From Jörg Colberg’s weblog:

If Obama Loses: “If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama’s missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks, or the concern that Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected. But let’s be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin. Much evidence points to racial prejudice as a factor that could be large enough to cost Obama the election.” ….[READ MORE >>]

From Jacob Weisberg writing for Slate.com

Let’s be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin. Much evidence points to racial prejudice as a factor that could be large enough to cost Obama the election.

Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate. Five percent surely understates the reality. In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn’t vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American. And that’s what Democrats in a Northeastern(ish) state admit openly. The responses in Ohio and even New Jersey were dispiritingly similar.

Such prejudice usually comes coded in distortions about Obama and his background. To the willfully ignorant, he is a secret Muslim married to a black-power radical. Or—thank you, Geraldine Ferraro—he only got where he is because of the special treatment accorded those lucky enough to be born with African blood. Some Jews assume Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel in the way they assume other black politicians to be. To some white voters (14 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll), Obama is someone who, as president, would favor blacks over whites. Or he is an “elitist” who cannot understand ordinary (read: white) people because he isn’t one of them. Or he is charged with playing the race card, or of accusing his opponents of racism, when he has strenuously avoided doing anything of the sort. We’re just not comfortable with, you know, a Hawaiian.

Then there’s the overt stuff. In May, Pat Buchanan, who writes books about the European-Americans losing control of their country, ranted on MSNBC in defense of white West Virginians voting on the basis of racial solidarity. The No. 1 best-seller in America, Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., leeringly notes that Obama’s white mother always preferred that her “mate” be “a man of color.” John McCain has yet to get around to denouncing this vile book. ….[READ MORE >>]

Paul Street for ZMAG Writes:

….Barack Obama told reporters that if he lost in his quest for the presidency, “it would not be because of race. It would be because of mistakes I made along the campaign trail.”

“….like many of Obama’s formulations, his comment was partly true and largely false.”

If Obama loses to the reactionary war-mongering nut-job John McCain despite a political context that would normally strongly favor a Democrat this time around, the refusal of a significant number of white voters to support a black candidate will be a significant part of the explanation. ….[READ MORE >>]

Bob Herbert of The New York Times says:

So what’s the problem for the Obama campaign?

The problem is the dog that isn’t barking.

Talk for more than a few minutes with an Obama supporter in a white middle-class or working-class area and you’ll hear about a friend or relative or co-worker who has a real problem with the candidate.

When Jack Davis’s wife, Joan, who also plans to vote for Senator Obama, was asked about Democrats that she knew who would not vote for him, she replied:

“My mother! She’s 85 years old. I’m sorry to say, but she will not vote for him.”

It is frequently the case that a statistically significant percentage of white voters will lie to pollsters — or decline to state their preference — in races in which one candidate is black and the other white.

After many years of watching black candidates run for public office, and paying especially close attention to this year’s Democratic primary race, I’ve developed my own (very arbitrary) rule of thumb regarding the polls in this election:

Take at least two to three points off of Senator Obama’s poll numbers, and assume a substantial edge for Senator McCain in the breakdown of the undecided vote.

[ READ MORE HERE ] — The race issue in Barack Obama’s campaign can come up in peculiar and jolting ways.

REFERENCES:

1. Racist Attacks on Obama Growing More Heated
2. Jerome Corsi: Politician-Basher’s White Supremacist Ties Revisited
3. Hawking Racism — Pat Buchanan’s latest book is a White Nationalist Screed
4. Fox ‘Racist News’ Channel Depicts Pro-Obama Europeans as — ‘Scary’ Black People
5. Obama Smears - Fox News’ Racist Liars On A Rampage!
6. Attack Politics - Taken To New Lows By Fox News Morons!
7. Neo Nazi/White Supremacist Hal Turner Confirms Friendship And Kinship With Fox News’s Sean Hannity

Popularity: 7% [?]

In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors Are Flying

On the television in his living room, Peterman has watched enough news and campaign advertisements to hear the truth: Sen. Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is a Christian family man with a track record of public service. But on the Internet, in his grocery store, at his neighbor’s house, at his son’s auto shop, Peterman has also absorbed another version of the Democratic candidate’s background, one that is entirely false: Barack Obama, born in Africa, is a possibly gay Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

“It’s like you’re hearing about two different men with nothing in common,” Peterman said. “It makes it impossible to figure out what’s true, or what you can believe.”

“I think Obama would be a disaster, and there’s a lot of reasons,” said Pollard, explaining the rumors he had heard about the candidate from friends he goes camping with. “I understand he’s from Africa, and that the first thing he’s going to do if he gets into office is bring his family over here, illegally. He’s got that racist [pastor] who practically raised him, and then there’s the Muslim thing. He’s just not presidential!” …..[MORE >>]

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly: Feagin’s voluminous, relentless book testifies to both the strengths and the flaws of applying a sociological approach to the intricate issues of racism in America. Most social scientists, according to this sociologist at the University of Florida (White Racism, etc.) and president of the American Sociological Association, see racism “as something tacked on to an otherwise healthy American society.”

But Feagin contends that the system embeds racism at the core, from the Constitution to the legacy of slavery and segregation in retarding black economic advancement. He argues aptly that color-blind ideology “provides a veneer of liberality” for those unwilling to recognize how race has shaped America, while those who lump blacks with white immigrant groups ignore the effects of racial discrimination. But Feagin’s approach surely sacrifices complexity.

Are “racist pressures against interracial marriage” solely the product of white racism? If achievement tests are so biased toward the white middle class, then why do some Asian immigrants do well on them? Feagin calls for a large-scale educational campaign to move whites to confront “the reality of the pain that their system of racism has caused” and a new constitutional convention to incorporate “the group interests and rights of all Americans of color.”

He also calls for individual and group reparations for blacks. (But how exactly would a “black community” be determined?) Feagin doesn’t engage those who argue that class-based remedies may be better than race-based onesAanother flaw in a book full of strong yet poorly articulated arguments.

From Kirkus Reviews: A sometimes searing indictment of American racial practices.

Sociologist Feagin (White Racism, not reviewed) traces the development of American racism to its roots in Europe.

Ideologically, race was not a major consideration in human endeavors until the beginning of the European slave trade in the 1400s, Feagin tells us. But some 300 years later, it had grown full-blown and become a major cornerstone of intellectual thought–dominated by such thinkers as Locke, Kant, and Hegel, and by the Frenchman Joseph Arthur de Gobineau. All of these harbored anti-black views to varying degrees, including the curious natural-law notion that blacks somehow were born to be slaves.

Much of this 18th-century twaddle was absorbed by our Founding Fathers, especially by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison. Feagin also examines Reconstruction, the lynchings of the late–19th and early–20th centuries, the Civil Rights era, and the post–Civil Rights period.

As we enter a point in the new millennium where the white population is beginning to shrink, Feagin points out that less than half the population of America’s four largest cities (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago) is white.

This and other factors lead Feagin to call for an international view of civil rights (i.e., one in which all are entitled to equal concern because all are human beings and not members of this or that state or tribe). Feagin, who is avowedly influenced by Franz Fanon and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), is at his overwrought best when he is in historical pursuit of the roots of racism.

Perhaps because it is something not readily fresh on the mind, it is a matter of more than idle curiosity what Benjamin Franklin and James Madison thought about whiteness.

On the other hand, matters such as affirmative action and reparations are too widely discussed and familiar to make Feagin’s discussion of them very interesting or fresh.

A useful study, even for those who are not guilt-ridden.

Popularity: 19% [?]

By: Paul Harris in Williamson, West Virginia

“Bigot” Democrats in rural strongholds refuse to give backing to Obama

The conservative Appalachian heartlands voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton - and will switch to McCain in November

Johnny Telvor was not happy about Barack Obama becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Not happy at all.

Standing outside the sturdy courthouse in the sweltering heat of a West Virginia afternoon in the small town of Williamson, Telvor smoked a cigarette and bluntly gave his opinion of Obama’s historic mission to be America’s first black president.

‘We’ll end up slaves. We’ll be made slaves just like they was once slaves,’ he said. Telvor, a white Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in West Virginia’s primary, said he planned to vote for Republican John McCain in November. ‘At least he’s an American,’ he added with a disarmingly friendly smile.

Such racist opinions are a rough antidote to the giddy optimism that has swept through much of America’s chattering classes over the past week. Since Obama beat Clinton and finally became the Democratic nominee liberal pundits from New York to San Francisco have eagerly discussed how Obama’s unique candidacy will put America’s racially charged past behind it. The United States, they have argued, is finally prepared to elect a black president and absolve its historic sins of slavery and Jim Crow. But the uglier truth is that part of white America remains secretly - or sometimes openly - deeply distrustful of the idea of a black president.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the vastness of the Appalachian mountains that run from Maine through West Virginia and all the way down to Georgia. Here Obama faces his greatest problem in convincing poor white citizens to vote for him. They certainly have not backed him so far. In West Virginia Clinton trounced Obama by more than 30 points. It is a place of deep poverty and astonishing natural beauty - and it is overwhelmingly white. Outsiders deride it as ‘hillbilly’ country. But it is also somewhere that has a special place in America’s heart. Appalachia is where the TV series The Waltons was set. It is a place of deep family values, where clannish folk have created a vibrant mountain culture of God and guns. It is also a place not used to voting for a black politician. ‘McCain will win here,’ said Telvor. ‘No doubt about it.’

Williamson is a typical slice of Appalachia. The town of 3,000 souls lies on the banks of the Tug Fork River, overshadowed by the mountains that surround it. A railway runs through the centre of town, which has long been used to hard times as the coal industry faded away.

The town is in the heart of Mingo County in West Virginia. In last month’s Democratic primary, a staggering 88 per cent of people in Mingo County voted for Clinton - the highest number in the whole state - compared with just 8 per cent willing to put a cross by Obama’s name. Those are landslide numbers that even some third world dictators would be embarrassed to record. And, as went Mingo, so went the entire state. ‘This state is white, elderly and working class. This is not natural Obama country. People are not used to having black politicians on the ballot,’ said Professor Allan Hammock, a political scientist at West Virginia University.

The sheer scale of Clinton’s win in West Virginia - repeated from Pennsylvania to Georgia - took many pundits by surprise. But it did not shock people in Williamson, Jack Spence among them. The elderly retiree, enjoying the hot weather on a street bench, said he voted for Clinton and, now she has lost, he plans to sit out the November election. ‘I can’t vote for a Republican. My daddy would just roll over in his grave,’ he said. But nor can he bring himself to vote for Obama, though he insisted it was not because of race. ‘That does not matter to me. Though it might to a lot of folks around here,’ he said.

Was there anything Obama could say during the coming campaign to convince him? ‘Nope,’ Spence replied. Then he broached the one issue many Americans consider off-limits: the potential security threat to Obama. ‘Look, someone will kill him. Whoever Obama picks as running mate will end up being president.’ Spence’s ready smile and chatty manner on the thorny issue of Obama’s possible murder gave little clue as to whether he thought it would be a bad thing or not.

   An Appalachian HillBilly — Clinging To God, Guns, and “MoonShine Liquor!”

Often such sentiments are dismissed as the ramblings of a few diehards, carrying with them the prejudices of a by-gone age. After all, Iowa, a very white state, was the place Obama first won. But the fact is Obama’s Appalachian problem is very real.

Williamson and West Virginia are far from alone in rejecting Obama. Take Pikeville, Kentucky. It welcomes visitors with a cheerful sign that boasts it is one of ‘the 100 best small towns in America’. But it is not friendly country for Obama. On Pikeville’s main street, just outside a now abandoned Obama campaign office, Stanley Little laughed when asked if he could support Obama. ‘I will vote for McCain,’ he said. Little, a maintenance man for local offices, had one simple reason why he too was rejecting his long family history of voting Democrat. ‘McCain is one of us. Obama ain’t,’ he said, leaving little doubt as to who he meant by ‘us’.

Pikeville’s rejection of Obama in Kentucky topped even Mingo County’s. Pike County, a huge stretch of forest and hills in the east of Kentucky, voted for Clinton by a thumping 91 per cent versus a mere 7 per cent for Obama. Only nearby Magoffin County (where Clinton scored 93 per cent) is even less friendly to an Obama candidacy.

It is not just an Appalachian issue. There are pockets of this sentiment across America from the working class white suburbs of Philadelphia to the rust belt towns of Ohio and Michigan. Many poor, white Americans are prepared to flock to McCain rather than face a black occupant of the White House. No public courtship between Obama and Clinton - carried out on the nation’s TV screens - is likely to change that. In Georgia a local bar owner has been selling T-shirts featuring Obama being endorsed by a cartoon monkey eating a banana. The sale prompted outraged coverage in the local media but the T-shirts quickly sold out. In Vincennes, Indiana, an Obama campaign office was vandalised on the eve of the state’s primary, its windows smashed and its walls spray-painted with the words ‘Hamas votes BHO’ (for Barack Hussein Obama).

The difficult truth is that Appalachia is unusual mostly because many people here are willing to openly talk about what some of their fellow citizens are secretly thinking. In exit polls of the recent primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia, one in five Democrats confessed to pollsters that race was a factor in their voting choice. ‘West Virginia and Kentucky were just more honest than other parts of the country. A lot of other people know it’s not socially acceptable to mention that sort of thing,’ said Professor Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University and expert on racial politics.

Indeed much of America’s media has been resolutely focused on a ‘post-racial’ vision of America despite the clear evidence that race remains a huge divide in American life. Obama’s own bi-racial background and his campaign’s language of inclusivity have conjured up a beguiling image of a race-free America. It has built on other recent black political successes in America, such as Newark mayor Cory Booker and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who have won on the back of black-white voting alliances. There is truth to it too. Obama has run a remarkable campaign, winning many white states such as Kansas and Montana. He has attracted vast, racially diverse rallies, especially of young people who seem open to putting racial divides behind them. And indeed there is much hope that Obama can change things. Gillespie points out that recent studies have shown that white voters in US cities that have elected a black mayor for the first time prove far more willing to elect one for a second term. ‘They realise the sky has not fallen in. That life went on,’ Gillespie joked. If Obama does win the White House, that experience could be repeated on a national scale for all Americans. Few things could be more important in finally drawing the poison of racism out of American life.

But behind such optimism, another America looms. It is an America far from the headlines that have proclaimed Obama’s candidacy a revolution that will atone for a race-tinged history. This is the America where outrageous rumours that Obama is a Muslim are readily believed. It is the America where Telvor is able to voice a sentiment that ‘Obama might actually be the antichrist‘ without apparent irony or fear of contradiction. It is a slice of America trapped in the dreadful history of race relations and the legacy of slavery and segregation.

On the streets of towns such as Pikeville and Williamson, and in the minds of people like Little and Telvor, that past lives on. It is kept in the present by poverty, joblessness and a fear of the different. It is also a powerful force that should not be underestimated. It could even decide who will be the next President. ‘McCain will beat Obama. There’s a lot of Democrats around here that will be switching side to vote for him,’ Little said. Behind him a white-washed message in the closed Obama Pikeville office read: ‘Vote Obama 08: change!’ In the brutal summer heat it seemed a forlorn hope. It was asking for the overthrow of generations of entrenched prejudice. But, come November, a black president might finally be pulling up a chair behind the desk in the Oval Office. If he does, that slogan of change might just end up being a prophecy. Even in Appalachia.

Popularity: 30% [?]

“Republican Mike Huckabee responded to a sharp offstage sound during his speech to the National Rifle Assn. by suggesting that it was Barack Obama diving to the floor because someone had aimed a gun at him.

Hearing a loud noise, Huckabee interrupted his speech to say: “That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He’s getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he — he dove for the floor.”

There were a few murmurs in the crowd.

The Obama campaign had no comment.” — Quotation from the Los Angeles Times

Mike Huckabee is one of the few politicians who can ad lib quips that haven’t been written, vetted and analyzed by campaign staffers. His jokes were a breathe of fresh air in the Republican presidential debates, but he really stunk up the joint with this clunker.

Perhaps Huckabee thought he could get away with a crack about gunfire at a meeting of the NRA, but even that crowd of troglodytes was appalled at his insensitivity.

Huckabee’s quip must have gone over like a lead balloon in the Obama camp, the presumptive Democratic nominee has received numerous death threats.

Obama is a charismatic, eloquent and intelligent statesman who transcends race and politics, he has united people of all races, colors and creeds.

But there are always the loonies who can’t stand the idea of a black president, and they don’t need Huckabee planting any ideas in their heads.

Maybe if Huckabee were black, he wouldn’t have made that offhand wisecrack. But Huckabee is a hillbilly and we’ve already had a hillbilly president. There isn’t any nut who would have killed Huckabee to prevent a country bumpkin from inhabiting the White House.

Could Huckabee Be Wishing Obama — Assassination?

“Later Friday, Huckabee issued an apology: ‘During my speech at the NRA, a loud noise backstage that sounded like a chair falling distracted the crowd and interrupted my speech. I made an offhand remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama. I apologize that my comments were offensive. That was never my intention.’” — Quotation from the Los Angeles Times

Huckabee conducted himself like a gentleman during his presidential run, he never resorted to name-calling or dirty politics. I believe he is truly sorry that his witticism backfired, and I don’t think he meant to offend Obama.

When Huckabee heard that chair falling he should have made this one-liner:

Fellow NRA members, relax, don’t reach for your assault rifles. That was just the sound of a drunk NRA member out in the parking lot shooting himself in the foot.

REFERENCES:

1. Mike Huckabee Is Seriously Deranged
2. For Assassination Joke, Huckabee Should Be Off TV

Popularity: 36% [?]

Obama Faces Racism in West Virginia - video powered by Metacafe

….Red State Update

Popularity: 37% [?]