"While John McCain was being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton for five years, Barack Obama's friend Bill Ayers the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist was bombing the Pentagon and the Capitol. On 9-11, Ayers said he wished he had set more bombs...
Posted on 04/24/2008 7:50:27 AM PDT by BFM
A Nightmare of their Own Making (Smoked-Filled Rooms II)
April 24, 2008-- How will black voters react if Obama retains the lead in delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised, but the superdelegates give Clinton the nomination?
By Michael C. Dawson
They're working. The rules are working as designed (see my earlier piece, No Time for Smoke-Filled Rooms), to guarantee that in a deeply divided, complicated and dangerous primary season the party elders will have the last say in choosing the Democratic Party's nominee for president. But the people who designed, and seem so eager to play by, these rules might do well to consider the following question: How will black voters react if Obama retains the lead in delegates, popular votes, states won and money raised, but the superdelegates give Clinton the nomination?
The probability of this scenario emerging is more likely than it sounds. First, as several articles today have already pointed out, Clinton's victory in Pennsylvania while strong, was not overwhelming to the degree needed to start changing the basic math. Clinton needs to have won the remaining contests by over 15 percent in order to have a chance to pull close enough to Obama in popular vote and pledged delegates to make a convincing claim that the results at the polls had not produced a clear winner.
As important, the March fundraising numbers make it extremely clear that the Clinton campaign is in bad financial shape, and the Obama campaign continues to acquire extraordinary fiscal resources. This will be more important in the remaining primaries as many, such as Indiana, are far more favorable to Obama than Pennsylvania. Thus, Obama's superior resources are likely to have a greater impact in the remaining contests. Yesterday's results reinforce the strong belief that Clinton cannot even come close in votes and delegates, let alone pull ahead.
The picture for Obama is sobering as well. Yesterday's results have done nothing to alleviate worries that he is having a hard time making inroads among white working class voters—particularly white Catholic voters who were at the core of the group labeled the "Reagan Democrats." As many of us have argued , "the race card" does, indeed, work against Obama. CNN reports that of the 20 percent of voters that considered race yesterday, nearly 60 percent went to Clinton. Of the 21 percent who considered gender, 71 percent chose Clinton, compared to 23 percent for Obama.
In another story, an AP-Yahoo poll earlier this month found that nearly 10 percent of whites felt comfortable plainly stating that they would have problems voting for a black candidate for president. The conservative estimate of the article was that this translates into probably 15 percent unwilling to vote for a black candidate, regardless of his or her qualifications. A "prominent Republican" interviewed for the story claimed that Obama's biggest weakness was that he was black and therefore had a significant percentage of the November electorate already predisposed against him. Such glaring numbers may persuade still uncommitted superdelegates that Obama is unelectable in November.
Should that happen, the Democratic Party will face the Herculean task of trying to mobilize its most loyal constituency – black voters -- in the face of deep and widespread black bitterness and active campaigns in the black community encouraging black voters to defect or abstain. You can already hear the angry comparisons. Just like in 2000, the protests will go, an election will have been "stolen." But this time from within the party! Malcolm X's quote about how the rules are changed when blacks start to succeed will also, I bet, be prominently displayed.
Many will argue that if a candidate with as much multi-racial appeal as Obama cannot be treated fairly, then there is truly no hope of any black in the U.S. (with perhaps the exception of a black Republican) to win the nation's top office in the foreseeable future. My own prediction, should we head down this road, is that the already worrying statistic of 79 percent of blacks who believe that racial equality for blacks will either not be achieved in their lifetime or at all in the U.S. will jump to an even larger percentage (see my website for how this percentage has changed over the past few years). Should this happen, Democrats would risk losing traditionally safe states with large black populations, leaving them with amuch more difficult, perhaps impossible, road to victory.
The way out? Let democracy work. The nomination should go to the candidate who wins the largest number of primary votes and delegates. If this happens to be, as seems likely even today, Senator Obama, the Democrats have a clear, if difficult, road to victory in the fall. The way to win if Obama is the candidate is to run the type of grass-roots, hard-nosed campaign that we have not seen from a Democrat at the national level in years. Mobilize the young and people of color who already support Obama in large numbers and put them to work knocking on doors, holding meetings, mobilizing entire communities. Go into the working class towns and urban neighborhoods, saying "you're not sure about me, but let me tell about how I'm going to provide health care, bring the troops home, put Americans back to work, and reign in the corporations in this period of economic devastation that is undermining the welfare of many, many Americans."
Obama needs to run as a populist, and as a hard core Democrat who can convincingly make the argument that McCain is not a centrist, but a right wing extremist, who even some of his Republican colleagues consider more dangerous than the current president. He needs to expose McCain's right-wing extremist and corporate, slime-bag supporters and show how they represent not only business, as usual, but a clear and present danger to the Republic. This is the most likely way Obama can win. He cannot out centrist McCain. He has to demonstrate what is at stake and why even those who may not like him should support him for their own good. Democrats have not run campaigns like this much lately. It is a type of campaign, however, that could both invigorate and reunite a party that is now badly fractured and headed for a nightmarish fall.
Michael C. Dawson is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Visit him at http://michaeldawson.net .
"While John McCain was being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton for five years, Barack Obama's friend Bill Ayers the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist was bombing the Pentagon and the Capitol. On 9-11, Ayers said he wished he had set more bombs...
I am sick of hearing that Republicans are “playing the Race Card” against Obamarama. It is more accurate to say “Obama is playing the Racist Card.”
[Herculean task of trying to mobilize its most loyal constituency – black voters — in the face of deep and widespread black bitterness and active campaigns in the black community encouraging black voters to defect or abstain.]
Oh, the Huge Manatee!
I am so sad. Heartbroken. Really I am.
Wake up and smell the sweet aroma of CHAOS.....
Gotta love it!
Good luck with that one. The Root is an extreme radical leftist screed that caters to the upscale, anti-american, black liberationist fringe of african-american culture. It is also directly related to the MSM and is, I believe, owned and operated by HBO. This is how they see McCain: as an extreme right wing fanatic. And to think there are those who actually think a strong conservative would have had any chance at all to fight the MSM.
Even better would be video footage of a post-bomb attack vividly portraying the panic, sirens, screaming & blood, which at first glance appears to be a scene in Iraq, but then morphs into the US with scrolling text/voice over quoting Ayers’ regret about not “achieving” more.
I see a tremendous opportunity for the Republican party to put out ads this fall and hammer the democratic party for its failure to be fair in its own political process. There HAS to be a republican ad that encourages democrats to move to the Republican party where “you don’t have to be a SUPERDELEGATE” to have your vote counted. And if you are black, we republicans already broke the glass ceiling with Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell with their high offices. We don’t keep blacks back, only democrats say they support blacks and then push them to the back of the bus AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN. Isn’t it time for the black people to stand up and be counted by the party who WON’T racially discriminate - the Republican party....
Obama needs to run as a populist, and as a hard core Democrat who can convincingly make the argument that McCain is not a centrist, but a right wing extremist, who even some of his Republican colleagues consider more dangerous than the current president. He needs to expose McCain’s right-wing extremist and corporate, slime-bag supporters and show how they represent not only business, as usual, but a clear and present danger to the Republic. This is the most likely way Obama can win.
LOL! The author of this piece was pretty reasonable up ‘til the point he had to talk about Republicans, then he issued his own version of the Dean scream. Still, I found it interesting that he mentioned (in passing) that a black president is more likely to be Republican than Democrat. Hmm. Wonder why that is?
“I am sick of hearing that Republicans are “playing the Race Card” against Obamarama. It is more accurate to say “Obama is playing the Racist Card.””
This sums up why Obama will lose. He is a black racist. White people who don’t see themselves as racist don’t like being accused of being racist by black race hustlers who in fact are highly racist. It’s a backlash that dooms Obama.
He was absolutely the wrong person of color to run for President. As I say, Barack Obama, you are no Jackie Robinson.
“...March fundraising numbers make it extremely clear that the Clinton campaign is in bad financial shape, and the Obama campaign continues to acquire extraordinary fiscal resources.”
I thought the system was designed to preclude anyone ‘buying’ the nomination
“Obama needs to run as a populist, and as a hard core Democrat who can convincingly make the argument that McCain is not a centrist, but a right wing extremist, who even who even some of his Republican colleagues consider more dangerous than the current president. He needs to expose McCain’s right-wing extremist and corporate, slime-bag supporters and show how they represent not only business, as usual, but a clear and present danger to the Republic. This is the most likely way Obama can win. He cannot out centrist McCain.”
OK all you “Conservative” McCain haters....NOW you see the playbook....what are you going to do?
“Many will argue that if a candidate with as much multi-racial appeal as Obama cannot be treated fairly, then there is truly no hope of any black in the U.S. (with perhaps the exception of a black Republican) to win the nation’s top office in the foreseeable future.”
This guy just said Democrats are racist. Republicans are not.
Joking aside, this is something to be feared.
If the majority of black Americans see the corination of Queen Hillary after Obama gets most of the votes, it might set off a dynamic which would be a disaster. A large minority of Americans who are not just disaffected but actively in opposition to the government and culture creates enormous tension. I can imagine outcomes which look like this:
- The rise of a Marcus Garvey-style separatist.
- The wholesale conversion of much of the American black community to Islam.
- Attempts to forment revolutionary-style enclaves in the spirit of John Brown, FARC, or Che Guevara, maybe with overseas connections
- Outright rioting and mayhem in the slave revolt tradition, with some elements targeting major and minor politicians and leaders who are seen as preventing “black progress”
If their public statements are any indicition, many prominent black Americans are ready for these kinds of actions. They already believe that their skin color and background make them different to the point where blackness if primary, and racism is everywhere. Obama is seen as a “hope.” If that “hope” is dashed somehow, it’ll be replaced by rage, and an enraged population often looks for the strongman leader, the brutality of a powerful ideology, or war to “set things straight.”
My worst nightmare is that Obama gets pushed aside by the Clintons, or loses in a landslide, and the result is that 10 years down the road this nation has to live with a sullen, radical, and sometimes violent 10 percent Islamic minority, mostly black, who seek their own religious apartheid while targeting through terror what they think of as racist institutions such as the police, Congress, the President, and business, all the time getting aid and assistance from Moslems all around the world.
That’s grim as hell. I need a cup of coffee.
Calm down. Perhaps rather than coffee, you need a more soothing beverage... :-)
The rabid black radicals get a lot of press, but they do not represent the entire community. There is a huge black middle class in America, and black high-achievers are everywhere - including the Supreme Court and the Cabinet.
While there may be some anger if Obama loses, I don’t think it will get anywhere near the Black Panther/Malcolm X ‘60’s level.
This is the result of the entitlement mentality, "victomized" and fatherlessness black culture that has been foisted upon black people by guilty white liberals and supported/exploited by black race hustlers like Jesse Jackson.
The chickens are about to come home to roost ....
schu
May I call that "The Charlie Manson-style Race War?"
The dude looks like he's well on his way to determining empirically how much weed a man can smoke in one day.
The chick appears to be Perpetually and Professionally Offended and Aggrieved. And a spoiled rich b!+ch, pretending to be among the proletariat.
How far wrong am I?
“How will black voters react if Obama retains the lead in delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised, but the superdelegates give Clinton the nomination?”
The difficulty is that if one counts the votes cast in Florida and Michigan, it is, at this point, MRS. CLINTON who has the largest number of popular votes.
So, who should be the nominee? The candidate with the greatest popular vote? Or the one with the most delegates? Why not do away with delegate counts, and just nominate the candidate with a pure plebiscite?? Does this sound familiar?
And why shouldn’t the popular votes in Michigan and Florida be counted?
Or doesn’t Snob-ama believe that “every vote must count”?
LOL!
I’m enjoying this entirely too much.
However, too many voters over 50 or 60, a demographic that tends to actually show up to vote, remember the old "Amos'n'Andy" radio show. Unfortunately, Obama is an absolute rhetorical dead-ringer for Algonquin J. Calhoun, the smooth,sweet-and-fast-talking flim-flam con-man attorney who was always getting Amos'n'Andy in big trouble. Very politically incorrect...but there it is. He also reminds mature working class white people of the Affirmative Action Clymers with whom they are often stuck at work, often "promoted" as a form of damage control.
"Holy mackerel, Sapphire honey, this man be pretty much baloney."
Hey Travis, I hope you didn’t find those pictures in an old wallet in your tie-dyed bell bottoms!
If they listen to this Dawson creep they will be, for sure. Imagine radical son Obama trying to out-centrist McCain. I hope they try it, a "populist Obama" repeatedly exposed by tenacious bloggers as a hardcore leftwing a-hole will yield an implosion leaving nothing but steaming piles of toxic waste.
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