QOD
To me anyway, it has become apparent that Hillary has moved back to the center if not to the right quite a bit. Not knowing the history of politics like some I wanted to get honest feedback if this was what the Democrats used to be? If this is really that bad for the Party to pull back their base? If in all honesty, the Democratic party will not be stronger if they can pull some of the base away from the GOP and erode their power? You can’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime, so slowly turning the country back verses an emergency stop, reverse engines, hard left can’t be that bad can it?
Assuming Obama wins, will Hillary galvanizing this group of uneducated beer drinking, bowling, go to church on sunday men and women, be the death of the Dems for 2008?
Tags: 2008 Presidential, Politics
The whole Clinton/DLC thing is to take liberal Democrats for granted (because what are they going to do vote for the Republican…please) and pick off a enough moderate “centerist” to beat the Republicans by 1% of the vote.
It worked for Bill Clinton so the Democratic establishment thinks that it is the only way to win. They ignore that fact that it did not work for Gore or Kerry.
They also ignore that fact that being Republican-lite does not give any body any reason to vote for or support ANY democrats. As a result the Overton Windowof American poltics moves continuously to the right.
In fact many policies that would have been considered radical right wing – have now been totally adopted by DLC Demcorats like Tom Carper.
Putting Corporate needs and desires over the needs of the public, for instance.
The problem for the Dems is that many of these “beer drinking” etc. types end up voting for a Republican President. Basically, they are Dem at the local level.
Counting on them in the Presidential election is risky.
This turned out to be exactly what I’ve been saying all along: a demographic decision. According to The New York Times, the vote broke down like this:
White men: Clinton 53%, Obama 46%
White women: Clinton 64%, Obama 36%
Black men: Clinton 4%, Obama 96%
Black women: Clinton 11%, Obama 89%
Whites: Clinton 60%, Obama 40%
Blacks: Clinton 8%, Obama 92%
Male: Clinton 46&, Obama 53%
Female: Clinton 56%, Obama 44%
Protestant Christian: Clinton 58%, Obama 43%
Catholic: Clinton 70%, Obama 30%
Jewish: Clinton 54%, Obama 46%
Other: N/A
None: Clinton 37%, Obama 63%
And, considering “Operation KAOS,”
Democrats: Clinton 54%, Obama 46%
Ind/GOP: Clinton 46%, Obama 53%
Hillary Clinton has been telling y’all that the Democrats need to nominate her, because she can win the general election, and Barack Obama cannot. Trouble is, she can’t tell you why she believes that, because saying such is verbotten among Democrats, but she believes that Mr Obama cannot win because he is a Negro.
I imagine that the she-Clinton is using demographics to divide the country even more and accentuate differences.
Dana’s analysis is correct. The politics of division she is playing are as Steven Colbert aptly noted “democolypse now” while the Democratic Party shreds itself apart and positions McCain for a win in November among people who are sick of in-fighting.
If I could send one message to Howard Dean, it would be this….”why are you allowing the party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?”
Or is it a lethal cocktail of demographics and Bubba-philes who are bitter about Bush and cannot let go of the golden years of Clinton administration?
I’m not sure Hillary thinks that Obama can’t win because he is an African-American – BUT she knows a lot of dumbasses in the media and a handfull of ancient party bosses think that, so she is pushing that line of attack.
Dana, yep. And that’s probably true. This is a racist country, for the most part.
Hillary forgets… Come November racist dumbasses turn into gender dumbasses.
Ever since Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act the Republicans have been using coded racial messages to win the U.S. Presidency. The only times we’ve won have been when we’ve nominated a “good ole” Southern Boy — somebody the bigots could trust not to push too hard on this equality stuff.
The Rev. Wright kerfluffle is just another way of sending the racial code to the masses. Dana and June are right. Clinton’s strategy plays to American’s racism. Unfortunately, as we have seen, it usually works.
So, remenber the guys in Philadelphia who wrestled over our Constitution? Should they allow slavery and form an imperfect union or should they hold out and do it right and have no union at all? They compromised and 80 years later the union dissolved into Civil War. Then 100 years after that the Democrats handed control of the country to the Republicans by passing the Civil Rights Act that actually gave all American citizens the rights they had been promised after the Civil War. It has been a long struggle throughout our history.
So here’s my question, and remember I support Obama before you all pile on me. If the country truly is racist, and I think it is, then would it be wiser to elect a president who isn’t racist but is willing to play the race card in order to get elected OR should we just roll over and let the Republicans continue to elect more racists? Does the country make more progress toward equality under a Democratic president or a Republican president?
Onward!
You know, the usual dynamic for Dems running for President is to make a big appeal to the base in the primaries and then get to the center to pick off independents.
This year, there are a large number of new Dems, there are a HUGE number of people completely unhappy with the current state of the country, and there is the usual base. Once any Dem gets the nomination, they pretty much end speaking to their base — they know that most of them will turn out.
Hillary’s Reagan Democrats may or may not vote for Obama, but against McCain they may or may not vote for Hillary as Pandora points out. But this year, with Mr. 22% tied to McCain, those Reagan Dems are closer to voting with their real interests (and not R wedge issues) than they have since Reagan.
Any Dem has a better than fighting chance against BushMcCain — Obama just has a better chance of speaking to a broader group of voters than Clinton does.
So if Clinton wins our choice is bewteen a racists or someone who uses racism to get ahead.
Super!
That’s a pretty slim line.
I get your point, Rebecca, but I’m uncomfortable with the ‘wink, wink. Don’t worry I’m really on your side’ approach.
I think anyone willing to play the race card is either:
1. an egomaniac who justifies their behavior under the delusion that they – and only they – are capable of ‘saving’ the Dem party from itself, or
2. a racist
Me too Pandora, I think it’s the height of cyncism and hypocrisy, but is it the only way to win??
If we accept the premise that America is a racist country, with racism built into our history and our very social soul, then how do you win without playing the racial code game? And yes, perhaps you have to be an egomaniac to have the stomach to do this. I couldn’t but I couldn’t run for any office, much less president. I don’t think Clinton is a racist but I do believe she will do anything to win.
“Assuming Obama wins, will Hillary galvanizing this group of uneducated beer drinking, bowling, go to church on sunday men and women, be the death of the Dems for 2008?”
Yes
Oh another thing, we are making progress.
We knew in 1787 that slavery was wrong but we made a compromise to get a union.
We fought a Civil War over it in the 1860’s.
In 1964 the Democratic Party committed suicide over it with the Civil Rights Act.
I would argue that Obama’s candidacy is the next milestone in our stuggle to climb out of the cesspool of racial hatred. If nothing else, he has given a voice to a new generation of Americans who denouce the old racial divides.
When my father was growing up in the 1920’s his family had a pet black cat. Its name was the N word. Nobody thought anything of it and this was commonplace back then. The family wasn’t particularly racist; in fact, four members had died sixty years before in the Battle of Gettysburg and are named on the PA Memorial.
I find the cat’s name appalling but I am from a different generation and I grew up in a society where this sort of thing is no longer tolerated. My father wouldn’t tolerate it today.
There are new generations coming along who will find the Clinton campaign as appalling as I find the N word. This is progress. It’s slow but it is happening.
The key question is how far you stray from your principles to be in control. If your aim is power at all costs, it matters not. Incremental change is most likely to be peaceful. If either party were to suddenly change the course of the ship of state the shockwaves would be significant esp. in light of the state of the economy. YMMV.
Pandora, you said:
“I think anyone willing to play the race card is either:…
2. a racist”
Does that make Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson et al. racists?
Perhaps A.,
but their racism stems from being the oppressed, not the oppressor and that makes a big difference. Otherwise, the entire black population of America would be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Pat Buchannan have all used race in the political arena. I could name more… because, like Obama says, that’s politics as usual – just ask Harold Ford.
IMO, Hillary is not a racist, but she’s using it to win. My first point applied to her. To HRC everything is about winning, even if it means employing tactics that she’d be the first to criticize someone else for.
I think that’s what so shocking. Last year if you had asked me if HRC’s campaign would pull out the race card I would have laughed and made a joke about Bill being our first ‘black’ president.
I’m not laughing now.
I am no racist, bassist, or falatist!
IS Hillary actually using the race card IF she truly believes that America will not elect an African-American candidate? As several stated above, the Dems need to win to make the changes they want, and the Bradley effect is demonstrably real. Should Hillary or anyone else be prohibited from talking about it?
Certainly every blessed aspect of Hillary being a woman, including the ball-crusher nut-cracker that ran on this very blog have been fair game.
Barack Obama–or any other African-American–cannot be elected in this country until he, she, or they can run AND discuss the issue of race openly. Obama, despite one eloquent but fundamentally flawed speech, has failed to do that.
Bigger issue implicit in donviti’s set-up: that fact that you can disdain “this group of uneducated beer drinking, bowling, go to church on sunday men and women,” who have been registered Democrats for generations, indicates why you were willing to give Obama a pass on his “bitter, clinging” remarks–he was apparently just vocalizing what many in the Democratic Party actually think.
Is being elitist necessarily preferrable to being racist? I’m not sure.
Finally, Pandora, parsing racism into whether it arises from being the oppressor or being the oppressed is a dangerous and narrow line to walk. It sounds good, but when you examine it, it’s intellectually pretty bankrupt.
The Bradley effect is often called a theory in search of data. There are tons of ancedotes, but no rigorous proof. But if we are dealing with anecdotes, then you have to account for folks like Deval Patrick, Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell and all of the other black mayors and local legislators who win or lose their races within their polling narrative. The Bradley effect is a sideshow from the real deal here.
Obama, despite one eloquent but fundamentally flawed speech, has failed to do that.
This right here is bullshit. He has had to address race fairly often — is he black enough, his so-called black nationalist church (before the out of context Wright stuff), the madrassa stuff plus all of the dog-whistle stuff that has been trotted out along the way. Race is not a performance for white people. Otherwise he would be criticized for being Sharpton or Jackson. Meaning it is damn tough for him to win on this. And if you are interviewing for a job with someone who has racial baggage, believe me, you can have one of the best CVs in the business and know it is unlikely to get the job. People who walk in the door opposed to the color of your skin take a very long time to win over, but in the meantime, you will be employed someplace more genial.
And if you are watching the exit poll internals, what you would know is that Obama did better with “this group of uneducated beer drinking, bowling, go to church on sunday men and women,” in PA than he did in OH. And PA is older and less black than OH. He is making some inroads in spite of being “elitist”. And most folks understand he was inartfully getting at wedge issue politics.
The bottom line is that the entirety of the Dem base is split between these two candidates. Once it is over they will unite behind a candidate, some more enthusiastically than others. Some won’t vote for a black man and some won’t vote for a woman and others won’t vote for a Clinton. Some will swear they are voting for McCain until they live through a summer and fall where Dems will show that it is BushMcCain they are voting for (and they won’t even have to make it up). It cannot be a surprise that people often have irrational reasons for voting or not voting.
“Race is not a performance for white people.”
EVERYTHING about a presidential candidate, from Bubba Clinton’s marital infidelity to Dubya’s drunk driving to Kerry’s service in Vietnam, to Mitt Romney’s religion, Hillary’s gender, and Obama’s race IS a performance for the voters.
Pretending that it’s not doesn’t change anything.
Of course the Bradley effect is difficult to substantiate, because the only way to do it is to rely on self-reporting, and as people who research sexual behavior know–that’s damn unreliable. And we have to acknowledge that any such effect would necessarily be dependent on the particular demographics of the voter population under consideration.
I have been watching exit poll data, and I do agree with you that the Dem base is split. Where
I think a lot of Dems are deluding themselves (not necessarily you, by any means) is in their conviction that this fight is going to end without alienating significant portions of that base no matter who is the ultimate nominee.
Which is why I think the Dems are dangerously underestimating their difficulties in the general election.
“Race is not a performance for white people.”
EVERYTHING about a presidential candidate, from Bubba Clinton’s marital infidelity to Dubya’s drunk driving to Kerry’s service in Vietnam, to Mitt Romney’s religion, Hillary’s gender, and Obama’s race IS a performance for the voters.
You’ve moved the goalposts here — from Obama has not been able to address race adequately (definition of which we can only guess) to the point that everything about a Presidential candidate is a performance. I’ll concede the latter, but but won’t concede my original point.
Race — specifically blackness — is not a performance for white people. And isn’t that lack of performance what is in your claim that Obama has failed to discuss race openly?