I believe this columinist has hit the proverbial nail on the head.  Keep it uppity, JLL

A post-racial country? It’s easy to talk about but much tougher to accomplish.

Jonah Goldberg

February 12, 2008

‘Bill Clinton: Obama’s White Half Won Maine,” read the headline on the humor site Scrappleface this week. “Obama gets to play both sides of the race card,” a fictional Bill Clinton told the site. “I told you he won South Carolina because he’s black, like Jesse Jackson. So, to be consistent, I’d have to say he won Maine because he’s white like Michael Dukakis.”

There’s more than a little truth here. It seems that Barack Obama can win blacks and that he can win whites; where he has trouble, electorally speaking, is winning blacks and whites.

You wouldn’t know this from all the resplendent rhetoric about Obama’s gorgeous mosaic of a campaign. Indeed, the audacity of Obama’s hype is a marvel to behold.

“This is it,” Obama proclaimed during his victory speech on Super Tuesday. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change that we seek.” Obama insists that his is the campaign for those who want to move “beyond race,” and, let the record show, there is a powerful thirst for a post-racial America, not least among conservatives.

So let us stipulate that it would indeed be wonderful if America could move beyond the intergenerational venom, guilt-mongering, orchestrated offense-taking and entrenched animosity that has characterized much of the black-white relationship over the years. Let us also concede that this is what Obama wants to do and what his followers want from him.

There remains the inconvenient question: Does it make any sense?

Perhaps rather than serving to heal America’s racial wounds, maybe Obama’s campaign is more like a dye marker that helps us better diagnose the complexity of the problem.

Obama has had his greatest success winning white votes in states that are nearly all white, particularly those with caucuses. In non-homogeneously white states, he’s only won when he’s added enormous shares of black votes to his prosperous white liberal base — as he did in South Carolina.

But in states that actually “look like America,” he tends to get beaten by Hillary Rodham Clinton. He lost such melting-pot states as Nevada, California, Massachusetts and New York largely because he couldn’t accumulate nearly enough white or Latino votes.

Some conservatives have mischievously alleged anti-black sentiment among Latinos as one reason why Obama fails to gain Latino support. Many liberals have worried about a “Bradley effect” — named for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley — whereby secretly racist white liberals say they will vote for the black guy but don’t follow through.

Although there’s got to be some truth to this at the margins, I think it’s mostly hogwash. Still, it says something fascinating about our political and racial landscape that the Democratic voters with the most experience living in multiracial, multicultural communities are the ones who are the most immune to Obama’s “beyond race” rhetoric. At the same time, the whitest states are the most gaga for Obama (he beat Clinton 80% to 17% in white-supremacist-rich Idaho).

One possible explanation for this might be found in the work of Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam. In 2006, the scholar of civil society and author of “Bowling Alone” released some controversial findings: The more diverse a community, the less trusting it becomes.

“In the presence of diversity, we hunker down,” he told the Financial Times. “The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.” Social trust was at its absolute lowest in Los Angeles, America’s most diverse city, Putnam found.

The hard interpretation would be that diversity does in fact breed racism and ethnic resentment. But a softer, and I think slightly more plausible, reading would be that increased diversity breeds not so much resentment as realism — at least among the rank-and-file voters.

It’s easy for upscale liberals to talk about the glories of diversity because they live at Olympian heights, above the reality of multicultural America. For Obama’s wealthy, white, liberal supporters, diversity is knowing a rich black lawyer, a wealthy Latino accountant and lots of well-to-do gay folks.

Meanwhile, for working-class white liberals who live in places such as Iowa or Maine, it’s easy to see our racial divide in almost purely theoretical terms and therefore believe that purely rhetorical responses are sufficient; Obama says the right words, and that’s all we need.

But for much of the rest of the country, people are more skeptical that high-flying talk about diversity and unity, married to fairly conventional liberal policies on affirmative action, immigration and the like, will do much to solve the real problems we face. They may have never heard such rhetoric delivered so well. But they’ve certainly heard it before.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg12feb12,0,7606908.column

Obamawatch 2008! Continues

I am convinced that given the clean sweep of Saturday and Sunday’s caucuses and primaries of Washington, Louisiana, Nebraska and Maine that Hill’ry is you-know-whatting in her pants and it is the advice of The UNN to buy Immodium AD to stop this from happening.  This will continue to occur in the ensuing months and next year as she will have to get used to familiar terms such as “Democratic nominee Obama” and other unsettling phrases such as “the frontrunner against John McCain” and yes even “President-elect Obama” and prayerfully she will also have to stock up on electrolytes to prevent dehydration because I’m not sure if she could fully handle the third Saturday in January 2009 when she will have to get used to “President Barack Obama.”

And if this weekend’s primaries were not enough, let the record show that Obama even beat her husband in the Grammy’s on Sunday night for his audio reading of The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream over Bill Clinton’s nomination for Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.  So as these two beat it out for the Mylanta and Pepto-Bismol (nausea, heartburn, indigestion–upset stomach–DIARRHEA–YEA!) and even the Immodium AD in the bathroom, Obama still has one more hurdle to cross–TEXAS!

I’m somewhat skipping over the Chesapeake Primaries on the basis that D.C. and Maryland will probably go in Barack’s favor.  Now Virginia may prove to be tedious night for both candidates however, but, clearly the momentum is in favor of Obama.  However, Texas is going to proove a formidable foe for Obama because of the high concentration of Latino and Hispanic voters, they simply do NOT know who he is.  But, Obama has more than enough time to get his name out there and campaign effectively in western Texas where there are higher concentrations of Latino’s and Hispanics.

I will take this time to echo some of the sentiments that I heard from CNN last night conerning this issue of immigration.  Most people refer to those who come over here undocumented as “illegal immigrants” and I noticed specifically that the Latina woman referred to them as “undocumented workers” and even though I disagree with that term; lets call an apple and apple and an orange an orange and not sidestep the true identity by just referring to them as fruit, I was empowered to see her redefine for herself what she saw as the problem.  Although, these Mexican illegal immigrants would create a lower rung on the job ladder, this pundit was correct by debunking the myth that these workers are taking the jobs that previously unskilled African American workers would take.  Now, I believe that in some economic subsets such as Texas or California where there are many higher concentrations of undocumented workers from Mexico that this actually could pose a problem–why because in this country we’re all about profit and these workers will work for wages severely less than what born and bred American’s will work for.

Now as I go off on a tangent, the question in my mind is why are they coming over here?  What about the United States is so appealing to them?  Well, I suggest that its all part of the master plan of this North American Union that no one is talking about.  Mexico is allowing their citizens to slowly take back the land that was once theirs under the guise of this tacit immigration into what are now United States’ borders.  After all is said and done, do NOT be shocked if we end up with another Mexican-American war this time waged on behalf of Mexico and those in the Southwest will be forced to live and submit to Mexican law and the United States is going to look quite dumbfounded.  Or else simply, as my mother states, we’re headed to this coffee colored generation where everyone is a light mocha brown color. . . .

Be that as it may, Obama needs to let them know that he is there and that he is electable.  Not doing so would be committing political suicide particularly as we stand a big possibility of headed toward a brokered convention.  (You can tell I’ve been watching too much CNN.)  I had never heard the term either because quite frankly, I don’t remember this much hoopla over presidential primaries before, but that’s because there hasn’t been a brokered convention, according to Jeffrey Toobin in none of the lifetimes of the people on that particular CNN panel.  Now I’m not sure how old they were, but the last Republican brokered convention was in 1948 resulting in the nomination of Thomas Dewey who as we all know lost to Harry Truman.  And the last Democratic brokered Democratic convention was in 1952 resulting in the nomination of Adlai Stevenson who lost to the war general Dwight Eisenhower.  The last time a Democrat won the general election from a brokered convention was the inaurgural term for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 according to UNN sources.

Well, all that sounds real complicated doesn’t it?

My problem is that it results in no more than politcal back door, cigar smoke-filled back room, elitist politicking that effectively removes the people from the process.  A brokered convention happens when one nominee fails to get to that magic number (1,191 for the Republicans and 2,025 for the Democrats) and then the various candidates begin pandering to certain delegates asking them to trade their votes for other delegates and it really results in political manuevering on a level that this current generation has not seen.  Although, one need think back to our President-select from 2000; it was the epitome of political manuevering that allowed for the Supreme Court to ultimately select our 43rd president.

This issue of states’ rights and this electoral college/delegate process will be reviewed once again and like in late 2000 and early 2001, the Constitution will remain unchanged; a Constitutional amendment would require ratification from 2/3d’s of the states and not unless 2/3d’s of the states feel disenfranchised nothing will happen.

So, to Sen. Obama, one way to avoid all of this and to prevent Clinton from demanding that her vote in Florida and Michigan counted is to win Ohio and Texas on March 4th and all of the other states will probably suffer from the bandwagon effect and you’ll be alright.

Keep it uppity, JLL

check out my other blogs in Church and Society

Obamawatch 2008! continues

In the days after the biggest national primaries that this country has ever seen, we, the Democrats still haven’t a frontrunner in our midst.  All political pundits are saying that this does not bode well for Hill’ry and company.  Well, what went wrong for the Hill’ry campaign? one may ask.  (Somehow Bill Clinton comes to mind.)  But it was a sentiment that was brought up in the wee early morning hours of February 6^th as the country waited on the west coast states to finish tallying up their votes: she’s running against a movement.

Movements don’t die: and Hill’ry would do well to remember that in her upcoming days.  This movement of change, that Obama has started, has somehow galvanized groups of people that previously would have voted for Clinton.  My own personal belief is that it goes all the way back to the January 5th Iowa caucuses where Clinton came into an astonishing third place win in a state that she should have easily trounced Obama and Edwards.  Democrats across the nation sat up a realized that Obama actually has a chance at winning this thing and actually put into perspective this idea that a Bush-Clinton dynasty (1988-2012) wasn’t really a hot idea. 

February 5^th’s Super Duper Fat Tuesday election was really a dead heat and did nothing to settle the frontrunner because while Clinton won the delegate rich states of California, New York and Massachusetts, Obama did the unthinkable and won states like Idaho, North Dakota and Utah.  The UNN need not publish the diversity information on the three aforementioned states in order to drive home the point that Clinton, does in fact have an uphill battle in attempting to unify this country.  She has consistently been a polemic individual; a real love or hate situation with the country.  Frankly, I was all for Clinton’s candidacy until that guy from the South Side of Chicago came in talking about change.

Even today, as Louisiana holds primaries and the state of Washington holds primaries and caucuses (and for those from Washington, only the caucuses count toward delegate numbers in the national primaries) Obama still has more delegates than Hill’ry.  Although it’s only by two, a lead is still a lead, just ask anyone who’s every played a sport before—a win is still a win, even if it is by one.  I just hope that the Obama campaign can finally ride this momentum into the national convention with enough delegates to force Hill’ry to take some Immodium AD and prevent her from you-know-whatting in her pants.  But, then again the tide could turn all because of one state—any guesses what state that may be?!?!?

FLORIDA!

Well, actually Florida and Michigan, but Florida just sounds more impending.  The issue at hand is the delegates and these two states blatant disrespect for the Democratic National Party rules.  DNC rules state that no Democratic primary can be held prior to Feb. 5th of 2008 except for the traditional caucuses and primaries of Iowa, New Hampsh–, South Carolina and Nevada.  Michigan had its primary on January 15th, a state in which no one campaigned and Florida on January 29th which no one campaigned.  Although, wasn’t it ironic that the winner of both of those “beauty contests” as some pundits called it, went and claimed her “prize.” She herself made a vow to make sure that her delegates were seated: I guess I would too.

If this movement catches fire even more and Obama wins the caucus in Washington, and the Chesapeake primaries, you can best believe that there will be fireworks in the Front Range of the Rockies at the DNC convention in Denver over how to seat the delegates of Florida and Michigan.  Even if Clinton does win Texas and Pennsylvania, there will still be a challenge from the Obama campaign as to what to do about these delegates.

The UNN is a staunch supporter of “no taxation without representation” and a supporter of states’ rights insofar as they support the collective bodice of the states in the union.  This being said, the voters who voted in this primary should have their votes counted in the form of delegates seated at the convention.  However, the wins in both states were so lopsided for Hill’ry that one would really have to question the validity and fairness of the election.  Not to mention that Hill’ry’s name was the only one on the ballot in Michigan in the first place!

However, tricky Florida had placed a certain referendum on the ballot for their January 29th election and it was the opinion of many state Democratic party members that they were going to continue with the election.

Now, given the sway of Billary, and who Billary is, could one surmise that this was all part of the master plan?

I mean, go with me for a second.  A combined Bush-Clinton dynasty from 1988-2012, who knows, maybe the Clinton’s were in bed with the Bushes long before Al Gore even thought about running for president, because isn’t it ironic that yet again Florida will be at the center of an election yet again.  This is no longer a case of if but rather how and when.  I would hate to see this go to the Supreme Court which I’m sure the Democratic Party would try and avoid at all costs because of long-range damage going into the fall election, but clearly Obama has a movement on his side—and the money—to challenge DNC rules versus the power of the states’ rules.

Whatever the case may be, the UNN and I support our candidate Sen. Barack Obama from the South Side of Chicago for the presidency of the United States “come hell or high water.”

Run Barack run!

Keep it uppity, JLL