Lois Coar, the mother of two grown children, supported Mitt Romney this year and is undecided for November. She cannot see voting for Obama — “not because he’s black, but I just can’t put it in words.” She likes McCain as a person, but “I can’t understand why he keeps talking about this Ayers guy” — William Ayers, the 1960s radical who became an occasional colleague and supporter of Obama in Chicago. “He should be focusing on the economy and real terrorists; that’s what people worry about,” she said. Washington Post
If you are white and you do not consider yourself a racist, a wing-nut, or rich and your answer for not voting for Senator Barack Obama is, “It isn’t because he’s black, but I just can’t put my finger on it.” I have sad news for you; it is because he is black! I read this response and I was immediately struck by the number of people who share this same sentiment. With our economy experiencing a “China Syndrome” meltdown, the war in Afghanistan on the verge of defeat, and a whole host of other problems besetting this country anyone who would even consider supporting the Republican brand in this election needs to have their voting rights revoked. What this election has finally shown is just how bankrupt the Republican Party is, of course after they have bankrupted most of the free world. I mean there are only so many ways you can screw the public and get away with it. The sad part is that there are still those who would allow the divisiveness of race to keep them from supporting an obviously more qualified candidate.
It is reminiscent of the people on the Titanic after it has hit the iceberg and they are flailing around in a frigid ocean and refuse to get in the lifeboat because a black man is steering it. Well my friends my response to those folks is let them drink sea water. Anyone that stupid and stubborn probably deserves to drown. Anyone who had any doubts about John McCain’s judgment needs to look no further than his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Fortunately there aren’t enough of those folks to prevent the inevitable from happening. Despite the Fox News poll that has McCain down by 2 points, this election is over. It won’t even be close. Anyone remember the Reagan revolution? We are about to experience the Obama revolution.
For his part, Reagan, the charismatic former Governor of California, repeatedly ridiculed Carter, and won a decisive victory; in the simultaneous Congressional elections, Republicans won control of the United States Senate for the first time in 28 years. This win marked the beginning of the “Reagan Revolution.” Wikipedia
McCain has run one of the worst general election campaigns in my memory. He has stumbled and fumbled every step of the way. I guess a campaign run by lobbyists isn’t the best campaign money can buy. Of course to be fair McCain did have a difficult task to overcome. All of the major issues in this campaign favored Obama and the Democrats and how hard is it to run as the agent of change candidate when you have been sitting in Washington for the last 25 years? Though most liberal journalists and pundits are too afraid to state the obvious for fear of jinxing the election, many of their Republican counterparts are already heading for the exits. Every day we are treated to another Republican mouthpiece laying the groundwork for a major Republican defeat. It’s as if the Republican Party is disintegrating right before our eyes. You have half the Party wanting McCain to go really negative and throw everything including the kitchen sink at Senator Obama and the other half watching in disbelief as this election becomes historic. The problem with going really negative is that the polls are showing it isn’t working, but more importantly the damage that it would do not to Senator Obama but to the office of the Presidency. And God knows we don’t need the office diminished anymore than George W. has already done.
The problem for McCain is two-fold. The first is that if Mr. Ayers were the American equivalent of Osama bin Laden as he is being compared, why is he still walking around a free man? Surely any man as dangerous as him would have to be on his way to Guantanamo not sitting in some mansion is Chicago dispersing 100’s of millions of dollars for educational foundations. Not to mention that Senator Obama was all of 8 when this Mr. Ayers was committing these acts of terrorism and probably not even in the country. It is hard to compare a man that we all see on television walking around free to a man that is living in caves while there is a worldwide manhunt for him; the symbolism kind of gets lost somewhere.
The second problem is that if this gets anymore negative then the McCain campaigns does something that we cannot allow in a democracy and that is too diminish the office of the Presidency. In other words you may disagree with the officeholder but the office is supposed to remain above the fray. You may not respect the man, but you must respect the office or anarchy will prevail. By personally attacking Senator Obama the way the McCain campaign has been doing then even if he is elected Senator Obama as President could not govern. This would be an intolerable condition for all of us. Not only would the man be tainted but also the office itself. I don’t have to follow any terrorist sympathizer, Muslim, or ni**er! Any President is only in command for a limited period, but the office must continue to hold its dignity and prestige regardless of its occupant. Let’s face it there will already be plenty of people who will resent Senator Obama as Commander in Chief, but we cannot tolerate any public ambiguity about who is in charge. Nor can we give any latitude to those voices of intolerance to reinterpret the law of the land.
If you dehumanize or devalue the person in such a way then the office is tainted. Mr. McCain is fond of stating that he puts country first, the final days of this election will allow him the opportunity to prove it based on the direction he allows his campaign to take. So, if the best you can do is I don’t know why I can’t vote for him, then I think we all know why and you are just unable to get honest with yourself.
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. – Henri Frederic Amiel
The Disputed Truth
I read that same quote, and had the same response to it…she won’t vote for him because he’s black!
The popular variation on that “I just can’t put it into words” line around here is “I just don’t trust him”. If you ask why, you get a defensive-sounding “I just don’t.”
After watching the drunken lurchings of the McCain campaign, I wonder how anyone could trust him with more responsibility than taking out the trash on Thursday mornings…
It is not entirely because he is black.
There is an even deeper hatred than racism lying buried within the white working class American psyche. It is an endemic distrust of the intellectual. Witness the Adlai Stevenson debacles for all that you need to know about that idea. And make no mistake…Obama is (and even worse, quite proudky appears to be.) an intellectual.
Of course there is an element of racism in all of that bile that we see spewing up out of the McPalinites, but it’s more than that.
1-It is racist.
2- It is anti-intellectual.
3- It is classist…don’t forget, this guy is RICH, and he doesn’t go to any great lengths to hide it as do Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton. Even “I Married a Millionairess and My Daddy and Grandaddy Were Admirals” McPain tries to get over as just one of the folkses, with his ill-fitting suits and galumphing attempts at “My friends” camaraderie. Obama just walks out in his suprerbly tailored suit…this man can carry some clothes, people…and lays it right out there on the table.
He doesn’t resort to ghetto patois, either. Oh…he drops a “g” now and again, but he is speaking high-level Ivy League English to an audience of Yahoos, and they resent the fuck out of it.
And there you have it in a nutshell. Those three elements act as mutual amplifiers for the haters.
There it is.
Deal with it.
He has to.
The only question? Besides of course the distinct possibilities that some All-American nutjob will try to kill him or his real political enemies will use that distinct possibility to cover a political murder?
The only question remaining is whether that low-IQ segment of the white American voting public still actually has the numbers to make the election competitive.
The polls say no.
However, the polls are usually somewhat full of shit.
The polls don’t cover the trailer parks, and they’re not real strong in the remaining urban white ethnic and rural working class enclaves either.
We shall see.
The debate tonight will tell another part of the tale.
Remember…it is in the best interests of the media to make this a continuing race. An early blowout? Pfffffttttt….there go the ratings.
We shall see.
Less than three weeks and counting.
We shall soon see how many Yahoos have survived the ongoing evolutionary culling that is going on here.
Let us pray.
AG
I partly agree. The thing that bothers me about Sarah Palin isn’t that she doesn’t know anything, its that she doesn’t want to know anything as if knowledge were somehow bad….
Where I disagree is in the order you have placed your negatives. Compared to the other candidates Obama is not that rich. It is one thing for a white man to talk above these whites but for a black man to do it it is tantamount to treason…hence the traitor, kill him comments…who the hell does he think he is…you have to remember that many whites wouldn’t trade places with a black man even if he were a billionaire…I think I’ll ride this white thing just a little longer…because in the back of their minds they believe that despite all that money they are still inherently better than the black man…
Compared to the low end of the IQ spectrum…most of whom (if they are working at all) are forced to hold down bad-paying jobs (or two or three) the candidates are ALL incomparably wealthy.
Wealth? The majority of the most vicious people that I have seen in this context would be overjoyed if they were to come into a little simple security.
When was the last time you heard of someone who had risen this high in politics facing eviction?
Please.
Obama makes no bones about his position. He says over and over again “Only in America could someone who started where I started end up where I am today.” It’s actually the backbone of his candidacy to some degree. However…he doesn’t dress up in faux work shirts like John-Boy Edwards, doesn’t speak about “the old neighborhood” (Wink wink, nudge nudge…the old working class white neighborhood) as does Joe Biden, dress in a small town grocer’s Sunday go-to-meetin’ best like Senator McPalin or run the whole gamut of small town whore winks, twitches and come-on grimaces like The People’s Slut, SarahGirl.
You also write:
Y’know what?
I have hunch that you are wrong there as well.
They talk about the “voting booth truth”. About how many white people are liable to change their mind (or vote their true mind) in the privacy of the voting booth.
Remember the old Lenny Bruce skit? Where he has Lyndon Johnson being coached for a speech regarding how to say the word “Negro”?
Like that.
Well…and here’s the root for a great SNL skit or even a movie…imagine all of those racist motherfuckers that you see at the rallies yelling “LYNCH HIM!!!” and similar shit.
Now pick one…ANY one that is not a card-carrying member of a seriously active racist organization and is financially challenged even just to some normal, mainstream degree…and make him or her the following offer.
Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick. About 7 seconds into the waiting period and…Presto Chango!!! One more scuffling white fool disappears and yet another black billionaire walks the face of the earth.
Bet on it.
AG
Money is only part of a complicated mix that also includes race, status, intelligence, identification, education (and kind of education), tribalism, habit, information access, location, and other factors that blend and merge beyond analyzing. I get kind of tired of all the “trailer park” “walmart” spew from the “progressive” side as if this cartoon image explains everything.
For one thing, poverty alone doesn’t explain the huge political gap between poor whites and poor blacks. Both have been screwed royally by the ruling classes from the very beginning.
Also, don’t forget that we’ve heard essentially the same message from ruling class “liberals” like Ferraro and Rothschild, for instance. I guarantee it’s going on at country clubs and in boardrooms where big Dem donors congregate and feel secure, and will flash on the picture of a big fat black woman with 9 children as soon as the “welfare” word is mentioned. It takes extraordinary humans to easily give up undeserved advantage, whether that results from color, inheritance, luck, or nationality. Which, oddly enough, is at the deepest level why I think the Obama presidency really will bring profound change way beyond his policy accomplishments.
I dunno about you, Dave, but much of my blood family resides cheek-to-jowl with the “WalMart shoppers” I mentioned.
The Maine versions thereof.
Nor am I a “progressive”. NOR is this simply a cartoon image that I am drawing.
These motherfuckers are real.
As real as death, in case you haven’t ventured out into white lower class America recently.
A half an hour in a busy WalMart in any primarily white, primarily financially depressed part of this (primarily white, primarily financially depressed) U.S. of A. is…if you have the eyes to see…scarier than the nastiest horror flick ever aimed at that exact audience.
Saw-The Country Years
The Night Of The Barely Living Dead
Not all white people who shop at WalMart who are of lower middle-class or below status are racists…hell, I wrote here recently about how I picked up my whole fall wardbrobe for about $80 at WalMart myself because I couldn’t pay the tariff at fancier (supposedly less slave labor-intensive) places and I do need to cover my nakedness when I venture out onto the hard streets of New York City…but all of the McPain/McPlain race-shouters that I have seen are absolutely, identifiably just what I pegged them to be.
Proud white losers.
But not so proud as to turn down a billion dollars.
THEIR mamas didn’t raise no fools. (In a manner of speaking, anyway.)
Bet on it.
You want to talk about poverty?
About the racial divide among the poor and how stupid that fact is?
OK.
Back to my idées fixes.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
and
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
Thise divides are learned divides.
They don’t happen in the sandbox among young children.
They are taught to people.
Change the culture and its disseminating vessels…may as well add ACADEMIASTRIKE!!! to the mix as well while I am at it…and those problems would be gone inside of a generation if not sooner.
I have written at length on this topic. Lynddie England (The leash girl from Abu Ghraib) is a poster child for this shit.
Sure…these people have been screwed. The question remains…and it is both a good and a valid question…that given the plain fact that in this poor white culture there were for generations escape doors open for those who came up in it who had native talent, energy and intelligence (Escape doors that were NOT so open to people of color who came up in the same general financial and social circumstances.), then are the leavings of those generations…the bottom of the bottom of the gene pool that existed in this society…in any way salvageable?
Should we excuse their behaviour…behavior that has, when translated into votes, sunk us into quagmire after quagmire over the past 50 years or so…or whould we call it as we see it?
That’s all that I am doing here. Calling it as I see it.
Who do you think that THIS woman is? The lady of the local manor?
Please.
I know if you don’t.
Bet on it.
And the sub-text of McPalin’s answer?
Nice.
Who else do you think that game will play on?
Please.
Bet on it.
So do the NeoCons.
Bet on that as well.
AG
So that’s what it takes to get a white to trade places with a black huh? A billion dollars…thank you you proved my point for me….
Frankly…I think that a lot of those people would change places for about $75K.
I mean…hell, Forgiven. You can put out a contract on somebody for about $5000 in many areas of the U.S. Probably less if you hire an amateur.
AG
You got me thinking there, Arthur. I used up my 20 seconds looking back to see whether you said “turned into a black man.” Oh well – ‘person’ changes everything, as does money.
“Anyone that stupid and stubborn probably deserves to drown.”
Maybe Natural Selection is finally beginning to give a hand.