Did Obama win because he was black ?

[johnnycakes]

Re: Obama colour topics a come een like Blu homo ones

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Fully 96 percent of black voters supported Obama and constituted 13 percent of the electorate, a 2-percentage-point rise in their national turnout. As in past years, black women turned out at a higher rate than black men.</div></div>

How do you know they voted for him <span style="font-style: italic">because</span> he was black ? </div></div>


R_C,

That is a fair question. I do know that were I black and personally knowing of the history of oppression, racism that made any black presidency impossible in the past, I'd vote for any black man who SEEMED reasonable and especially so if I were presented with the moral but fictitious image that all candidates try to project when campaigning.

Blacks historically (this century) have always voted for Democrats because Democrats are perceived as being more in favor of the policies which would benefit blacks and when you add the two factors together blacks voting overwhelmingly more for Obama , a black man then they did by a few percentage points for born-again Liberal Democrat and white Jimmy Carter is what leads me to think this is so.

Here in the Boston area Italian candidates usually win in Italian neighborhoods and Irish candidates in Irish neighborhoods and black candidates in black neighborhoods.

It's the way people vote.

In presidential elections limited to only two major candidates, the propensity for voting for someone of your own ethnic group becomes even more of a factor.

Yes much of this is my opinion only and I would invite and accept many opposing views with the notable exception of the view that Obama would be something better than any of his predecessors.
That view was invalid; a non-starter to anyone who read his book and knew of his views prior to the election.

For me ( and too few others) the fact that the hierarchy of the Democrat Party checked out his REAL views and approved of them before they allowed him to be presented to us as a candidate, is all the proof that I needed to know that he could not be a moral person or anything like the persona his campaign made him out to be.

[Tulip]

Re: Obama colour topics a come een like Blu homo ones

Aside from assuming someone knows how many blacks or whites or browns or yellows or reds voted for President Obama because he was black, I have two other questions:

1. How do you know what percentage of the black electorate voted for him? I have yet to declare race on my voter registration card; it's not required. And even if I had, my vote is not supposed to be recorded.

2. What percentage of the black electorate using whatever method was used to determine it for the last election voted for the democratic candidate in previous elections? Was there some major shift as if a great percentage of blacks were voting for repubs before?

[R_C]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

jc, do you think that white people voted for George Bush because he was white ?

[barosa]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body">jc, do you think that white people voted for George Bush because he was white ? </div></div>
R_C, it shouldn't be surprising that this perenial talk in the media and most publications of the 96% of &quot;blacks&quot; who voted for Obama is a constant theme.. It was a given that blacks in large numbers would exercise their civic duty of voting more than at any other time in the history of the US.. Who can remember the old lady who had never voted before, who made sure she voted the first time in her life for Obama; What was that telling us? I'm sure many whites of certain background or history, must have viewed that with some discomfort 'tho basic democracy was being exercised..

All politicians fall short of delivering on many of their promises.. It's the nature of the game in many Democracies where there are political roadblocks to changes that can derail &quot;well meaning intentions&quot; .. The H/Care bill is a case in point when he settled for less than he wanted which is far better than the old system.. We should never forget that &quot;race&quot; is the third rail of American politics... Obama's entry into &quot;presidential politics&quot; confirmed that &quot;reality&quot; and has verified to many unsuspecting citizens both white, black and other, the extent of how much the nation is &quot;hung up&quot; on <span style="font-weight: bold">race</span> and will be for the foreseeable future.. It's in the nation's DNA...
_________________________________

Just like oil, the truth always surface to the top..

[johnnycakes]

Re: Obama colour topics a come een like Blu homo ones

[quote=Tulip]Aside from assuming someone knows how many blacks or whites or browns or yellows or reds voted for President Obama because he was black, I have two other questions:

1. How do you know what percentage of the black electorate voted for him? I have yet to declare race on my voter registration card; it's not required. And even if I had, my vote is not supposed to be recorded.


Tulip,
Many polling organizations do what they call exit polling. They interview people leaving the voting places and ask them how they voted. While not 100% accurate for a variety of reasons (many would be ashamed to admit they voted for Bush or mcCain or more so, for Palin) these polls have shown enough validity over time that they continue to use the method for election analyses.


2. What percentage of the black electorate using whatever method was used to determine it for the last election voted for the democratic candidate in previous elections? Was there some major shift as if a great percentage of blacks were voting for repubs before?


Tulip,
The exit polling and other blind polls are what has always been used. There are many competing polling companies and it is very bad for their business if they are consistently wrong, better and far more profitable if they are accurate.

The numbers of people polled always vary from organization to organization and the type of thing on which they need information. These groups or a great many of them have been doing this for decades and know their business to the point they know when something looks screwy in the results they are getting and which differ greatly from what has come to be expected. In these cases they always go out and do it over and over again to check accuracy .

You would have to know not to trust any poll results coming from any group that has a vested interest in a certain result such as Fox News or pro-business groups like the Heritage Foundation and know that the polling results you rely on come from a company or group with a long record of accuracy and impartiality.

Many many untrustworthy polls twist the statistics by asking questions in a certain way so as to get the answers THEY want so you do need to take any such information from unknown, untested sources with a hefty dose of skepticism.

[R_C]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

All that may be so, but I am still trying to explore further your assertion that black people generally vote on straight racial lines.

So again, do you think that most white people voted for George Bush (or for that matter John McCain) because they (i.e. Bush or McCain) are white ?

[X]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

if Obama won cause he was black, suh a guess Jessie Jackson, and Al Sharpton.. and who knows, maybe OJ Simpson have a shot..

ridiculous question..

[R_C]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: pleXxed</div><div class="ubbcode-body">..ridiculous question.. </div></div>

jc said this in another thread. I am trying to get him to defend his position...with clarity.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body">All that may be so, but I am still trying to explore further your assertion that black people generally vote on straight racial lines.

So again, do you think that most white people voted for George Bush (or for that matter John McCain) because they (i.e. Bush or McCain) are white ? </div></div>



R_C,

I think there can be no doubt that McCain got a lot of votes from people who would not vote for a black man but as with the black vote going to the more liberal candidate because of his illusory liberal views and some who knew little about him just voting for the black man, so too many conservatives voted for conservative policies and others ignorant of politics voted for the white man.

It's a mixed bag and it is, after all, the first presidential race in which race was a factor.
That racial factor logically had to have its effect on the voting results in a country still so racially divided..

[johnnycakes]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

I have said as many others have that Obama won because the public was taken in by the false image Obama's campaign projected.
This in spite of what he had written and said well before he was to become the Democrat's candidate.
I now offer the Obama supporters another in the long line of opportunities to avoid understanding just how uninformed/disinformed they were when they went into the voting booth and how easy it was for Obama and the political circus to beguile the unwitting.



From ZNET: the website and the truth that must be avoided:


Obama the War Hawk (2007)

In researching my book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics in 2007, I looked at then Senator and presidential candidate Obama’s speeches to and writings for establishment foreign policy institutions and journals. All this material was readily available to anyone with the willingness and ability to examine it – on the Web and in bookstores and libraries. It was not difficult to find a vast amount of material showing that the Obama who spoke to the nation’s foreign policy “influentials” was quite different from the antiwar and non-imperial brand Obama rolled out for liberal and progressive primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. To give one example, candidate Obama’s summer 2007 article in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs was titled “To Renew American Leadership.” Containing numerous dubious historical reflections that badly whitewashed past U.S. crimes abroad, Obama declared that “we can be [Kennedy’s] America again” and essentially accused the George W. Bush administration of dropping the ball of empire. “The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew,” Obama proclaimed, adding that “we must lead the world by deed and by example” and “must not rule out using military force” in pursuit of “our vital interests.” “A strong military,” Obama wrote, “is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace.” We must “revitalize our military” to foster “peace,” Obama argued – echoing Orwell – in part by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marines.

Obama gave reasons to expect future unilateral and “preemptive” wars and occupations carried out in the name of the “war on terror” by an Obama White House. “We must retain the capacity to swiftly defeat any conventional threat to our country and our vital interests,” Obama pronounced. “But we must also become better prepared to put boots on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.” Reassuring the more militarist segments of the power elite that he would not be hamstrung by international law and civilized norms when “our vital interests” are &quot;at stake,&quot; Obama added that “I will not hesitate to use force unilaterally, if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests wherever we are attacked or imminently threatened…We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense,” Obama added, “in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities” [6] – words that take on a haunting significance in light of president Obama’s fake-humanitarian, petro-imperialist intervention in Libya.

Obama’s “Renewing American Leadership” article was just one of many ways in which he went out of his way to prove his imperial credentials to the foreign policy establishment. The cumulative evidence[7] did not fit the dominant media portrayal of the 2007 and 2008 presidential elections as pitting the “antiwar” Obama against hawkish Hillary Clinton and the militarist John McCain. But it was readily available to any interested and minimally capable researcher. I bought the Foreign Affairs issue in which candidate Obama’s essay appeared at my local Barnes and Noble.



Obama the Deeply Conservative State Capitalist, 2009-2011

Staying with Obama, I was recently struck by the ease with which it is possible to determine in the mainstream media that the supposedly left-liberal president distanced himself from the inspiring public worker rebellion that recently broke out in Madison, Wisconsin last February. Both feeding and playing on the dominant media narrative of Obama as a “man of the left,” the Tea Party right insisted that their great, supposedly socialist nemesis Barack Obama – the corporate-friendly savior of Wall Street – intervened decisively on workers’ side. But, as national New York Times correspondent Jackie Calmes reported in early March, the White House intervened against the national Democratic Party’s initial efforts to support the Wisconsin labor protests, which administration officials saw as contrary to their happy and neoliberal message. “When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests,” Calmes wrote, “they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters…Administration officials said they saw the events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic ‘win the future’ message that Mr. Obama introduced in his State of the Union address.”8



The above is just an excerpt form the larger article which any thinking person will want to read if just to find mistakes that they can then throw at me:
take up the challenge:

http://www.zcommunications.org/why-some-truth-slips-through-by-paul-street

[Jazz]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

The only competition a black man would win in this country because he is black is a race to the jailhouse - possibly also a big penis contest *tekwehmiself*

[barosa]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body">All that may be so, but I am still trying to explore further <span style="font-weight: bold">your assertion that black people generally vote on straight racial lines.</span> </div></div>

R_C, I am puzzled you arrive at that assumption from what I said !! ~ <span style="font-weight: bold"> I made no assertion that &quot;black people&quot; generally voted on racial lines</span>.. I was merely giving my take on &quot;the fact&quot; why so many &quot;blacks&quot; for the first time voted for one of their own in the 2008 presidential election.. It was a given, that more blacks than ever would vote and it was more than was expected.. For the first time they voted as &quot;whites&quot; have always done..

It's not my understanding that black people generally vote on straight racial lines. I would say that it's more likely a situation within &quot;white&quot; local communities where blacks as minorities have no choice than to vote for one of two or more whites.. &quot;black candidates&quot; would not be chosen because of their &quot;unelectability&quot;..


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">So again, do you think that most white people voted for George Bush (or for that matter John McCain) because they are white ? </div></div>
Yeah! R_C, most white people voted for G.W. what other choices did they have? (2004 presidential) ~ The same for McCain even with a choice (2008 presidential); whites have always voted along racial lines..

____________________________________

Just like oil, the truth always surface to the top..

[R_C]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

My apologies barosa, my post was intended for jc.

[R_C]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I think there can be no doubt that McCain got a lot of votes from people who would not vote for a black man but as with the black vote going to the more liberal candidate because of his illusory liberal views and some who knew little about him just voting for the black man, so too many conservatives voted for conservative policies and others ignorant of politics voted for the white man</div></div>

Well I see that you have taken a couple of steps back...what you are saying now is quite a bit removed from saying that Obama would not have won had not so many people voted for him because he was black. That, jc, was the quick and lazy conclusion and is dangerously close to the kind of &quot;analysis&quot; that we get from so called journalists on the right.

The fact of the matter is that the Republican Party ticket was a spectacularly weak one with a presidential candidate, who held some extremist views, was mentally unstable and had nothing new to offer. The vice presidential candidate represented a cynical and ultimately fatal move by the repubs primarily to court conservative republican women who, as it turned out, were just a noisy and tiny disaffected group that then left them with this albatross Sarah Palin to deal with for the next few years.

Secondly, the hostility to immigrants and to entitlement programs that the Republican party has become known for, hot button issues for Hispanics and Blacks respectively, also made the McCain/Palin ticket instantly a loser for both groups.

There is no doubt that the prospect of having a black president would have motivated some black people to vote for Obama. Of course it would. But there were also many many many thoughtful and well intentioned people, both white and black, who also considered other issues that were important to them and voted accordingly.

To make a blanket statement that <span style="font-style: italic">&quot;Obama would not have won had not so many people voted for the man because he was black.&quot;</span> therefore amounts to some of the worst kind of racial stereotyping to have come out of that election and I am surprised that you would have repeated it here.

How long must black people continue to bear the burden of the perception that the only reason that they got where they did was because they were black?

I resent that and reject it.

[MarieK]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

the bottom line is this man is smarter, more capable than the other white man who ran. He just happens to be black. Will whites and some <div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Click to reveal.. <input type="button" class="form-button" value="Show me!" onclick="toggle_spoiler(this, 'Yikes, my eyes!', 'Show me!')" /></div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div style="display: none;">self-hating</div></div></div> blacks please get over that?