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Back in the 1980s, one of the top-level swimmers in California adopted a rather unusual method of getting himself psyched up for his events. Half an hour before his race, he'd start chanting softly to himself, “I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win.” His chants gradually got louder and louder, and, from the time he entered the ready area until he took his place on the starting block, everyone around him was treated to his constant mantra, “I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win.” The strategy worked to a certain extent. His chanting often threw competitors...

DETROIT --The Classic Creations barber shop sits empty, surrounded by drunks and shuttered storefronts just two blocks from the manicured lawns of Grosse Pointe Park. The contrast isn't lost on LaVar Anthony, a young barber who speaks in riddles of race, class and politics. "What's already understood," he says without looking up from his Ebony magazine, "don't need to be explained." But when it comes to race, what is understood? And what is misunderstood? And how can it be that in 2008 - 143 years after slavery was abolished, decades after the civil rights movement - an AP-Yahoo News poll...

The personality is familiar to us all: the sweet old aunt, the loving grandfather or the generous widow down the street, each of them unfailingly kind toward friends and family but given to flights of shocking prejudice when the conversation turns toward ethnic groups to which they don't belong. Often the response is a nervous laugh, a wan smile or a hasty effort to change the subject. We assume that old people are the products of less-enlightened times; they're unlikely to change; and their comments, however ugly, are largely innocuous. Now, though, in the midst of the nation's first presidential...

U.S. Democratic Party moderates are warning that presidential nominee Barack Obama needs to gain more support from white voters to win in November. A draft report from the Democratic Leadership Council, leaked to the Washington Web site Politico Wednesday, contends that while Obama, a freshman U.S. senator from Illinois, will likely increase turnout from blacks, self-described liberals and young voters, it may not be enough to offset weaknesses among middle-class white voters, particularly men. Those votes will be necessary for Obama to defeat Republican opponent Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the study says. It contends that Obama hasn't done enough...

(CBS/AP) How America votes could come down to the economy, and that could be especially true in many of the so-called battleground states where voters have been hit hard economically. But a new AP-Yahoo News poll shows that race could also play a big role in how some voters make their choice - and this may not bode well for Barack Obama. According to the poll released Saturday, a little over one-third of white Democrats and independents agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, and they are less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't hold...

An AP-Yahoo News poll has found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks - many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles. The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 - about two and one-half percentage points. Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He's an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation's oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all...

Racist Democrats could sink Barack Obama’s chances for the Presidency. A Yahoo Survey partnering with AP discloses that the Democrats are one of Obama’s biggest problems. Will the MSM pick up on this?

Sep 20 01:11 PM US/Eastern By RON FOURNIER and TREVOR TOMPSON Associated Press Writers WASHINGTON (AP) - Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks—many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles. The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004—about 2.5 percentage points. Certainly, Republican John...

One-third of polled white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks WASHINGTON - Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles. The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points. Certainly, Republican...

Excerpt

A new AP-Yahoo News poll finds that white Democrats’ resistance to voting for a black man for President could cost Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama the White House: Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them “lazy,” “violent” or responsible for their own troubles. The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than...

WASHINGTON - Deep seated racial misgivings could cost Barrack Obama the Whitehouse if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo news poll that found one-third of white harbor negative views toward blacks -- many calling them "lazy", "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles. The poll suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points. Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He's an ally of an unpopular president...

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago WASHINGTON - An overwhelming advantage in experience and lopsided support from working-class and suburban whites have lifted Republican John McCain to a slender lead over Barack Obama less than two months from Election Day, a poll on the presidential race said Friday. The Arizona senator has a 13-percentage-point lead over his Democratic rival both with men and senior citizens, and a 23-point advantage among rural residents, according to the Associated Press-GfK Poll of likely voters. He's also doing better than Obama at consolidating support from party loyalists: 94 percent of Republicans...

WASHINGTON - An overwhelming advantage in experience and lopsided support from working-class and suburban whites have lifted Republican John McCain to a slender lead over Barack Obama less than two months from Election Day, a poll on the presidential race said Friday. *************** Obama leads 61 percent to 35 percent among voters under age 30. He has about a 5-to-1 edge with minorities and narrow advantages with college graduates and women, though he trails among white women 53 percent to 40 percent.

In an interview on National Public Radio last week, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean touted the racial and gender diversity of the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. In what sounded like a slip of the tongue, he momentarily referred to the GOP as the "white party." Paging Dr. Freud. The McCain campaign pounced on the remark. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and chair of Victory 2008 -- and one of the highest-ranking females in the McCain campaign -- issued a statement calling Dean's comments -- as if they had been intentional -- "insulting, inappropriate, and have no...

THE MOST remarkable fact of the 2008 presidential election is that it remains a close race. Democrats have not known such favorable political terrain since 1932, yet what should be a blowout is looking like a blanket finish. The fundamental reason is white men. Like Al Gore in the summer of 2000, Barack Obama is roughly splitting white women. But only 34 to 37 percent of white men support Obama, according to the Gallup Poll's latest weekly index of 6,000 voters. In fairness to Obama, he inherited the problem. Not since 1976, when Democrats last achieved a majority, has a...

And only Only 32% of whites think Obama is "Very Patriotic" versus 77% for McCain. Another little gem. Guess which race will not vote for a black guy? Hmmmm.

The larger point of Jesse L. Jackson's criticism of Barack Obama -- if not the crude way he expressed it -- touched a nerve among some African American political activists who have been unhappy about the senator 's pointed critiques of absentee fathers and other problems in the black community. Eric Easter, a blogger on the joint Web site of Jet and Ebony, two black-oriented magazines, wrote yesterday that some of Obama's rhetoric "smacked of calculated political expediency" in an effort to win over white voters. The criticism was similar in some ways to the reaction to comedian Bill Cosby,...

White working-class voters typically aren't in vogue, with the political chatter tending to revolve around "soccer moms," the "youth vote" or other boutique demographic groups of the moment. But the late charge of Hillary Clinton's doomed presidential campaign made white working-class voters surprisingly fashionable. They'll stay that way if the important new book "Grand New Party," by two young writers for The Atlantic, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, has the impact on the political debate that it should. In an incisive analysis of the past 30 years of our politics, Douthat and Salam puncture self-comforting delusions of both the right...

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader accused Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic Party nominee, of downplaying poverty issues, trying to "talk white" and appealing to "white guilt" during his run for the White House. Nader, a thorn in the Democratic Party's side since the 2000 presidential election, has taken various shots at Obama in recent days while ramping up his latest independent run for president. ----- The Obama campaign had only a brief response, calling the remarks disappointing. Asked to clarify whether he thought Obama does try to "talk white," Nader said: "Of course. ---- Nader said he plans to...

Over half of the American Whites consider presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a "risky" choice for the White House, whereas two-thirds believe McCain as a "safe" pick, a new survey has revealed. The survey by the Washington Post/ABC News also opens up apprehensions of the race factor being whipped up by white supremist groups as a way to stop the Illinois Senator and the first African American from entering the White House. The survey has shown that over half of Whites called 46-year-old Obama a "risky" choice for the top post, while two-thirds said McCain is a "safe"...

Despite the lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy among some Christian conservative activists, Sen. John McCain so far is performing well among rank and file evangelical voters. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week found McCain collecting about 68 percent of the white evangelical vote, compared to Barack Obama's 22 percent. That number is very similar to level of support President Bush received in June 2004, when he led then Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry 65 to 30 among white evangelicals. And it's essentially unchanged from polls in March, despite the Arizona senator's distancing of himself from evangelical pastors...

The woman who shouted "McCain in '08" at the Democratic rules committee was speaking for a multitude. After mounting for months, female anger over the choreographed dumping on Hillary Clinton and her supporters has exploded -- and party loyalty be damned. That the women are beginning to have a good time is an especially bad sign for Barack Obama's campaign. "Obama will NOT get my vote, and one step more," Ellen Thorp, a 59-year-old flight attendant from Houston told me. "I have been a Democrat for 38 years. As of today, I am registering as an independent. Yee Haw!" A...

With senator Barack Obama poised this week to clinch his party's nomination for President, there are growing fears in some quarters that the Democratic party may not be choosing its strongest candidate to beat Republican John McCain. Senator Hillary Clinton has been making that argument for weeks. Now some recent polls and analysis, looking particularly at vital battleground states and support among white voters, have bolstered her case - even as Obama looks certain to become the nominee. Obama supporters reject this argument and point to his record of boosting Democratic voter turnout, especially among the young. But sceptics in...

RFFM.org Commentary While watching politics for most of my adult life, I never cease to be amazed at how dumb the two major political Parties can be. And this year may top them all for absurdity. Heading into the primary season, the Democrats had everything going their way. George Bush's favorability ratings hovered somewhere around 30%, the Democrats just came off of winning back both Houses of Congress in 2006 and, in general, during the last decade the Republican Party was doing its best imitation of how to govern like Democrats. Hillary Clinton herself had high disapproval numbers, but a...

This message is for that oppressed, neglected, passed over, bitter, gun-toting group of people otherwise known as working-class white males: You really don't matter. To all the hand-wringing over Sen. Barack Obama's alleged problem with winning over the votes of those white men, let's counter with some other facts. Obama has a lot of company. John Kerry. Al Gore. Bill Clinton. Michael Dukakis. Walter Mondale. Jimmy Carter. Just to name the six most recent Democratic nominees who lost the white, working-class, male vote. In a matchup with Sen. John McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton does no better than Obama among these...

In an attempt to explain how race will impact Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama's run for the White House, Newsweek has created a "Racial Resentment Index" exclusively for white people without measuring such biases of non-whites.

A new NEWSWEEK Poll underscores Obama's racial challenge. Even as he closes in on the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama is facing lingering problems winning the support of white voters--including some in his own party.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is right. She has the broader and whiter political coalition, so she should, by all rights, be the Democratic presidential nominee. After all, in other realms of the political process, we routinely refer to "black districts" or "Latino districts" and speak of the necessity of those jurisdictions to be represented by black or Latino elected officials. Well, then, because the American population is 66% white, maybe the United States is a de facto white district that should be represented accordingly. Don't scoff at the idea. Ethnic and racial self-determination have been underlying factors in the formation of...

DES MOINES, Iowa - Barack Obama shied away from triumphantly proclaiming total victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton last night, but he certainly annihilated the central reason she gives for staying in the race. The Clinton team claims that Sen. Obama is nothing more than a black candidate with a sidecar of liberal academics. This is why, the Clintons argue, white Democrats in working-class and rural states simply can't pull the lever for this black guy with a foreign-sounding name. And, the Clinton's implied reasoning goes, since she appeals so much to these racist white Democrats that are the "backbone" of...

Even before I heard Chris Matthews mention it, it struck me too . . . Among the visuals a big-time campaign carefully choreographs is the human backdrop when the candidate speaks—particularly when it's a matter of an important, nationally-televised speech. So it's very hard to imagine that it was coincidence that the crowd visible behind Hillary this evening as she gave her Kentucky primary victory speech . . . was comprised 100% of people of pallor. Kibitzing with co-anchor Keith Olbermann immediately after Clinton's comments, Matthews mentioned it. CHRIS MATTHEWS: I thought a giveaway line was "who is best positioned...

. . . Before the April and early May primaries, cultural and racial politics seemed to throw the Obama campaign off its stride, especially as the controversy over Obama's former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, smoldered, then flared again. It angered Don Lutes, a retired steelworker and union official from Griffith, Ind., who voted early for Clinton. "All this came out with the Rev. Wright and this [former Weatherman] Bill Ayers deal," Lutes says. "I can't believe he knew this Ayers. They bombed the Capitol. How could he associate with people like that? That really turned me off. And [Obama's]...

Furthermore, Obama does not deserve the vote of any Catholic, Jew, or self-respecting African-American. The reason has nothing to do with the color of his skin, and everything to do with the content (or lack thereof) of his character. ...It is easy to imagine white people, and especially Jewish white people, reacting to this picture the way most African-Americans would react to a candidate posing arm in arm with someone in a sheet and hood in front of a burning cross. ...Hillary Clinton added, and quite correctly, that she “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans,...

I'll never forget a frigid morning in Springfield: Sen. Barack Obama, elegantly Lincolnesque in a long wool coat, launching his presidential candidacy in the shadow of the old Illinois State Capitol. The echoes of history were almost deafening—not just of Abraham Lincoln, who, like Obama, had been a legislator there, but of the argument over slavery and race that Lincoln had joined there. On that sunny February day in 2007, Obama seemed to radiate uplift and glorious possibility. He was making a statement: that his candidacy would be the exclamation point at the end of our four-century-long argument over the...

A confluence of groups customarily inclined toward Hillary Clinton was voting in the West Virginia primary, with less-educated, lower-income Southern whites predominating. Nonetheless there was room for criticism of Clinton -- and bringing "needed change," Barack Obama's trademark, was again the most-desired candidate trait. The Race Factor Racially motivated voting appeared to be running higher than usual: Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. And only a third of those voters said they'd support Obama as the nominee against John McCain, fewer than in other primaries where...

Democrats bristle at talking about this in plainer terms. They say Sen. Hillary Clinton has found her base -- the "working class." That's why she won in the Rust Belt primaries. That's her great hope in Kentucky and West Virginia. But calling Clinton's strategy one of kowtowing to the "working class" doesn't quite say it, does it? Isn't this just old-fashioned racism within the Democratic Party? When Hillary strategists say they are winning the "working class," they don't mean they are winning working people with a household income of, say, less than $50,000. All the exit polls show quite clearly...

Hillary Clinton, down to her last straw, is making the case that she is the better candidate to run against the Republicans because, unlike Barack Obama, she can win white Democrats. She is right. But because she is daring to touch the hot button of racial politics, she is being told to shut up or risk being charged with exploiting racial tensions for political advantage. The facts are stubborn, however. Since his phenomenal win with 33% of the white vote in nearly all-white Iowa, Obama has been unable to get a firm grip on white Democrats. He has won a...

NEW YORK — Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), among Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top African-American supporters, was none too pleased with Clinton’s comments this week to USA Today that she has broader appeal with white voters. The statement was “the dumbest thing she could have said,” Rangel told reporters before a Clinton fundraiser in a midtown hotel ballroom Saturday. He called her statement “very poorly worded” but acknowledged there may be some truth to it. “In any campaign, there are groups of people that you know that you have and groups of people that you don’t,” he said. “And I don’t...

Whether or not the Democratic primary marathon between two path-breaking candidates has been good for the party or the country, it has clearly been good for people like me: political scientists who study voting behavior. We've been given a data gold mine, the results of an experiment that no one intended to conduct. Sen. Barack Obama is the all but certain Democratic nominee, but voting patterns in Indiana and North Carolina show that resistance to a black candidate among some white Democrats remains a serious threat to his chances in November: · As in other recent primaries, Sen. Hillary Rodham...

Well, Barack Obama should be one happy guy. His big victory in North Carolina has pretty much locked up the Democratic presidential nomination. Now it is virtually impossible for Hillary Clinton to defeat him in the popular vote or in the elected delegate category. Thus, Obama has the nomination won unless another Rev. Wright crawls into the picture. Spinners who talk about re-votes in Florida and Michigan are dreaming; that will not happen. The Obama campaign would be foolish to participate. They played by the Democratic Party's rules and won. They're not going to sanction do-overs. Also, as Al Sharpton...

As if the divisions between race and gender in the Democratic Party hadn’t been further exposed through Tuesday night’s exit polls — and by a very heated exchange on CNN between Donna Brazile and Paul Begala — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s interview with USA Today on Wednesday is further mining those tense depths. “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in the interview, citing an article by The Associated Press. It “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had...

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PRINCETON, NJ -- Barack Obama's current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry's margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

On the eve of two crucial primary election contests, Hillary Clinton is pinning her hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination on a collapse in the white vote for Barack Obama. “White flight” from Obama, who was hailed as the first post-racial presidential candidate, has been gathering force since Clinton’s nine-point victory in last month’s Pennsylvania primary. Her allies will be looking at voting patterns in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday, the two largest remaining states to go to the polls, for any signs that Obama’s proven weakness among white working-class voters may turn into a rout. Clinton is...

Reproduction and circulation of the following as a viral E-mail, and/or re-posting, is encouraged. Why Won’t Whites, Jews, and Catholics Vote for Obama? Despite the endorsement of Senator Robert Casey (D-PA), Barack Obama lost the Pennsylvania primary by a 55-45 margin. In Luzerne County PA, a traditional Democratic region whose demographics include factory workers and the descendents of immigrant coal miners (many Catholic), Obama lost by a three to one margin. Why does Barack Obama have so much difficulty in getting white people (and especially Catholics and Jews) to vote for him? Let’s give “Barry” some hints and see his...

Arianna Huffington started The Huffington Post with a read-my-lips-with-an-accent pledge: it would be an oasis of brainy progressivism, not a slash-and-burn hate site. That's a tough promise to live up to when you invite Hollywood mudslingers like Alec Baldwin and Bill Maher to the table. But even the women sling mud. Screenwriter Nora Ephron is starting out the week singling out white men as vile and ignorant boobs who shouldn't be allowed to pick the next president:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) got glowing reviews when he addressed the issue of race last month in Philadelphia. But there are aspects of the race issue in this campaign that still make people nervous. Recently I called a number of political strategists of both parties, as well as unaffiliated experts, to ask whether Democrats have been voting along racial lines in this year's primary season. After all, 92 percent of black Democrats in Mississippi voted for Obama, while 91 percent of black Democrats in Wisconsin did the same. And 70 percent of white Democrats in Mississippi voted for Sen. Hillary...

Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama's 10-point advantage in a head-to-head matchup, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates in an Associated Press-Ipsos national poll released Thursday. The survey showed the extended Democratic primary campaign creating divisions among supporters of Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and suggests a tight race for the presidency in November no matter which Democrat becomes the nominee. McCain is benefiting from a bounce since he clinched the GOP nomination a month ago. The four-term Arizona senator has moved up in matchups with each of the Democratic candidates, particularly Obama....

Obama advance: 'Get me more white people' POLITICO Ben Smith From the account in Carnegie Mellon's paper, the Tartan, of a Michelle Obama event in Pittsburgh: While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.” “I didn’t know they...