Some valuable stuff here, such as this:
Brendan Payne in Edmonds, US, says: I voted for McCain and disagree with much of Obama’s policies, but this is an historic day for the United States. Ideology aside, we must come together as Americans to celebrate this great hammer blow against the walls of racism in America.
I think Mr. Payne has his cause and effect confused.
Make it stop.
I’m incredulous and pretty tired of the whole “walls of racism” thing & Obama. Every law-abiding adult in this country has had the right to vote for how many decades now? And they’re just now making their way to the polls? I’m not impressed.
Try being a conservative voter in California. Talk about effective disenfranchisement!
Watching last night’s coverage, it’s more obvious to me now than before that Obama’s race–or what could be called his “interestingness”–figured into the election of this president more than ever before. Why can’t he just be a president, and not a (technically half-) black president?
Now we’ll see what he’s got to offer beyond charm & exotic appeal.
It is interesting and ironic that all of the focus on Obama’s race and on the celebratory “we have overcome” rhetoric is actually a repudiation of Dr. King’s dream. Obama appears to have been judged not by the content of his character, but by the color of his skin:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1
I think (no stats) that Caucasian-Americans by and large have accepted Obama for who he is, not what he looks like; and we have voted either for or against him on the basis of his promises and policies. But it appears that non-whites, and blacks in particular, have come out uncritically for Obama. Is it possible that blacks are a monolithic voting bloc on all of the issues (95%???), or could it be that a large number of them voted for him because he’s black? I don’t know, but the wild imbalance gives me pause.
Connecticutian (#3):
Is it possible that blacks are a monolithic voting bloc on all of the issues (95%???), or could it be that a large number of them voted for him because he’s black?
Perhaps a family would have had to live in this country for 200+ years without *EVER* seeing a person of their skin color on a presidential ballot to understand that? Perhaps if more black presidential candidates had been nominated over the years it would have been much clearer that this election was about issues. Perhaps if Republicans had acted more like black constituents mattered in the last 8 years, the stats would have been different. Did the Republicans give black people any reason to vote for them? Have they done so in the last 20-30 years?
I found this year’s election choice a particularly difficult one. Mr. Obama’s leftist politics are deeply troubling, and I have abhorred Bush’s moves to limit our freedoms and privacy. It’s sort of like the Episcopal Church, there is no center anymore. McCain might have been that center, but the Republican campaign strategy – his or his advisers’ – was a very poor one.
“Perhaps if Republicans had acted more like black constituents mattered in the last 8 years, the stats would have been different. Did the Republicans give black people any reason to vote for them? Have they done so in the last 20-30 years?”
Um, Colin Powell? Condoleezza Rice?
[i]Did the Republicans give black people any reason to vote for them?[/i]
Of course they did: lower taxes and free enterprise. But apparently a message of net tax consumption and government intervention resonates more strongly with them.
I remember a caption from a picture on the front page of an Orlando FLA newspaper many years ago. The picture depicted an
Afro-American orange grove laborer holding up a bundle of cash. The printed word referred to him saying ” …why should I work when I can get this “…free money…”.
Harvey [#7]: Did the newspaper editors include any reviews of their favorite minstrel shows?
It wasn’t a pair of whites in robes in Philidelphia who intimidated voters. It was a pair of [url=http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=80036]’Black Panthers'[/url], one of whom had an illegal night-stick, who closed ranks against whites entering the polling place, saying they were “not going to let angry whites keep Obama from getting elected” (or words to that effect).
So where was the racism???
Jim Elliott
FLorida