Powell endorses Obama

[Lobowolf]

Can Obama Close The Deal With Those White Guys?

 

Good story here  by Matt Bai.

 

Excerpt:

I asked Obama if it was frustrating to have seen, throughout the campaign, so many polls that showed him trailing badly among white men with lower incomes or less education.

 

“It’s not frustrating,” Obama said, shaking his head. I found this believable; Obama seems almost impervious to frustration. “There are a couple of things at work here. No. 1, let’s face it — I’m not a familiar type.” He laughed. “Which means it would be easier for me to deliver this message if I was from one of these places, right? I’ve got to deliver that message as a black guy from Hawaii named Barack Obama. So, admittedly, it’s just unfamiliar.

 

“Which, by the way, is a different argument than race,” Obama continued, pausing to make sure I understood. “I’m not making an argument that the resistance is simply racial. It’s more just that I’m different in all kinds of ways. I’m different even for black people. I went through similar stuff when I ran against Bobby Rush on the all-black South Side of Chicago.” In that race, a Democratic primary for Congress in 2000, Rush, the black incumbent, handed Obama his first and only political defeat. “It’s like: ‘Who is this guy? Where’d he come from?’ So that’s part of it.

 

“The second part of it is that I’m trying to do this in an environment where the media narrative is already set up in a certain way. So it’s hard to not be dropped into a box.”

 

He reminded me that back in March, for instance, he accepted a spontaneous invitation from a voter in Altoona, Pa., to bowl a few frames, and it turned out Obama was basically a god-awful bowler. Some commentators gleefully used this deficiency to portray him as out of touch with the common man, in a John Kerry-windsurfing sort of way. (Joe Scarborough, on MSNBC, used the word “prissy.”) To Obama, this brought home the bleak reality that, as a Democratic nominee, he was going to be typecast, fairly or not.

 

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told me. “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?

 

“I guess the point I’m making,” he went on, “is that there is an entire industry now, an entire apparatus, designed to perpetuate this cultural schism, and it’s powerful. People want to know that you’re fighting for them, that you get them. And I actually think I do. But you know, if people are just seeing me in sound bites, they’re not going to discover that. That’s why I say that some of that may have to happen after the election, when they get to know you.”

2 observations:

 

1) He's got a better chance than McCain does "closing the deal with those black guys."

 

2) It's a different argument than race?!

a. For instance, he's from Hawaii, unlike most people.

b. Of course, Most people aren't from Arizona, either.

 

 

 

Which isn't to say that his "unfamiliarity" argument isn't accurate with respect to certain voters; however, I find it disingenuous to suggest that the argument isn't about race. It may not be an identical argument, but it's certainly a large part of it (and the part he led with, not being Hawaiian or having a fairly atypical (in the USA) name.)

[jdonn]

1) He's got a better chance than McCain does "closing the deal with those black guys."

Pardon me. "Those black guys" have been voting for white guys their entire lives! But "Those white guys" will too often NEVER vote for a black guy, simply because he is black.

 

These 'reverse racism' arguments never worked with me. If you are black then you have probably been discriminated against your whole life, but still voted for the type of people who were doing it. Then, after having fought for literally centuries for equal rights, one of your people has a chance to do something amazing. Of course you will want to vote for that person! And I'm applying this argument to blacks and to women, though of course it would apply in many ways. There is such a world of difference between "a person like me finally has a chance to make it!" and "I would never vote for a person who is not like me."

 

BTW it's not just African-American racism. The whole 'Muslim' thing may never die...

[Lobowolf]

Observation #3: There's an interesting subtext at work here, too; the unquestioned assumption that if you're "lower income," you should, de rigeur, be voting Democratic, and if you're not, we have to figure out what illogical forces (such as racism) are at work. I can't remember who wrote it (Larry Elder?), but I read an interesting article that took the position that not only was this not the case, but that many typically Republican positions actually disproportionately help low-income people. For instance -

 

Support of school voucher programs: if there's a good, expensive private school in the area, rich people can already afford it; it's those who are financially strapped who can't pay out of pocket for the private school, and also out of paycheck for the public school they wouldn't be using.

 

Partial voluntary privatization of Social Security: Rich people have disposable income to invest after deductions from their check. The long term stock market results are disproportionately less available to people with lower incomes. In addition, to the extent that race correlates with poverty, status quo social security is worse for African American workers, who have a shorter life expectancy and less time to enjoy the benefits of their mandatory deductions earlier in life.

 

Private gun ownership for law-abiding citizens. To the (arguable) extent that gun ownership discourages crime, the benefits have a disproportionate effect in higher crime areas (ditto stricter sentencing).

 

Illegal immigration. If it's true that Republican politicians are more opposed to illegal immigration than their Democratic counterparts (debatable), the effects disproportionately hit the lower-education, lower-income unskilled labor force.

 

There were more that I can't remember. I didn't agree with all of them, nor did I disagree with all of them. I do think that the author made enough of a point that the semi-automatic "Not rich? Why would you ever vote Republican?!" dogma is worth a second look.

[awm]

Part of it is race of course, but it's not just race.

 

Obama is not just "black" -- he is the product of a mixed-race marriage. Many older voters remember when such marriages were not even legal in most states. Likely there are people who are uncomfortable with mixed-race marriages without necessarily being uncomfortable with black Americans.

 

Obama also isn't the descendent of slaves; he is not from a black family that has been in the United States for generations. His father was a Kenyan citizen (who never became an American). There is a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment in this country (frequently regardless of the nation-of-origin, although certainly some of this sentiment is targeted at Mexican immigrants for racial reasons). When Obama ran for Illinois legislature in an almost all-black district, he was challenged for "not being black enough" because of his white mother and foreign father.

 

Obama has a muslim name. He also spent a fair part of his childhood in a muslim country (Indonesia). There is a lot of anti-muslim sentiment in this country (religion-ism maybe, racism not so much... how many votes do you think a white muslim would get?)

 

Obama is very new on the national scene. People haven't had years to get comfortable with him and what he represents. That makes it easier for people to credit some of the lies being spread about him (i.e. that he is muslim) and his policies (i.e. that he supports raising taxes on lower income voters) because he doesn't have the long record and reputation that makes them easier to refute.

[Lobowolf]

1) He's got a better chance than McCain does "closing the deal with those black guys."

Pardon me. "Those black guys" have been voting for white guys their entire lives! But "Those white guys" will too often NEVER vote for a black guy, simply because he is black.

 

These 'reverse racism' arguments never worked with me. If you are black then you have probably been discriminated against your whole life, but still voted for the type of people who were doing it. Then, after having fought for literally centuries for equal rights, one of your people has a chance to do something amazing. Of course you will want to vote for that person! And I'm applying this argument to blacks and to women, though of course it would apply in many ways. There is such a world of difference between "a person like me finally has a chance to make it!" and "I would never vote for a person who is not like me."

 

BTW it's not just African-American racism. The whole 'Muslim' thing may never die...

I guess the question is to what extent you take "a person like me" to be about skin color, or to be about belief system. It'd be interesting to see the demographics in a race between Bill Clinton or John Kerry vs. Condi Rice or Alan Keyes.

[jdonn]

1) He's got a better chance than McCain does "closing the deal with those black guys."

Pardon me. "Those black guys" have been voting for white guys their entire lives! But "Those white guys" will too often NEVER vote for a black guy, simply because he is black.

 

These 'reverse racism' arguments never worked with me. If you are black then you have probably been discriminated against your whole life, but still voted for the type of people who were doing it. Then, after having fought for literally centuries for equal rights, one of your people has a chance to do something amazing. Of course you will want to vote for that person! And I'm applying this argument to blacks and to women, though of course it would apply in many ways. There is such a world of difference between "a person like me finally has a chance to make it!" and "I would never vote for a person who is not like me."

 

BTW it's not just African-American racism. The whole 'Muslim' thing may never die...

I guess the question is to what extent you take "a person like me" to be about skin color, or to be about belief system. It'd be interesting to see the demographics in a race between Bill Clinton or John Kerry vs. Condi Rice or Alan Keyes.

You can take it in any context you want, but I completely meant about nothing but skin color.

[cherdano]

I don't understand the premise of this discussion.

The only poll I could find showed Obama leading McCain by 56% to 27% (beginning of August) among low-income voters. [i would be curious if there are more recent numbers available.] Is this not good enough? It seems an arrogant assumption to think that just because Obama is giving low-income voters a bigger tax break or more likely to help them get health care, all of them should be voting for him. Not every college professor making more than $150,000 is voting for McCain after all.

 

Meanwhile, in the most recent weekly Gallup poll he is trailing McCain by 40-54%. This compares to Kerry losing white men to Bush by 37% to 62%. So Obama is doing 9 points better than Kerry among white men. This is not good enough?

 

I am very sympathetic to the point Obama is making in the quote above about familiarity. But I am not sure it is true for all that many voters. Obama is always winning the "Who is sharing your values more closely?" question in polls. I find this quite a remarkable achievement of his campaign.

[Lobowolf]

Pardon me. "Those black guys" have been voting for white guys their entire lives! But "Those white guys" will too often NEVER vote for a black guy, simply because he is black.

 

These 'reverse racism' arguments never worked with me. If you are black then you have probably been discriminated against your whole life, but still voted for the type of people who were doing it. Then, after having fought for literally centuries for equal rights, one of your people has a chance to do something amazing.

ok, I give up...what is the intended context given that this excerpt completely means nothing about skin color?

[jdonn]

Pardon me. "Those black guys" have been voting for white guys their entire lives! But "Those white guys" will too often NEVER vote for a black guy, simply because he is black.

 

These 'reverse racism' arguments never worked with me. If you are black then you have probably been discriminated against your whole life, but still voted for the type of people who were doing it. Then, after having fought for literally centuries for equal rights, one of your people has a chance to do something amazing.

ok, I give up...what is the intended context given that this excerpt completely means nothing about skin color?

I do not understand what "I give up but let me ask this question" means, nor do I understand what your question itself means, nor do I understand why you would quote my post from two back which you already replied to. So I'll give up too.

[kenberg]

I'm one of these older white guys everyone seems to be concerned about. I'm just trying to figure out who has the best skills for running the country. After some thought, I'm voting for Obama. I talked by phone a few hours ago with an older white guy I have known since grade school a half century plus ago. He is voting for Obama for the same reasons. He votes Republican maybe more often than not, but he likes Obama. I have an older white guy friend I have known since graduate school. He is voting for McCain because he thinks McCain is the best person to run the country. I think his wife, an older white woman, is voting for Obama. Give it a rest. We older white guys, and gals, are not sitting around checking blood lines or skin color.

[jdonn]

I'm one of these older white guys everyone seems to be concerned about. I'm just trying to figure out who has the best skills for running the country. After some thought, I'm voting for Obama. I talked by phone a few hours ago with an older white guy I have known since grade school a half century plus ago. He is voting for Obama for the same reasons. He votes Republican maybe more often than not, but he likes Obama. I have an older white guy friend I have known since graduate school. He is voting for McCain because he thinks McCain is the best person to run the country. I think his wife, an older white woman, is voting for Obama. Give it a rest. We older white guys, and gals, are not sitting around checking blood lines or skin color.

I haven't seen anyone refer to "older white guys" in this thread until you. However, I'm glad you and three of your friends make rational informed decisions. Unfortunately, millions of people don't. They are very easy to find on Youtube if you don't believe me.

[TimG]

I haven't seen anyone refer to "older white guys" in this thread until you.

My kids, especially my 12 year-old daughter, are convinced that nearly all Republicans are old white men.

[kenberg]

I haven't seen anyone refer to "older white guys" in this thread until you.

My kids, especially my 12 year-old daughter, are convinced that nearly all Republicans are old white men.

Yes, and you might check on what she thinks of as old!

[kenberg]

I'm one of these older white guys everyone seems to be concerned about. I'm just trying to figure out who has the best skills for running the country. After some thought, I'm voting for Obama. I talked by phone a few hours ago with an older white guy  I have known since grade school a half century plus ago. He is voting for Obama for the same reasons. He votes Republican maybe more often than not, but he likes Obama.  I have an older white guy friend I have known since graduate school.  He is voting for McCain because he thinks McCain is the best person to run the country. I think his wife, an older white woman,  is voting for Obama. Give it a rest. We older white guys, and gals,  are not sitting around checking blood lines or skin color.

I haven't seen anyone refer to "older white guys" in this thread until you. However, I'm glad you and three of your friends make rational informed decisions. Unfortunately, millions of people don't. They are very easy to find on Youtube if you don't believe me.

The thread, sometimes obliquely sometimes not, is concerned with whether racism explains the fact that Obama is not leading by more than he is. We older white guys are the usual suspects, so maybe I jump to conclusions about the view here.

Probably older people, white or black, male or female, are skeptical of "change". Few of us have the time, ability or inclination to thoroughly analyze an election. We all take shortcuts. I think Obama is onto something with his thoughts about "strangeness". A guy comes out of nowhere (well, seemingly) and promises to shake everything up. Well, I need to think about that. My life is going pretty well as it is. I need to lose some weight, but I am pretty sure I have to take care of that myself. McCain has some positive qualities. Powell mentioned them in his endorsement, and I agree. Taking Powell's words at face value his movement toward Obama sort of paralleled my own.

 

There are those who will not vote for a black man, there are those who will not vote for a woman. Forget fairness for a moment, they are being stupid. The country needs all the talent it can get. It appears that this year has shown that most of us, although surely not all of us, understand that.

[Lobowolf]

I do not understand what "I give up but let me ask this question" means

"I give up" meant something roughly like, "Since you assert my first guess was incorrect, and I can't think any rational alternative, I won't hazard a second guess, I'll just ask."

 

 

That is to say, it wasn't "I give up BUT let me ask this question." It was "I give up, SO let me ask this question.

[matmat]

i get the feeling there is a lot more concealed racism and prejudice in the US that people want to believe.

 

kenberg... "older white guy you know since grad school" ?

there's your problem right there... academia does tend to be more liberal, and, even if a particular person has conservative tendencies, like your friend, the sheer fact that he went to grad school implies he is capable of rational and independent thought. you are *NOT* a representative sample of the joe twelve packs from blue collar, nearly purely white, follow the leader communities.

[blackshoe]

i get the feeling there is a lot more concealed racism and prejudice in the US that people want to believe.

 

kenberg... "older white guy you know since grad school" ?

there's your problem right there... academia does tend to be more liberal, and, even if a particular person has conservative tendencies, like your friend, the sheer fact that he went to grad school implies he is capable of rational and independent thought. you are *NOT* a representative sample of the joe twelve packs from blue collar, nearly purely white, follow the leader communities.

"grade school" ≠ "grad school"

[matmat]

i get the feeling there is a lot more concealed racism and prejudice in the US that people want to believe.

 

kenberg... "older white guy you know since grad school" ?

there's your problem right there... academia does tend to be more liberal, and, even if a particular person has conservative tendencies, like your friend, the sheer fact that he went to grad school implies he is capable of rational and independent thought. you are *NOT* a representative sample of the joe twelve packs from blue collar, nearly purely white, follow the leader communities.

"grade school" ≠ "grad school"

try again.

[y66]

Do Republican leaders have any idea who "real" Americans are?

 

From a recent column by Frank Rich:

IT seems like a century ago now, but it was only in 2005 that a National Journal poll of Beltway insiders predicted that George Allen, then a popular Virginia senator, would be the next G.O.P. nominee for president. George who? Allen is now remembered, if at all, as a punch line. But any post-mortem of the Great Republican Collapse of 2008 must circle back to the not-so-funny thing that happened on his way to the White House.

 

That would be in 2006, when he capsized his own shoo-in re-election race by calling a 20-year-old Indian-American “macaca” before a white audience (and a video camera). “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the young Democratic campaign worker for good measure, in a precise preview of the playbook that has led John McCain and Sarah Palin to their tawdry nadir two years later.

 

It wasn’t just Allen’s lame racial joke or his cluelessness about 21st-century media like YouTube that made him a harbinger of the current G.O.P. fiasco. It was most of all the national vision he set forth: There are Real Americans, and there are the Others.

 

The Real are the small-town white folks Allen was addressing in southwestern Virginia. The Others — and their subversive fellow travelers, the Elites — are Americans like the young man who Allen maligned: a high-achieving son of immigrant parents who was born and raised in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs during its technology boom. (Allen, the self-appointed keeper of real Virginia, grew up in California.)

 

Cut to 2008. You’d think that this incident would be a cautionary tale, but the McCain campaign instead embraced Allen as a role model, with Palin’s odes to “real” and “pro-America” America leading the charge. The farcical apotheosis of this strategy arrived last weekend, again on camera and again in Virginia, when a McCain adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, revived Allen’s original script, literally, during an interview on MSNBC.

 

After dismissing the Northern Virginia suburbs, she asserted that the “real Virginia” — the part of the state “more Southern in nature” — will prove “very responsive” to the McCain message. All Pfotenhauer left out was “macaca,” but with McCain calling Barack Obama’s tax plan “welfare” and campaign surrogates (including the robo-calling Rudy Giuliani) linking the Democrat to violent, Willie Horton-like criminality, that would have been redundant.

 

We don’t know yet if McCain will go the way of Allen in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1964, when L.B.J. vanquished another Arizona Republican in a landslide. But we do know that Obama swept like a conquering hero through Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, last week and that he leads in every recent Virginia poll.

 

There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what “real America” is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don’t have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.

 

But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.

The rest of the column.

 

p.s. If Obama wins Virginia, that will be even sweeter than if the Rays win the series. It will also mean that change is already well underway.

[Al_U_Card]

Obama neither represents change nor does he require it. What he is doing is raising questions and taking more inclusive and incisive approaches to the current problem set facing the States.

 

With much less national political baggage than most, he is a vector for change. Will his direction be a good one? Will the magnitude of his field of influence be enough? Will he be able to buck the trend and fend off the (economic) barbarians at the gate? Did JFK?

 

Welcome to those oft-referred to "interesting times".

[y66]

Tapping into the energy, ideas and skills of bright, thoughtful people who really want to do the right thing is a huge change. Obama has a natural instinct for doing this.

 

Politicians obviously have limited options for putting the brakes on a free falling economy and turning things around, even if they're working night and day with guys like Volcker, Summers, Rubin, Reich and Buffett. But they can do some things to restore confidence. Just knowing that Obama and Volcker have been talking seriously about the economy since they were introduced to each other in June 2007 , that they have a very good relationship and that Volcker is a serious candidate for Treasurer goes a long way in this direction for me. Scarry how far we are from turning this around though.