Reply #39: It's sad.... [View All]

[moriah]

I don't think that Clinton's upswing was due to racism. I think the difference between the polls and the votes had to do with the "Iowa Bump" dropping, as well as the confrontation with Iran and women being POed that Hillary was getting slammed for so long for being a "robot" and then slammed for "crying".

http://dominantreality.blogspot.com/2007/12/final-iowanew-hampshire-polls.html

An example of the 2004 polling data...

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But as far as racism in this country is concerned, yes there will be people who will refuse to vote for a Black candidate. However, poor Obama has one other thing going against him. He's not just Black, but the part of him that is Black is also foreign -- and "Muslim" despite the fact that his father was an athiest.

I live in the South. I know a lot of racists. I have a female coworker, not a Hillary fan, and she's from a rural part of my state. (She and I actually lived within a mile of each other about eight years ago when we both lived in that rural part of the state, we didn't know it at the time tho.) Last Friday morning when she came in I asked her if she'd heard the results of Iowa, and she hadn't. I told her Huckabee had one -- a good, Southern Republican governor. That was the first result I mentioned, because I assumed she was Republican. She seemed vaguely disappointed, then asked about the Democratic caucus. "Obama won by a landslide, Edwards and Hillary close but Edwards ahead."

"I don't like him and I'll never vote for him." Why?

"He's too ... foreign, and that's all I'll say at work."

My father, who wants Edwards, said "I'll never vote for a person when I can't pronounce their name." Then got more vitriolic, at which time I switched topics to the Cotton Bowl after telling him that Edwards said he didn't want his vote after all if he felt that way.

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Racism is alive and well, as I'm unfortunately too aware. I noticed that both of these people couched their objections to Obama's ethnicity not about him being Black, but essentially how soon the members of his family with darker skins left Africa and the fact that someone in his ancestry (even several generations back) worshiped Allah. Is that going to be the excuse people use to hide their racism?