In this primary campaign, the spectre of “identity politics” has been invoked several times, and it’s worth noting that politics are always to a certain extent about identity politics. There is nothing different in the black or female electorate in this campaign compared to the white male electorate in this regard, it’s just that for the first time, there is actually some diversity of options in the broadest identity categories.
This article has a short, quick summary of it:
I’m wondering how much this will be an issue in the general, really. I mean, the Democrats are already the party of the black and female, so maybe it won’t be that much of an issue, really. Of course, it’d be gratifying if the Democratic candidate did not try to hopelessly emulate the Bush pandering of the southern male vote, like Kerry did, and instead actually embrace the people willing to vote for them.
There are something like seven times as many white voters as black (wild-ass guess). Because of identity politics I think Obama has to not appear to be courting black voters too strongly. Based on his primary campaign, I’d say he thinks that as well.
Obama’s juggling being the First Serious Black Candidate with being Everyman’s Candidate pretty well, I agree. What I think you can count on from the noise machine is an attempt to paint him as just being a black candidate with a scarey foreign name. He’ll be a communist islamo-facist and, worse, mostest liberalist evar 24/7 on talk radio.
And if Obama handles that with the aplomb he’s handled everything else thrown at him pretty soon the Coulters and the Limbaughs will only be talking to each other. McCain can’t embrace that crap and, given the public’s increasing familiarity with Rovesque tactics, he can’t run away from it either. He’ll sink like a stone.
Disagree. He can do what he’s doing right now–attack it as the mean-spirited dirty politics it is. Like Obama, he’s trying to rise above the fray. I’m looking forward to a clean contest between the two that focuses on issues, and my vote is up for grabs if they’re their parties’ respective nominees.
Dave, I’m surprised, given that on the surface Obama would seem to be too far to the left to appeal to your more Libertarian tastes - his rhetoric on NAFTA and universal health care coverage are just the most obvious examples.
Just out of curiousity, what do you find appealing about Obama? Is it just that McCain is too close to the Bush era’s legacy of diminishing civil liberties and general mismanagement?
It doesn’t matter whether McCain sincerely is rejecting it or rejecting it out of convenience (I tend to want to be believe the former myself) but the fact it is going on and going on ostensibly to benefit him as a candidate. He may well not, and probably won’t, have any control over it. But it’ll be pro-McCain Republicans out there doing it and that will reflect on him whether it should or not.
Pretty good summary, yup. There’s no doubt that Obama is much too big government for my tastes. Had McCain not cozied up to Bush and the religious right over the last few years, he’d easily be my top choice. He did, though, and I’ll have to spend some serious time researching/thinking about/listening to debates with the two of them to decide.
McCain is dead on arrival. His campaign staff is full of lobbyists, one of whom has operated his lobby from the Straight Talk Express. It doesn’t matter how good he is on foreign policy or national security. I’ve never seen a candidate so nakedly in the pocket of his benefactors – while claiming strenuously to the contrary.
I don’t think he’s a bad man. But he’s kidding himself if he thinks borrowing millions from those sharks and surrounding himself with them won’t come back to bite him in the ass. He should have folded up the tent a year ago when the money dried up the first time, instead of going in deep with the evil empire.
And it keeps on coming. There are times I think the GOP is just the asshole party. They’ve run on such nasty fumes for so long they can’t even stop when it’s in their own, plainly obvious, best interest.
CNN) – Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan formally denounced Thursday the Tennessee Republican Party’s use of Barack Obama’s full name in a recent press release questioning the Illinois senator’s commitment to Israel.
“The RNC rejects these kinds of campaign tactics," RNC Chairman Mike Duncan said in a statement. "We believe this election needs to be about the critical issues confronting our nation.”
The statement in question, which was released Monday, said the state party is joining a "growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel…if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.” It also included a photograph of Obama from a 2006 trip to Kenya in which he is dressed in traditional attire worn by area Muslims.
The press release was sparked by recent praise for the Illinois senator from Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan, who has made several derogatory remarks about Judaism and has indicated his support for Obama. At Tuesday night’s MSNBC debate, Obama said he denounced those comments and did not seek Farrakhan’s support.
On Wednesday night the party removed both the photo and the reference of Hussein from the statement after Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander called to express his belief that using them had become a distraction, Tennessee GOP Communications Director Bill Hobbs told CNN.
And then it’ll be someone else. The establishment GOP or McCain’s campaign will rush to denounce it. But it’ll be too late. And then the next guy and the next. This is the bed ya’ll have made for yourselves. Enjoy it.
Except he has arrived and he isn’t dead. The polls are very close between McCain and whoever the Dems end up with; in fact one of the network news shows said their latests polls had him ahead of both Hillary and Obama.
I don’t know where you’re coming at this from so I’m not going to challenge your sources. However, until that issue rears it’s head and has an impact on what the public thinks about McCain, it doesn’t matter.
As I keep saying, we have almost nine months before we vote. There are tons of things that can and will impact who we think is the better choice between now and then.
He arrived because he signed on for FEC public matching funds, which allowed him free access to a passel of state ballots, which would usually cost millions in petition organizing. He used the promise of those funds to leverage a multi-million dollar bank loan, which according to FEC policy, locks him into the matching fund program.
But now he wants to back out after securing that loan, because the matching funds are peanuts compared to what he could get if he was allowed to raise money outside of the program. He wants to have it both ways; get a guarantee from the public matching, use it as bank collateral, get out of public matching, and take both the FEC money and the bank loan.
This has all been covered at Talking Points Memo, The Page, CNN’s Political Ticker, McClatchy, Online Journal, and some other places. Mostly the first two in that list. Once it works its way into Obama’s rally speeches, McCain will begin to sink. Because then it will be on the nightly news as well.
But Obama doesn’t even need to go that far. All he has to do is position Mac as a continuation of the Bush administration, which isn’t exactly a stretch.
I’m not saying it won’t eventually have an effect, but McCain has arrived (he’s clearly the Republican nominee, even it not yet technically) and despite the coverage of that issue already in major places, his polling is still very high.
I’m not disputing your reasoning, I’m disputing the use of the term “dead on arrival.” Your use above of “McCain will begin to sink” is a far less inflamatory statement.
Yeah, I think it’s interesting that, for all the Obama-mania, public weariness of the Republicans, etc. McCain is doing extremely well in the polls against both Dems. It’s early, sure, but I’d have expected that McCain would be quite a bit behind.
The Dems just need to not make the mistake they have made for the last couple of elections, and assume the American voters hate the Republicans as much as they do.
