Did Obama win because he was black ?

[johnnycakes]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

R_C,

It is still my opinion that Obama gained more than he lost simply by being someone perceived as quite different from Bush and the similar in policy McCain.

I feel that being a black man actually helped him in creating that mistaken perception and that he gained more votes for people who knowing nothing of him wanted to get in on voting for the first black president.

Years ago I had a father-in-law who actually voted for Nixon because he knew that he would win and my F-I-L wanted to get on the winners bandwagon. There are still people who vote for reasons no better than that.

As the Paul Street article I posted amply proved, the electorate was taken in by his smooth and deceptive campaign and I really don't care how or why he got elected.

He's as criminal and immoral as any of his predecessors and certainly more of a disappointment for his followers than Bush was to his.

That excludes those who, for some reason at this late date with an atrocious record and with all the selling out that Obama has done still support him in much the same fashion that 29% still supported Bush at the end of his atrocious terms in office.

I can be fairly sure that none of his supporters have read any of the disparaging and true articles about Obama that I have printed.

What do you call that but ignorance in the true sense of the word ?.

[Tulip]

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

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">[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.



</div></div>

Alright JC, I'll accept exit polls even with the flaws as a method of determining the demographics of who voted for who. I just walk on by and do not respond in the same way that I walk on in and ignore campaign workers, but everybody isn't me.

I still would like to know if these exit polls showed a lower percentage of black people voting democratic prior to the last election. I sincerely doubt it.

[Blackstar*]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

Over 90% of African-American voters vote Democrat. Put simply, had it been Michael Steele vs. Barack Obama, Obama would still have won.

[Blackstar*]

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">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 <span style="text-decoration: line-through">and I am surprised that you would have repeated it here</span>.

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. </div></div>I agree with everything you say except for the cross-out.

[Gen]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

Not sure why this isn't obvious. Most blacks will never EVER vote republican, unless the party makes drastic changes to their fundamental anthem. Like you said it really is that simple.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Over 90% of African-American voters vote Democrat. Put simply, had it been Michael Steele vs. Barack Obama, Obama would still have won. </div></div>

[MarieK]

Re: Did Obama win because he was black ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Gen</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Not sure why this isn't obvious. Most blacks will never EVER vote republican, unless the party makes drastic changes to their fundamental anthem. Like you said it really is that simple.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Over 90% of African-American voters vote Democrat. Put simply, had it been Michael Steele vs. Barack Obama, Obama would still have won. </div></div> </div></div>

It's not obvious because (a) people will never see what they don't want to see, (b) people's bigotry always always cloud their judgment (c) the thought of an educated black man scares white america and (d) If Barak Obama had skeletons in his closet he wd fit right in with the racist immoral vile Reps and their supporters - therefore that makes him, for lack of a better term - abnormal and we all know how they respond to anything abnormal

[johnnycakes]

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


&quot;I still would like to know if these exit polls showed a lower percentage of black people voting democratic prior to the last election. I sincerely doubt it.&quot;


Tulip
I agree with you .
My point is that due to the fact that Obama is black MANY MORE minorities; blacks, Hispanics and even whites who would not otherwise have voted came out to elect Obama when they otherwise would have stayed home as they traditionally do.

As usual after the previous president (Republican or Democrat) has shown himself to NOT be what they thought he would be , the electorate makes the shift to someone other than the incumbent or of the incumbent's party.

My contention is that because Obama is black he drew the interest of blacks and other minorities to the point that they went out and voted where they had not chosen to do so in previous elections in such numbers.

With the nation so evenly split between &quot;red&quot; and &quot;blue' constituencies that few percentage point increase in the number of minority voters made the difference.


And sorry but there is no one who can tell me that it was because people were well informed as to who Obama was and what his political thinking was that he got elected.

I posted that Paul Street article which enumerated the many points on which Obama, prior to 2008 had expressed the opposite image of what his presidential campaign had people believing he was.

How many have read it?

The number has to be close to zero.

Nothing in Street's history can be considered racist . Nothing that is ever printed at ZNET ( MY source for information) is ever racist. It is pure fact and it that site that the Obama supporters here REFUSE to read because of the devastating effect it has on what they have CHOSEN to believe.

It is far easier to be WILLFULLY ignorant and toss the race card at me than it is to actually look at the fraud that Obama is and how badly those who supported him were suckered.

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

This parallels the wlllful ignorance and fear of being wrong that prevents 'Christians&quot; from watching Christopher Hitchens destruction of the moral concept of &quot;vicarious redemption &quot; the torture and murder of Christ for our sins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo82sgrSAYg

IMO
If you can believe lies and immorality from the religions that brook no questioning (a celestial dictatorship) you are far more likely to not question the authority of any top figures in politics but rather blindly follow like the sheep the Bible calls the religious flocks.

Are we thinking rational beings or we are sheep ?

Do we look at both sides of an issue that so affect our lives or do we blindly accept what is handed to us ?

Running from the truth does not make it go away.

Let me ask this; What are so many here afraid of that they cannot watch Hitchens on &quot;vicarious redemption&quot; nor read things like Paul Street's criticisms of Obama?

Are their positions and beliefs SO shaky that will not stand up to closer examination?

[evanovitch]

Race and Republican Attacks on Obama

Race and Republican Attacks on Obama
By MATT BAI

NY TImes

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called President Obama a “food stamp president.”
Newt Gingrich did his level best to appear level in his “Meet the Press” interview Sunday, maintaining a mostly subdued, thoughtful tone except for one telling moment — when David Gregory, the host, asked him if his labeling of President Obama as the “food stamp president” might have racist connotations. “Oh, come on,” the former House speaker huffed. “That’s bizarre.” All he meant, Mr. Gingrich went on to explain, was that Mr. Obama’s policies would turn all of America into Detroit, which probably didn’t endear him to Eminem.

That exchange led to some spirited discussion among me and my fellow round-table analysts, both on and off camera. The Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne accused Mr. Gingrich of “doubling down” on racial connotations by choosing Detroit to make his point. I tweeted from the green room that Mr. Gingrich’s listing of American identity as a core theme of his campaign sounded “ominous” and, when asked to explain this, I said it sounded like an appeal to a “dark current in American politics.”

But Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist, rejected this interpretation. If there were a “dark current” running through the attacks on Mr. Obama, she told us, it represented a kind of conspiratorial populism in American politics generally and had nothing to do with racism.

This is a debate that is likely to surface many more times in the next 18 months, no matter whom the Republicans nominate, and the truth seems to me a little more complex than partisans on either side might suggest.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Is there a racial element to some of the attacks on President Obama? It’s pretty hard to argue there isn’t, when a conservative writer like Dinesh D’Souza argues that Mr. Obama sees the world like an African nationalist (a theory Mr. Gingrich praised again in his interview Sunday), or when Donald J. Trump asserts that Mr. Obama isn’t smart enough to have gotten into Harvard or to have written his own books.</span>

<span style="font-style: italic">But here’s the thing: race and cultural otherness were powerful undercurrents in Republican politics long before the nation’s first black president came along. The infamous Willie Horton ad that George Bush deployed against Michael Dukakis in 1988, you may recall, was more overtly racist than anything Mr. Obama had to parry 20 years later. Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore were all portrayed as being well outside America’s white, Christian mainstream.</span>


<span style="font-weight: bold">Mr. Gingrich’s “food stamp” line is an homage of sorts to Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens.”</span> This business about turning America into Detroit is exactly the kind of thing Mr. Reagan would have said, if he hadn’t been so busy trying to win Michigan’s electoral votes.

So to say that Mr. Obama is being cast as somehow alien to the white American experience simply because he is black really does miss the point. He would still be cast in this way if he were an urban, northern Democrat who happened to be white. The fact that Mr. Obama is black may even blunt the attack to some extent, because Republican challengers have to be more careful in how they raise these kinds of cultural issues than they would with your standard-issue white liberal.

In fact, there are tactical reasons for Republicans to consider scrapping the cultural argument altogether when it comes to Mr. Obama, or at least minimizing it.

After all, we have now reached the point where a 45-year-old American voter has no memory of civil rights marches or the silent majority and grew up in a society where overt racism was uniformly stigmatized. In this new environment, you’re probably not well advised to make racial alienation a centerpiece of your campaign, unless you want to offend half the voting public, including most of the independent voters who decide the outcome of a general election.

Beyond that, of course, there are basic responsibilities of political leadership. Themes of otherness are always most prevalent, and most dangerous, at moments of economic or existential anxiety; think of the Know-Nothings or the Red Scare. History tells us that giving them voice does nothing to address the issues of the day. The job of true leaders in such a moment isn’t to leap into that dark current I was talking about, but rather to point their followers toward some more ennobling way downstream.

[Derek]

Re: Race and Republican Attacks on Obama

Ask a white person why they voted for Obama. I don't think he or she will say because Obama is black.

I'm pretty sure the answer will be close to what I wrote (apart from the, 'he said what people wanted to hear'.)

[MarieK]

Re: Race and Republican Attacks on Obama

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Derek</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Ask a white person why they voted for Obama. I don't think he or she will say because Obama is black.

I'm pretty sure the answer will be close to what I wrote (apart from the, 'he said what people wanted to hear'.) </div></div>

Oh ok, and stupid dumb me voted for him because he was the obvious better choice over McCain and his running mate ignorant stupid racist Sarah.

BTW if ppl voted cuz he said what they wanted to hear how does that differ from the lying scoundrel that was in there prior.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Race and Republican Attacks on Obama


Oh ok, and stupid dumb me voted for him because he was the obvious better choice over McCain and his running mate ignorant stupid racist Sarah.

BTW if ppl voted cuz he said what they wanted to hear how does that differ from the lying scoundrel that was in there prior.
[/quote]


Marie_K,

Your first sentence might well have been said by the people (the then) Malcolm X
addressed after Johnson was elected in 1964 when Johnson, like Obama was considered the lesser of two evils in which HE called them stupid ( disagree with that) and ignorant ( I agree with that) .


You already know the answer to the question posed in your second sentence. sentence . To the poor, the disenfranchised and the working people AND most notably, the the very wealthy who allowed you to vote for Obama because despite his projected image he was and is no different from any of his predecessors in all the things that really matter.

[Derek]

Re: Race and Republican Attacks on Obama

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Marie_K</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

BTW if ppl voted cuz he said what they wanted to hear how does that differ from the lying scoundrel that was in there prior.
</div></div>

No difference.

People wanted to hear pull out of Afghanistan, close Guantanamo, etc etc.

[MarieK]

Re: Race and Republican Attacks on Obama

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Derek</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Marie_K</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

BTW if ppl voted cuz he said what they wanted to hear how does that differ from the lying scoundrel that was in there prior.
</div></div>

No difference.

People wanted to hear pull out of Afghanistan, close Guantanamo, etc etc. </div></div>

ok and isn't he workn twd that or did you want it done overnight because logically an overnight withdrawal and closure of these respective areas wd result in chaos. I am very happy with the progress we have made it's not where we were 11 years ago but then the other white man in there lied manipulated and schemed us into trenches ditches and gutters so evn tho we are not bk to where we were I am quite happy where we stand because if not for nothing we have progressed, but then again, the color of his skin is blinding many of u

[MarieK]

Re: Race and Republican Attacks on Obama

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Oh ok, and stupid dumb me voted for him because he was the obvious better choice over McCain and his running mate ignorant stupid racist Sarah.

BTW if ppl voted cuz he said what they wanted to hear how does that differ from the lying scoundrel that was in there prior.
</div></div>


Marie_K,

Your first sentence might well have been said by the people (the then) Malcolm X
addressed after Johnson was elected in 1964 when Johnson, like Obama was considered the lesser of two evils in which HE called them stupid ( disagree with that) and ignorant ( I agree with that) .


You already know the answer to the question posed in your second sentence. sentence . To the poor, the disenfranchised and the working people AND most notably, the the very wealthy who allowed you to vote for Obama because despite his projected image he was and is no different from any of his predecessors in all the things that really matter. [/quote]

the one prior to him was ten times worse and evn more dangerous, however, I don't remember posts being started about his incompetence, I don't remember ppl accusing his supporters of voting for him cuz he is white, it seems that the racism and self hatred that was laying dormant in <span style="text-decoration: line-through"> all of you</span> many was really awakened by the fact that a black man had the gall, the nerve to run and win -- the fact that in 2011 we are having this conversation really means that we really haven't evolved since the Jim Crow era infact, more now than ever, his presidency has proven that America is just as backwards regarding their attitude toward blacks and what's worse is that it has succeeded in making some blacks hate themselves and anything that looks like them.

It is quite entertaining to watch tho.

[Derek]

Re: Race and Republican Attacks on Obama

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Marie_K</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Derek</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Marie_K</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

BTW if ppl voted cuz he said what they wanted to hear how does that differ from the lying scoundrel that was in there prior.
</div></div>

No difference.

People wanted to hear pull out of Afghanistan, close Guantanamo, etc etc. </div></div>

ok and isn't he workn twd that or did you want it done overnight because logically an <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 11pt">overnight withdrawal</span> </span>and closure of these respective areas wd result in chaos. I am very happy with the progress we have made it's not where we were 11 years ago but then the other white man in there lied manipulated and schemed us into trenches ditches and gutters so evn tho we are not bk to where we were I am quite happy where we stand because if not for nothing we have progressed, but then again, the color of his skin is blinding many of u </div></div>

Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't the Obama administration escalated the war by sending more troops?
And it's all quiet on the Guantanamo front.