Al Gore was a tough debater until he met George W. Bush and got an attack of the sighs. He famously bested Dan Quayle and Ross Perot in early 1990’s debates. One debate I remember particularly was between Gore and Bill Bradley. It took place in New York City…perhaps at the Apollo. Regardless, it took place in front of a black audience. Bradley pointed out that his more progressive policies were a better fit for the black community. Gore responded by noting the overwhelming support he and Clinton had from the black community. Bradley said that the polls were the result of a lack of awareness of the differences. Gore then accused Bradley of calling black people stupid. BLAM!! Ten points to Gore.
That episode came to my mind while I was reading Al Hunt’s latest piece.
The focus group was moderated by an expert on such forums, Democratic pollster Peter Hart. The participants were informed and enthusiastic about their party’s prospects, had no interest in the Republicans or third-party candidates, and were about equally balanced between front-runners Clinton and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
When Hart pushed the group during a two-hour conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates, a different picture emerged.
Obama, they worried, can’t win the nomination; voters aren’t ready for an African-American president (a point expressed most directly by the two black women participants), and he may not be sufficiently experienced.
It’s something I have noticed anecdotally…blacks are more likely than whites to say that Obama is unelectable because of his race. I’ve also noticed that women are more likely than men to say that Clinton is unelectable, and Jews are more likely than gentiles to say that Feingold or Lieberman are unelectable.
And I don’t know whether their status as targets of discrimination and prejudice makes them more savvy judges of the American electorate…or less. I have no doubt that blacks, women, Jews, Mormons, atheists, and gays all lose votes just for being who they are. But unelectable? That’s a different matter. I don’t think Barack Obama is unelectable at all. I don’t think Hillary Clinton is unelectable. But I’m not a woman and I’m not black. And I tend to be somewhat deferential when people that have suffered discrimination tell me about their experiences.
On the other hand, victims of crime aren’t the most objective observers. Perhaps years of suffering indignities has clouded the minds of people and made them too quick to assume the worst about the electorate?
Yet, isn’t that like Bill Bradley calling black people stupid?
Oh wait!! That wasn’t what Bradley said at all.
Bowers picked up on the exact same thing.
The TV show West Wing got it correct. If people already view you as a smart-ass, you arent going to change that. Your better off embracing it.
I have said this before, and Ill say it again. I am 100% convinced that if instead of sighing durring the debates, Gore had said something to the effect of ‘George, just because you can’t do the math, doesn’t mean its wrong’. He wins walking away. It would be refered to as his ‘Their you go again’ moment. Instead, his handlers pushed him into pretending to not be the smartest guy in the room, and he let them.
Members of a minority group are subjected to the same cultural training as everyone else. I’ve caught myself starting to make snap decisions based on stereotypes.
I can’t speak as a black person about Obama, but I think he has a chance. Most southerners that will consider voting for a Democrat will also consider Obama based on his positions.
Clinton is probably a wash on the stereotype issue. Some will vote for her because she’s a woman, and other will not vote for her because she’s a woman. Her husband will also bring and drive away votes.
Personally, it’s nice to see a woman running, but I’m sorry that it’s this woman. She’s too corporate for my taste. A bad candidate will make it that much harder for a future woman to run.
“Personally, it’s nice to see a woman running, but I’m sorry that it’s this woman.”
My feeling exactly.
I feel the same way about Obama. If the Barak Obama that spoke at the convention had waited an election cycle to gain more of a record before running, I would have been his biggest supporter. Instead we got a guy that is rushing for the white house, and is being “handled” into being just another democratic candidate.
I will not vote for either of them in the primary. If one of them wins the nomination, they will get my vote in November.
Personally, it’s nice to see a woman running, but I’m sorry that it’s this woman.
Agreed. While I think it’s important for the overall progress of our society towards realizing our egalitarian ideals to elect a woman president sooner rather than later, if Clinton makes a bad president — which she most likely will — it’s not going to help the next woman get elected. Those who think otherwise should reflect on the non-existence of major female politicians in the UK in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher.
The same applies with respect to future African-American candidates and the appallingly empty suit that is Barack Obama.
I do think we’ve come a long way since Geraldine Ferraro’s VP candidacy. If Clinton isn’t electable, it’s not because she’s a woman, it’s because she’s a Clinton. I’m not so sure about Obama. I don’t know that America is more racist than it is sexist, but the racists certainly are more energetic and organized about their bigotry than the sexists are about theirs. An African-American presidential candidate might indeed be unelectable.
All that said, I think it would be better to put either of them forward and lose than it would be to back Edwards simply because he’s a white man and therefore “electable”.
In the future, everyone will be electable for 15 minutes.
Speaking of electability, you note the GOP is fleeing straight towards Huckleberry racist populism bullshit.
How ugly would a Huckabee/Clinton or Huckabee/Obama contest be, the crazy misogynist racist versus a female or African-American candidate?
As an Africa-American male, I can honestly tell you that there are more people out there than you think who wouldn’t vote for Obama just because he’s black, even if the other choice WAS a nutbar like Huckster. They’ll tell themselves it’s not that, they’ll explain to other people that it’s not his race…but it is. It’ll have nothing to do with the candidates’ qualifications.
The Club For Growth guys may be scared out of their minds right now, but they figure they can bring Huck around.
But I’m telling you straight up that if you put ten random white American voters in a room, hand them a secret ballot, and have them vote given the choice between a white Baptist minister who is an overt bigot who plays the hate card and an intelligent black man running on his qualifications and professing a message of tolerance and diplomacy in the world, the bigot will get 6 votes, minimum.
Every time. The fact that Huckabee’s in the lead makes me assume the worst about the electorate. The other GOP candidates at least try to play off their hatred and hide it a bit.
I agree completely. No matter what excitement might be instigated by either Clinton or Obama as far as I can tell based on my own experiences neither one could be elected president due to a huge reservoir of underground racism-people who believe they aren’t racist but at the very least are still prejudiced enough that having someone other than a white man as president just won’t do. I also think this same feeling will end up holding back many people at the last minute into not voting for a woman. This may never be admitted publicly but it will be in the back of too many voters minds.
I think you underestimate the religious factors that will come into play with a Huckabee nomination. There are plenty of secular Americans who would never vote for a preacher, plenty of religious minorities who would never vote for a Christian cleric, and plenty of non-Baptist Christians who would never vote for a Baptist.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that Huckabee is not in the lead among the electorate, just the benighted third of the electorate that always votes GOP.
Still, I fear you’re not that far from the mark. My guess would be that the bigot would still get five votes.
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But here in Philadelphia in the first week of December, a two-hour focus group of 11 Democratic voters, conducted expertly by pollster Peter Hart for the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a clear message: Don’t count Hillary Clinton out of the 2008 race.
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What kind of a boss would these would-be presidents be? Obama sounds like the ideal chief. Here are the comments he elicited: “compassionate,” “inspiring,” “motivational,” “willing to listen,” “patient” and “considerate.” Hillary Clinton, as a boss, would be “tough,” “demanding and difficult,” “demanding, but fair,” “tolerant,” “smart” and “difficult.” And Rudy (Giuliani)? A representative sampling: “A pain,” “high-maintenance” and “arrogant.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Love what Oprah is doing to excite the Obama campaign, and while I think I am realistic about it as opposed to being cynical, I still think the country is too racist to elect a Black (or even half Caucasian, biracial) president.
Have we come that far? I don’t really know. The southern block of Reaganized states are probably gone anyway. But what about the border states like TN, KY, AK, and especially OH, and maybe even MI? Michigan had a great run for the Reagan Democrats some years ago, and there is still a tendency of these moderates to dislike Detroit politics, and might vote against Detroit (urban Black people), i.e., for the Republican, as in 89s and 90s.
As far as TN goes, mmmmmmmaybe. Obama is a lot more appealing than Harold Ford, Jr., and Ford did come awfully close to being elected despite being a) black, and b) from a political family with a terrible reputation for corruption.
However, that’s only if Huckabee isn’t nominated. That would bring the lunatics out in droves.
You may be right, hope so. But Ford was a DLC moderate; Obama is hedging on many of his positions. Illinois is not Tennessee.
But we can hope, can’t we? Maybe I am underestimating the extent of change in the country. “Hi, Oba…give me a call sometime.” That any campaign could pull that shit in this day and age is remarkable. But it happened and Ford had to contend with it.
Being a DLC moderate may have hurt Ford in TN. I know an awful lot of Dems here who skipped voting in that race once Ford started sucking up to the religious right. I wasn’t even sure I could bring myself to vote for him after he started filming political ads in churches, but I finally sucked it up in the voting booth.
Anyway, it was still pretty close despite the tremendous set of negatives that came along with Ford.
I do hope that it is different this time around. The presidential primaries should be a good barometer of whether his pitch is a winning one.
Gore’s performance in the debates with Bill Bradley were part of the reason that I was not enthusiastic about his candidacy before the 2000 convention. I have nothing against Bill Bradley; but I did not consider him such a radical alternative to the Clinton administration or Al Gore as some other Democratic politician may have been. So I did not see why some other Progressive Democrats were so excited about him (In fact, I was a bit put-off by the claim by some of his supporters that his being a former basketball player made him more electable, because he’d appeal to the “guy vote.” This was the election in which the press couldn’t focus on anything more important than “who would you feel more comfortable with at the local pub?”). However, Gore’s debating sacrificed accuracy for sound bites and Bradley was justified in claiming that Gore distorted his record.