{"id":3348,"date":"2008-09-22T07:07:28","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T12:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3348"},"modified":"2008-09-22T07:10:29","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T12:10:29","slug":"bad-faith-and-credit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3348","title":{"rendered":"Bad Faith And Credit"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s tempting to look at the new AP-Yahoo poll<\/a> and have a chuckle. It’d be a bad idea.<\/p>\n

The poll – which shows that a third of Democrats have issues with black people…:<\/p>\n

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks \u2014 many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” responsible for their own troubles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 \u2014 about two and one-half percentage points.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…which, in fact, jibes closely with my own observations; Democrats have been among the most corrosively and casually racist people I’ve met in the past twenty years. Anecdotally, I’ve found mainstream Democrats to far more casual and blase about having racist attitudes than mainstream Republicans.<\/p>\n

Still, the number is pretty daunting:<\/p>\n

40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hm.<\/p>\n

But as with all polls and studies, you have ask – where did they get the numbers?<\/p>\n

And why?<\/p>\n

\n
More than a third of all white Democrats and independents \u2014 voters Obama can’t win the White House without \u2014 agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“Agreeing with a negative adjective” is racism? Because being loud, violent and responsible for their own troubles describes perceptions of a lot of groups – American teenagers of all races, Harley-Davidson riders, The Real World <\/em>contestants and on and on.<\/p>\n

Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s only a few bigots,” said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep. There are. Some of them wear wifebeaters and drive pickups with confederate flags. Other bigots wear suits and work at networks.<\/p>\n

Obama’s weakness in polling outside of his key demographics – Afro-Americans and people in state capitols and university towns – has been troubling his campaign since well into the primaries. It shadowed his performance in the primaries, and it dogged him even before Mac picked Palin as his running mate, in large part, I’d like to think, to exploit this very weakness (and to highlight Democrat bigotry on gender in the process).<\/p>\n

The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush’s unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.<\/p>\n

The findings suggest that Obama’s problem is close to home \u2014 among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So why are we hearing this?<\/p>\n

Because “some Americans are bigots” is news? Please.<\/p>\n

I suspect this is “news” because the Tics’ leadership is building a firebreak in case Mac – still a decided underdog – upsets The One in the general election.<\/p>\n

In 2000, the Dems blamed their loss on perfidy in Florida. In 2004, they blamed (and still blame) the Swift Boat Vets for…I dunno, telling the truth about their impeccably weak candidate.<\/p>\n

But The One isn’t weak (other than being a half-term Senator with no executive experience, but that didn’t become an issue to Democrats until Palin’s nomination); he’s been a juggernaut, a phenomenon. He should<\/em>, says the Tic conventional wisdom, win in a landslide against a GOP that’s staggering from four really tough years.<\/p>\n

And yet it’s not breaking that way.<\/p>\n

And it seems to some in the Democratic part it’s better to undermine the system and slime the voter than to admit – should The One lose – that they fielded yet another weak candidate, hobbled by policies left over from the late sixties that most Americans reject long before they reject someone’s skin color.<\/p>\n

Bonus question: do you think bigotry would be an issue for a black conservative running for President?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s tempting to look at the new AP-Yahoo poll and have a chuckle. It’d be a bad idea. The poll – which shows that a third of Democrats have issues with black people…: Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-ebony-and-ivory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}