But let the Dems talk about how the wealthiest Americans get tax breaks while the working stiff gets stiffed and then the Republicans cry "Class war! Class War!"

Grump!

I am sorry, but I do have a very hard time imagining any one born before about 1965 not knowing the horrific implications of the word "uppity" when used to describe any person with any African-American in their family genetics. Them were lynching words as recently as 1955 (Emmett Till, was it?). Give me a break!

edit to correct Mr. Till's name

Someone sent me a very interesting E-Mail earlier this morning with some quotes from one of Rush Limbaugh's Radio Shows.

Hey, folks, you want to tweak the Drive-By Media with me right now? You are aware, probably that Barack Obama lost his bearings recently and said that he was going to campaign in all 57 states.
You heard this? And most everybody chalked it up to "Well, he's tired". You know this is a Dan Quayle moment, I mean, Dan Quayle goes out there and misspells "potato", and we still hear jokes about it. Barack Obama says he's gonna go out and campaign in 57 states! He was just tired, you know, it's been such a long campaign, he's been so many places, he probably thinks there are 57 states. Well, I have here a printout from a web site called the Intenational Humanist and Ethical Union. And here is how the second paragraph of an article on that website begins. 'Every year from 1999 to 2005 the organization of the Islamic Conference representing the 57 Islamic states presented a resolution to the United Nations Commission on human rights called combating'. Obama said he's going to campaign in states,a nd it turns out that there are 57 Islamic states. There are 57 Islamic states! So did Obama just lose his bearings. or was this more of a telling slip. ladies and gentlemen? KEEP IT GOING, FOLKS! Our future is at stake...Make no mistake about it.

I just wanted to share this with everyone here.

beatles1964

Why? We already know Limbaugh is nuts.

I don't know it just caught my attention.Normally, I don't even pay any attention to what he has to say about anything.

beatles1964

Gee, thanks for sharing. Is this the kind of desperate crap he's broadcasting these days? This simply confirms my view that Limbaugh listeners are among the most gullible idiots in the world.

Just give me a number I can remember, Babe

from the Manchurian Candidate (from memory so forgive me if it's not quite right). The number was for the supposed number of communists in the State Dept. and was 57, from a Heinz ketchup bottle.

>43 beatles1964:

Beatles, I don't know which is more distressing about your comment - the fact that you received it via email, or the fact that you actually attribute any credibility at all to anything that Limbaugh has ever said. There are many conservative pundits who are competent, credible, and ethical, but Limbaugh is not now, has never been, and probably never will be any of those things.

Several people here have already asked you to please check the facts before posting. It is very easy to do. Due to the numerous allegations circulating about Barack Obama, Snopes.com has gathered them all on a single page. Right now, as I type this message, the Obama page on Snopes contains 33 allegations. Snopes has investigated each one, and they found only 4 of the 33 to be completely true. Six were partially true, and three could not be verified one way or the other. The remaining 20 allegations were found to be completely, totally, undeniably false.

I usually quote the source, but I am not going to do that here. It will give you a chance to get familiar with Snopes, so you can check future emails before posting them here. I would also highly recommend the excellent commentary by Lori Robertson at FactCheck.org, titled That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously. (Why do I get the feeling that I have already pointed it out, and that you have not read it?)

I think it is fair to say that most of us who participate on Pro and Con are here because we enjoy the debate. We want to bounce our ideas off people who have very different opinions. We enjoy the fact that other members challenge our ideas, and alert us to interesting articles and books that we might not have read if we associated only with people who agree with us.

Anyone is more than welcome to come here and offer opinions anywhere along the political spectrum, but we can be somewhat fierce in defending the civility of this forum. If you continue to post bogus emails and quote Limbaugh, we may have to conclude that you are a troll. There are many political forums that are totally infested with trolls, but this is not one of them, and we intend to keep it that way.

(Sorry, everyone, LT somehow saved several copies of my message before I was done typing.)

Weird. You didn't save a number of times—perhaps thinking LT was slow?

As someone who is politically hostile to Obama, but who thinks that character matters a lot in politics, I can report that Obama has an appeal that has nothing to do with his race, and which goes far beyond his formal politics. I never warmed to Edwards, who seemed too much a sort of artificial political construct, calculating and with no real core.

Obama appears to be -- but of course appearances can be deceptive -- someone that, if you have a good argument to make for a policy which is not natural to him or his base, would give you a hearing, and also someone who is intelligent enough to understand it.

Of course, perhaps this is just clever marketing. We all know that a good politician tries to extend his appeal out from his base, and knows that he has gained even if he can just "neutralize" supoorters of his opponent. Maybe Obama is just good at doing that.

But I can see the reasons for the "Messiah has come" type committment among his supporters. Edwards, or Hillary, would never have been able to induce that sort of emotion. Nor would have a conventional Black politician.

However, let's turn the tables: would Sarah Palin be on the Vice Presidential ticket, and arousing waves of enthustiasm among the Republican base, had she been male?

Like it or not the fact remains that Obama did make the statement he was going to Campaign in all 57 States. And of course everyone knows the U.S. only has 50 States. Maybe I should just go ahead and leave this group. That would probably make an awful lot of people real happy.

beatles1964

Obama will visit the last 7 while McCain's figuring out how to visit Czechoslavakia, or telling us how to protect the border between Iraq and Pakistan.

If you're making your mind up based on "gotchas", you'll have plenty to choose from. Better to focus on who will give us the more entertaining SNL skits.

Ha ha.

Beatles1964: I offer in Obama's case, the My Lai defense: don't judge if you haven't been there.

It's not really a good defense, of course, and is often -- My Lai is an example -- used to excuse the inexcusable. But "57 states" is nothing ... the man is speaking, speaking, speaking, under huge pressure, every word being recorded by malicious enemies and scanned for a slip-up ... I actually admire his willingness to think on his feet occasionally, and not just spout memorized boiler-plate.

Or maybe he has been shown secret Pentagon plans for expansion?

If you listen to the interview, or read the transcript, it is abundantly clear that he meant to say 47 states. Go read it in context and then see what you think.

60
We'll, if you're feeling hostility, stop and think. You're basing your vote on one slip of the tongue. Either that, or it's your convenient way of finding a way not to vote for Obama, because there are other reasons (see the name of the thread) why you would never vote for him.

But really, disliking him because in one of the hundreds of speeches he has made he had a slip of the tongue, that has got to be one of the goofiest rationales I have ever heard.

It is not just the slip of the tongue statements either. I heard him on one of the 0'Reilly Factor interviews and it sounds like Obama wants to make the U.S. weaker Militarily plus the fact I do not like that he will sit down with any Terrorist leaders without any preconditions. He wants to do away with the Star Wars Defense System that President Reagan started. We need a Strong leader in the White House not someone will make the U.S. weaker plus also his inexperience is a factor too.

beatles1964

I saw the O'R F interviews also, and Obama did NOT say that he wanted to get rid of the Star Wars program.

Your statement is a misleading as the nonsense that he 'flipped' on his position regarding off-shore drilling.

I just saw an Obama interview on tv the other day where he stated he wanted to get rid of the Star Wars program, get rid of our Nukes, cut the spending on our Military and other things that would lead to a much weaker U.S. Military.

beatles1964

More money is spent by the US on defense than by the following 40 countries or so - combined. And of course, that spending has climbed exponentially since the start of the two (unnecessary) wars and has sunk the US into massive debt (the largest ever in history) and created economic woes... and you think the US should maintain or increase military spending? What is militarily weaker than stretching out your forces in wars they can't win and throwing away all your national income on construction budgets for large corporations?

I just saw an Obama interview on tv the other day where he stated he wanted to get rid of the Star Wars program, get rid of our Nukes, cut the spending on our Military and other things that would lead to a much weaker U.S. Military.

Kindly offer substantiation of the claim...

I can only assume that Beatles is parroting some of the things that Sean Hannity brought up on the 11th, many of which were taken from this statement from Obama, made in 2007.

I don't know why I bother, but there's a rebuttal here at Media Matters.

Oh, I saw that interview! It was the one where Obama came out in a turban and dashiki, laughed maniacally, and declared "I seek nothing less than to destroy the US Military and annex the country to the 57 nations of Heinz Islam!!! hahahahahahaha!!"

... And exactly how does getting rid of a defense program that has been what, 25 (more or less) years in the making, and still isn't viable, make our country any less safe than, oh, say, having it.

The Star Wars program is akin to sticking your finger in your pocket and claiming you have a loaded gun.

A militarily weaker US may not be such a bad thing. It might limit the arrogance with which we approach the world. We might be forced to learn displomacy again.

As far as "Star Wars" is concerned after God knows how many billions have been sunk into this project have we knocked one ICBM out of the sky yet? Even when we feed our ABMs the targetting information before the ICBM is launched? Star Wars, aside from being tactical suicide, so far outpaces our technological know how that it won't be a a practical weapon for decades yet to come.

I watched "The Hunt for Red October" several weeks ago. The Red October was created for one reason, to start a nuclear war. Star Wars gives the state that gets it first the same capability, starting a nuclear war. It cannot protect against an all out Russian nuclear attack, not now, not ever. By the time the Chinese nuclear arsenal becomes large enough to blow us all up seventy times seven times it won't help there either. No, the only rational thing to do is work to put this genie back in its bottle.

Star Wars is just Republican red meat for the "Let's take a military grand tour of the Middle East crowd". It has nothing to do with saving America from nuclear annihilation.

At present shooting a bullet with another bullet is not technologically feasible and will cost way more than it is worth, especially if you believe as I do it's worth will be negative.

>1 codyed: You support McCain because he is white?

"Just imagine for a moment if it were the black candidate in this election, rather than the white candidate, who was born in Central America, was an indifferent churchgoer, had graduated near the bottom of his university class, had dumped his first wife, had regularly displayed an explosive and profane temper, and had referred to the Pakistani-Iraqi border ..."

--Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times

Doug at #59:

Obama appears to be -- but of course appearances can be deceptive -- someone that, if you have a good argument to make for a policy which is not natural to him or his base, would give you a hearing, and also someone who is intelligent enough to understand it.

Yes, that's what's know as a "liberal".

His actual policies are of course, moderately-right-wing corporatist (they could scarcely be otherwise in today's America...), but by temperament, Obama strikes one as having the intellectual virtues of liberalism.

Refreshing, isn't it?

Having been off line for a couple of weeks I just now have a chance to read this thread pretty much in one sitting. Thanks to all participants who contribute thoughtful, fact based, comments. This is a truly interesting campaign and I am hoping the majority of Americans are seriously considering voting. Our demographics have been changing in interesting ways and I would like to see those changes show up at the ballot box.

Again, thank you for not decending into intolerant ravings and rantings.