All,
The obvious and ominous signs are everywhere that as Dionne and so many other political analysts have pointed out Obama is being systematically sabotaged by white ethnic (and Latino American) racism both within the Democratic Party and in the larger general society. Astonishingly, commentators keep asking in infantile and very disingenuous terms: "What's behind the national Catholic vote against Obama" and "Why are they voting against Obama 8 and 9-1 across the board throughout the country?" and "Why can't Obama 'connect' with white people over the age of 50 in working and lower middle class communities" and "Why are so many Latino voters--again by huge margins of 8 and 9-1 voting against Obama?" Meanwhile the criminal Clinton Machine keeps brazenly and viciously exploiting these "differences" in every possible way their Machiavellian Karl Rove-like minds can think of...
DUH! Who do these so-called pundits and "analysts" think they're kidding with this bullshit? 99% of the "catholic vote" in this country is made up of four major ethnic groups only: Irish and Italian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Rican Americans. These four white and Latino American ethnic groups generally despise the African American community and have as individual voting blocs consistently voted against African American candidates in the great majority of local, state, and national elections for over 50 years in the case of Irish and Italian American voters, and the last 30 years among Mexican and Puerto Rican Americans. These statistical facts are very well documented and have been written about extensively by academics and political scientists and social policy wonks since the 1960s.
It is precisely this ethnic racism against blacks (joined and augmented of course by the even more traditional and virulent historical racism of working class, and middle and upper middle class WASPS) that have been and continue to be the major obstacle to building and sustaining any kind of viable, national progressive coalition of leftists and liberals within the Democratic Party and in independent 'third party' movements--radical or reformist. This persistent problem has in fact ultimately sabotaged or destroyed every serious attempt of African Americans to join in and organize principled radical and/or liberal reform political and economic coalitions since Reconstruction (i.e. 1870-present). It happened with the populist movements of the 1880s and 1890s, it happened with the rise of national trade and industrial unions during the Great Depression period of the 1930s and 1940s and yes, it happened in the 1960s and 1970s during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. Of course there were some exemplary exceptions to this generally ironclad rule among a small, relatively marginal number of groups and organizations led by the Communist Party USA and various small Socialist parties and New Leftist groups (especially from 1920-1970) but for the most part white ethnic and WASP racism (now coupled with the relatively recent historical expressions of antiblack racism by Mexican Americans on the West Coast and in the southwest as well as many Puerto Rican Americans on the east coast) have completely subverted, sabotaged, and destroyed any chances for a viable progressive coalition to emerge and sustain itself as a serious force either within the Democratic Party or in independent 'third party' contexts.
Thus the political catastrophes that have consistently beset the Democratic Party and all other leftist and liberal organizations over the past 60 years continues apace against Obama. From the "Dixiecrats" (southern Democrats who were virulently against and fought the Civil Rights Movement tooth and nail) to Nixon advisor Ken Phillips's insidious "Southern Strategy" in the 1970s to the so-called "Reagan Democrats" since 1980 (mostly former southern--and some midwestern and eastcoast--Democrats who simply decided to formally change political parties since they already hated blacks and women and loved white male power and conservatism so much) to the Clinton Machine DLC Democrats (who use raciist opportunism and thinly veiled white 'gliberal' southern-style demagoguery to manipulate, control, and exploit racism against blacks within the Democratic Party while at the same time using the black vote to their exclusive advantage) white ethnic and Latino American racism (along with the ever present WASP elites) have worked against African American voting interests and candidates especially on the state and national levels. As a direct result there have been only two (2) black governors in this country since slavery officially ended in 1863 (for a devastating historical constrast consider that there were two others elected from 1870-1880!), and a mere two (2) black Supreme Court Justices. Under these criminally racist circumstances one can see why the very idea of an African American president was not only taboo but considered impossible (and for the even more dismal and revealing historical record there have also never been any American president who was either female, Jewish, or of Italian, Latino, or Asian descent; in fact of the last 19 U.S. presidents since 1897 16 of them have been WASPS and only three (3) were Irish Americans. Of those Irish Americans TWO were assassinated (McKinley and Kennedy) and there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the third--Ronald Reagan--in March, 1981.
So this is the actual oppressive society that we all (and Barack Obama) "live" in. And no amount of rhetorical evasion or intellectual pretension to the contrary can possibly conceal or obscure what it all means. The task for us, as always, is immense and made even more severely difficult because the pervasive poisonous and deadly doctrinal disease of American racism and white supremacy still rules our politics, our culture, our economic system, our world, and our lives...
Kofi
P.S. Check out these other links for other important articles about racism and national anti-Obama movements as well:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/23/obama-strategist-dont-wor_n_98301.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLBlgR8dCIRw&refer=home
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_9036927
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/is-obama-mcgove.html
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04/obamas_white_workingclass_prob.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/politics/23penn.html?em&ex=1209096000&en=f230aa92364c80ac&ei=5087
E.J. Dionne: Resistance to Obama seems driven by race and religion
By E.J. Dionne
April 24, 2008
WASHINGTON - Perhaps it was inevitable: The Democrats' battle for the presidential nomination has now led us into the thicket of race and religion.
Hillary Clinton's significant victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary was the result of many factors, but most troubling for Obama's camp were exit polls suggesting that an underlying anti-Obama vote was responsible for the size of Clinton's victory.
One little-noticed finding was that 6 percent of Clinton's own voters said that they would defect to John McCain in the fall against Clinton herself. These Pennsylvania Democrats were clearly not Clinton enthusiasts. They were voting against Obama.
What was behind the anti-Obama feeling? More specifically, did Obama's race play a role? The evidence suggests that race mattered; it's just not clear how much.
Among white Pennsylvania voters, roughly one in six said race was a factor, and three-quarters of them voted for Clinton. By contrast, Clinton's gender seemed to help her more than hurt her: A substantial majority of men who said a candidate's gender was a factor (a very small group) voted for Clinton.
The import of race was widely debated in e-mail discussion groups and on websites from the moment the exit polls became available. There is certainly a danger of exaggerating the impact of race in Pennsylvania, since Clinton also beat Obama by about 3-2 among whites who said race played no role in their decision.
Nonetheless, elections are usually decided at the margins, and these findings will (and should) prompt a more open and candid discussion of race's role this year.
Republicans clearly know that they can find ways to play on racial feeling while fully denying they are doing so. On Wednesday, the North Carolina Republican Party released a television ad showing Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, giving his now-famous sermon in which he declared, "God damn America."
Of course Wright's comments were offensive, but to pretend that the ad does not have racial undertones would be to deny the obvious. After all, why didn't North Carolina Republicans focus instead on attacking Obama's alleged "elitism" or his foreign-policy views?
And a pattern was set that may define the rest of the campaign: Will John McCain be able to profit from incendiary ads run by his partisan allies even as he insists he would never run such ads himself?
The religious factor, and specifically the Catholic factor, is equally complicated. But it is no less important. Among white Catholics in Pennsylvania, Clinton received 72 percent of the vote, 9 points better than her share among whites as a whole and 13 points better than her performance among white Protestants.
Some of the differences can be explained by the fact that self-identified Pennsylvania Catholics were older than other voters -- and older white voters have been at the core of Clinton's base. Among voters under 45, by contrast, the differences between white Catholics and white Protestants were negligible.
Nonetheless, older white Catholics were decidedly more resistant to Obama than other older whites. Even as Pennsylvania's votes were being counted, a top Clinton campaign official was touting the extensive work Clinton had done to woo Catholics.
He spoke of campaigning by nuns around the state, a special "Catholic conversation" hosted by some of Clinton's prominent Catholic supporters just before CNN's "Compassion Forum," and even of the fact that Chelsea Clinton had attended mass at St. Christopher's parish in northeast Philadelphia with Catholic supporters.
The Obama campaign was slower in organizing Catholics, but earlier this month announced the formation of a Catholic "advisory council" whose ranks include Sharon Daly, a former top official at Catholic Charities USA, and Mary Jo Bane, who served in the Department of Health and Human Services in Bill Clinton's administration. Since Catholics have a history of backing the ultimately victorious presidential candidate, the struggle over Catholic voters will be closely tied to arguments with superdelegates over whether Clinton or Obama is the more electable Democrat.
But the debate over what happened in Pennsylvania is, finally, an argument over whether 2008 really is the year when the patterns of the past will be broken.
Will younger voters or older voters set the tone of the campaign? Will past divisions over race and religion reassert themselves, or will the electorate decide to push them aside in the interest of a new 21st-century politics? Never has Obama's slogan, "Yes We Can," seemed more relevant to his political task.
E.J. Dionne's column is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group.
© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
The obvious and ominous signs are everywhere that as Dionne and so many other political analysts have pointed out Obama is being systematically sabotaged by white ethnic (and Latino American) racism both within the Democratic Party and in the larger general society. Astonishingly, commentators keep asking in infantile and very disingenuous terms: "What's behind the national Catholic vote against Obama" and "Why are they voting against Obama 8 and 9-1 across the board throughout the country?" and "Why can't Obama 'connect' with white people over the age of 50 in working and lower middle class communities" and "Why are so many Latino voters--again by huge margins of 8 and 9-1 voting against Obama?" Meanwhile the criminal Clinton Machine keeps brazenly and viciously exploiting these "differences" in every possible way their Machiavellian Karl Rove-like minds can think of...
DUH! Who do these so-called pundits and "analysts" think they're kidding with this bullshit? 99% of the "catholic vote" in this country is made up of four major ethnic groups only: Irish and Italian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Rican Americans. These four white and Latino American ethnic groups generally despise the African American community and have as individual voting blocs consistently voted against African American candidates in the great majority of local, state, and national elections for over 50 years in the case of Irish and Italian American voters, and the last 30 years among Mexican and Puerto Rican Americans. These statistical facts are very well documented and have been written about extensively by academics and political scientists and social policy wonks since the 1960s.
It is precisely this ethnic racism against blacks (joined and augmented of course by the even more traditional and virulent historical racism of working class, and middle and upper middle class WASPS) that have been and continue to be the major obstacle to building and sustaining any kind of viable, national progressive coalition of leftists and liberals within the Democratic Party and in independent 'third party' movements--radical or reformist. This persistent problem has in fact ultimately sabotaged or destroyed every serious attempt of African Americans to join in and organize principled radical and/or liberal reform political and economic coalitions since Reconstruction (i.e. 1870-present). It happened with the populist movements of the 1880s and 1890s, it happened with the rise of national trade and industrial unions during the Great Depression period of the 1930s and 1940s and yes, it happened in the 1960s and 1970s during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. Of course there were some exemplary exceptions to this generally ironclad rule among a small, relatively marginal number of groups and organizations led by the Communist Party USA and various small Socialist parties and New Leftist groups (especially from 1920-1970) but for the most part white ethnic and WASP racism (now coupled with the relatively recent historical expressions of antiblack racism by Mexican Americans on the West Coast and in the southwest as well as many Puerto Rican Americans on the east coast) have completely subverted, sabotaged, and destroyed any chances for a viable progressive coalition to emerge and sustain itself as a serious force either within the Democratic Party or in independent 'third party' contexts.
Thus the political catastrophes that have consistently beset the Democratic Party and all other leftist and liberal organizations over the past 60 years continues apace against Obama. From the "Dixiecrats" (southern Democrats who were virulently against and fought the Civil Rights Movement tooth and nail) to Nixon advisor Ken Phillips's insidious "Southern Strategy" in the 1970s to the so-called "Reagan Democrats" since 1980 (mostly former southern--and some midwestern and eastcoast--Democrats who simply decided to formally change political parties since they already hated blacks and women and loved white male power and conservatism so much) to the Clinton Machine DLC Democrats (who use raciist opportunism and thinly veiled white 'gliberal' southern-style demagoguery to manipulate, control, and exploit racism against blacks within the Democratic Party while at the same time using the black vote to their exclusive advantage) white ethnic and Latino American racism (along with the ever present WASP elites) have worked against African American voting interests and candidates especially on the state and national levels. As a direct result there have been only two (2) black governors in this country since slavery officially ended in 1863 (for a devastating historical constrast consider that there were two others elected from 1870-1880!), and a mere two (2) black Supreme Court Justices. Under these criminally racist circumstances one can see why the very idea of an African American president was not only taboo but considered impossible (and for the even more dismal and revealing historical record there have also never been any American president who was either female, Jewish, or of Italian, Latino, or Asian descent; in fact of the last 19 U.S. presidents since 1897 16 of them have been WASPS and only three (3) were Irish Americans. Of those Irish Americans TWO were assassinated (McKinley and Kennedy) and there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the third--Ronald Reagan--in March, 1981.
So this is the actual oppressive society that we all (and Barack Obama) "live" in. And no amount of rhetorical evasion or intellectual pretension to the contrary can possibly conceal or obscure what it all means. The task for us, as always, is immense and made even more severely difficult because the pervasive poisonous and deadly doctrinal disease of American racism and white supremacy still rules our politics, our culture, our economic system, our world, and our lives...
Kofi
P.S. Check out these other links for other important articles about racism and national anti-Obama movements as well:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/23/obama-strategist-dont-wor_n_98301.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLBlgR8dCIRw&refer=home
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_9036927
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/is-obama-mcgove.html
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04/obamas_white_workingclass_prob.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/politics/23penn.html?em&ex=1209096000&en=f230aa92364c80ac&ei=5087
E.J. Dionne: Resistance to Obama seems driven by race and religion
By E.J. Dionne
April 24, 2008
WASHINGTON - Perhaps it was inevitable: The Democrats' battle for the presidential nomination has now led us into the thicket of race and religion.
Hillary Clinton's significant victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary was the result of many factors, but most troubling for Obama's camp were exit polls suggesting that an underlying anti-Obama vote was responsible for the size of Clinton's victory.
One little-noticed finding was that 6 percent of Clinton's own voters said that they would defect to John McCain in the fall against Clinton herself. These Pennsylvania Democrats were clearly not Clinton enthusiasts. They were voting against Obama.
What was behind the anti-Obama feeling? More specifically, did Obama's race play a role? The evidence suggests that race mattered; it's just not clear how much.
Among white Pennsylvania voters, roughly one in six said race was a factor, and three-quarters of them voted for Clinton. By contrast, Clinton's gender seemed to help her more than hurt her: A substantial majority of men who said a candidate's gender was a factor (a very small group) voted for Clinton.
The import of race was widely debated in e-mail discussion groups and on websites from the moment the exit polls became available. There is certainly a danger of exaggerating the impact of race in Pennsylvania, since Clinton also beat Obama by about 3-2 among whites who said race played no role in their decision.
Nonetheless, elections are usually decided at the margins, and these findings will (and should) prompt a more open and candid discussion of race's role this year.
Republicans clearly know that they can find ways to play on racial feeling while fully denying they are doing so. On Wednesday, the North Carolina Republican Party released a television ad showing Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, giving his now-famous sermon in which he declared, "God damn America."
Of course Wright's comments were offensive, but to pretend that the ad does not have racial undertones would be to deny the obvious. After all, why didn't North Carolina Republicans focus instead on attacking Obama's alleged "elitism" or his foreign-policy views?
And a pattern was set that may define the rest of the campaign: Will John McCain be able to profit from incendiary ads run by his partisan allies even as he insists he would never run such ads himself?
The religious factor, and specifically the Catholic factor, is equally complicated. But it is no less important. Among white Catholics in Pennsylvania, Clinton received 72 percent of the vote, 9 points better than her share among whites as a whole and 13 points better than her performance among white Protestants.
Some of the differences can be explained by the fact that self-identified Pennsylvania Catholics were older than other voters -- and older white voters have been at the core of Clinton's base. Among voters under 45, by contrast, the differences between white Catholics and white Protestants were negligible.
Nonetheless, older white Catholics were decidedly more resistant to Obama than other older whites. Even as Pennsylvania's votes were being counted, a top Clinton campaign official was touting the extensive work Clinton had done to woo Catholics.
He spoke of campaigning by nuns around the state, a special "Catholic conversation" hosted by some of Clinton's prominent Catholic supporters just before CNN's "Compassion Forum," and even of the fact that Chelsea Clinton had attended mass at St. Christopher's parish in northeast Philadelphia with Catholic supporters.
The Obama campaign was slower in organizing Catholics, but earlier this month announced the formation of a Catholic "advisory council" whose ranks include Sharon Daly, a former top official at Catholic Charities USA, and Mary Jo Bane, who served in the Department of Health and Human Services in Bill Clinton's administration. Since Catholics have a history of backing the ultimately victorious presidential candidate, the struggle over Catholic voters will be closely tied to arguments with superdelegates over whether Clinton or Obama is the more electable Democrat.
But the debate over what happened in Pennsylvania is, finally, an argument over whether 2008 really is the year when the patterns of the past will be broken.
Will younger voters or older voters set the tone of the campaign? Will past divisions over race and religion reassert themselves, or will the electorate decide to push them aside in the interest of a new 21st-century politics? Never has Obama's slogan, "Yes We Can," seemed more relevant to his political task.
E.J. Dionne's column is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group.
© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
