YOU ARE DUMB, AND YOU ARE PROBABLY A RACIST, IF YOU VOTED FOR HILLARY CLINTON
but not if you voted for barack obama. then you
are the wise and enlightened and open-minded, even if some numbers may suggest
otherwise.
Imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up,
opened the newspaper, and learned that people who voted for Hillary Clinton on
Tuesday did not actually bother to
think:
Pennsylvania could have put a stop to this civil war, but the voters were not inclined to think their votes through...
...With a Bush administration legacy of ill-advised war and economic woe, the Democrats would have to go out of their way to lose the general election -- and in Pennsylvania they unthinkingly went down that road.
You have to grudgingly admire, I suppose, an editorial that manages to analogize a woman who received 1.2 million votes in the Pennsylvania Primary and has to date received 13,917,009 votes nationwide as both the Bush Administration in the Iraq War and the Confederacy in the Civil War, as the candidate of the old, the stubborn, the foolish, and the unflinchingly stupid. The only missing accusation -- and it was surely whistling Dixie at the edges of the second analogy -- was the idea that she's the candidate of the irredeemably racist.
But the Post-Gazette editorial board -- methinks I spy the heavy hand, and the ham-handed metaphors, of Tony Norman -- doesn't have to regret the omission, because the New York Times, with a big assist from the Obama Campaign, handled it well enough for the both of them:
It is a question that has hung over Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and it loomed large on Tuesday night after his loss to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania: Why has he been unable to win over enough working-class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination?
In a front-page, homepage piece headlined Questions over Race and Electability, the answer remains unspoken, if not unheard: because so many of those people are racists, of course.
Just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Mr. Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Mrs. Clinton’s support — or, looked at another way, the makeup of voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Mr. Obama — has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.
After acknowledging -- grudgingly -- that Senator Obama has ascended to his current front-runner status by winning big victories in very white states, and that crowds at his rallies are as white as any at Clinton rally, Adam Nagourney's piece turns to Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, to note that many of these people react negatively to people who are seen as different." In other words: to people whose skin color is different.
But the hack job doesn't stop there. Consider these passages:
For Mr. Obama, race presents two potential problems: Voters opposing him simply because he is black, and Democrats who will not support him because they do not think a black man can win a general election.
The results in Pennsylvania suggest that problems exist. A poll of Democratic voters conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press found that Mrs. Clinton drew 63 percent of the white vote while Mr. Obama drew 90 percent of the black vote, mirroring a pattern in many other states. More strikingly, the poll found that 18 percent of Democrats said that race mattered to them in this contest — and just 63 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election.
Funny -- if predictable -- the implications and conclusions to which these numbers inevitably lead. But let's look at them against the grain for a moment.
37 percent of Pennsylvania whites crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Obama. Only 10 percent of Pennsylvania blacks crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Clinton. Which means that whites were 370% more likely to vote for the black candidate than blacks were to vote for the white candidate. But Obama's the one with the race problem? He's the one suffering at the dirty hands and darkened minds of those awful, knee-jerk, working-class racists?
If you really wanted to make an argument based on these numbers -- and I don't, by the way, any more than I want to buy that first set of faulty assumptions -- you would have to argue that Senator Clinton is the one with the race problem. After all, she's the one who suffered (far) more from voters unwilling to cross racial lines. But I don't see any articles or editorials or think-tank hand-wringing about that phenomenon. Oh, no. All I see are the -- frankly, quite fucking offensive -- suggestions that people who voted for Hillary Clinton are (just to recap) old, stubborn, foolish, unflinchingly stupid, or irredeemably racist.
Now. Let's not kid ourselves. Are (lots of) people voting against Barack Obama because he's black? Of course. Are (lots of) stupid people voting for Hillary Clinton? You bet. But you'd have to be a dreamer, an elitist, or -- let's be honest -- an utter moron to suggest that there are not also (lots of) stupid people voting for Barack Obama, and (lots of) people voting for him because he's black.
But those sorts of prejudice and stupidity are acceptable, I suppose, as long as they're in service to the sanctified causes of Hope and Change and a More Pefect Union, as long as you're voting the right way for the right guy that the right reporters and editorialists and (who are we kidding) hypocritical condescenders want you to. What is not okay, apparently, is for you to take a good, long look at that candidate and, the color of his skin and the power of his punditry be damned, decide he is too out of touch, or too elitist, or too inexperienced, or too uncertain on the issues, or just too much of a blowharding, self-loving phony to be President. That is most certainly not okay.
Even if it was back in 2000.
Pennsylvania could have put a stop to this civil war, but the voters were not inclined to think their votes through...
...With a Bush administration legacy of ill-advised war and economic woe, the Democrats would have to go out of their way to lose the general election -- and in Pennsylvania they unthinkingly went down that road.
You have to grudgingly admire, I suppose, an editorial that manages to analogize a woman who received 1.2 million votes in the Pennsylvania Primary and has to date received 13,917,009 votes nationwide as both the Bush Administration in the Iraq War and the Confederacy in the Civil War, as the candidate of the old, the stubborn, the foolish, and the unflinchingly stupid. The only missing accusation -- and it was surely whistling Dixie at the edges of the second analogy -- was the idea that she's the candidate of the irredeemably racist.
But the Post-Gazette editorial board -- methinks I spy the heavy hand, and the ham-handed metaphors, of Tony Norman -- doesn't have to regret the omission, because the New York Times, with a big assist from the Obama Campaign, handled it well enough for the both of them:
It is a question that has hung over Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and it loomed large on Tuesday night after his loss to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania: Why has he been unable to win over enough working-class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination?
In a front-page, homepage piece headlined Questions over Race and Electability, the answer remains unspoken, if not unheard: because so many of those people are racists, of course.
Just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Mr. Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Mrs. Clinton’s support — or, looked at another way, the makeup of voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Mr. Obama — has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.
After acknowledging -- grudgingly -- that Senator Obama has ascended to his current front-runner status by winning big victories in very white states, and that crowds at his rallies are as white as any at Clinton rally, Adam Nagourney's piece turns to Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, to note that many of these people react negatively to people who are seen as different." In other words: to people whose skin color is different.
But the hack job doesn't stop there. Consider these passages:
For Mr. Obama, race presents two potential problems: Voters opposing him simply because he is black, and Democrats who will not support him because they do not think a black man can win a general election.
The results in Pennsylvania suggest that problems exist. A poll of Democratic voters conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press found that Mrs. Clinton drew 63 percent of the white vote while Mr. Obama drew 90 percent of the black vote, mirroring a pattern in many other states. More strikingly, the poll found that 18 percent of Democrats said that race mattered to them in this contest — and just 63 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election.
Funny -- if predictable -- the implications and conclusions to which these numbers inevitably lead. But let's look at them against the grain for a moment.
37 percent of Pennsylvania whites crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Obama. Only 10 percent of Pennsylvania blacks crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Clinton. Which means that whites were 370% more likely to vote for the black candidate than blacks were to vote for the white candidate. But Obama's the one with the race problem? He's the one suffering at the dirty hands and darkened minds of those awful, knee-jerk, working-class racists?
If you really wanted to make an argument based on these numbers -- and I don't, by the way, any more than I want to buy that first set of faulty assumptions -- you would have to argue that Senator Clinton is the one with the race problem. After all, she's the one who suffered (far) more from voters unwilling to cross racial lines. But I don't see any articles or editorials or think-tank hand-wringing about that phenomenon. Oh, no. All I see are the -- frankly, quite fucking offensive -- suggestions that people who voted for Hillary Clinton are (just to recap) old, stubborn, foolish, unflinchingly stupid, or irredeemably racist.
Now. Let's not kid ourselves. Are (lots of) people voting against Barack Obama because he's black? Of course. Are (lots of) stupid people voting for Hillary Clinton? You bet. But you'd have to be a dreamer, an elitist, or -- let's be honest -- an utter moron to suggest that there are not also (lots of) stupid people voting for Barack Obama, and (lots of) people voting for him because he's black.
But those sorts of prejudice and stupidity are acceptable, I suppose, as long as they're in service to the sanctified causes of Hope and Change and a More Pefect Union, as long as you're voting the right way for the right guy that the right reporters and editorialists and (who are we kidding) hypocritical condescenders want you to. What is not okay, apparently, is for you to take a good, long look at that candidate and, the color of his skin and the power of his punditry be damned, decide he is too out of touch, or too elitist, or too inexperienced, or too uncertain on the issues, or just too much of a blowharding, self-loving phony to be President. That is most certainly not okay.
Even if it was back in 2000.
Posted: Thu - April 24, 2008 at 01:48 PM
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Published On: Apr 24, 2008 07:06 PM
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Published On: Apr 24, 2008 07:06 PM