All,
I originally made the following statement on January 12, 2008 in this publication. It's repeated here because it obviously remains all too true of this society and of course this election. The Newsweek article below not only confirms our deepest fears but is also still more blatant evidence of our most ancient and historically reliable knowledge of what America actually is as opposed to what it tells itself it is..
.BTW: The ridiculous phrase "racial misgivings" from the Newsweek article below is just one more utterly feeble and dishonest example of typically American codespeak. What they "really meant to say" is RACISM...Kofi
LET'S GET REAL HERE...I don't want to burst anyone's bubble by saying the following (or maybe I do) but in the interest of sheer accuracy there's a much larger truth that must be seriously acknowledged and dealt with here. And that is this: So long as AT LEAST 50% of the entire white voting population WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER VOTE FOR A BLACK CANDIDATE (whether he or she is the "best candidate" or not) we should not delude ourselves into thinking that this election doesn't have "anything to do with race." That's simply false based on the actual well documented historical record. There is no such thing as "color blind" politics in the United States and anyone who thinks there is, is either ignorant of the actual facts or engaging in self-delusional fantasy. Of course the color of a person's skin should not make a difference in how someone votes but it would the height of naivete to think for even a nanosecond that this is the actual case in a country where racial bloc voting is well established and still very prominent and important in the way American citizens (especially white Americans) perceive and act upon making the political choices they do...
Racial views steer some white Dems away from ObamaAP-Yahoo News Poll: Racial prejudices steer some white Democrats away from Barack ObamaRON FOURNIER and TREVOR TOMPSON Associated Press WritersAPDeep-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 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 white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.
More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can't win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.
Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.
"There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's only a few bigots," said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.
The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush's unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.
The findings suggest that Obama's problem is close to home — among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.
The survey also focused on the racial attitudes of independent voters because they are likely to decide the election.
Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren't voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn't vote for any Democrat for president — white, black or brown.
Not all whites are prejudiced. Indeed, more whites say good things about blacks than say bad things, the poll shows. And many whites who see blacks in a negative light are still willing or even eager to vote for Obama.
On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn't be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites' views.
Race is not the biggest factor driving Democrats and independents away from Obama. Doubts about his competency loom even larger, the poll indicates. More than a quarter of all Democrats expressed doubt that Obama can bring about the change they want, and they are likely to vote against him because of that.
Three in 10 of those Democrats who don't trust Obama's change-making credentials say they plan to vote for McCain.
Still, the effects of whites' racial views are apparent in the polling.
Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.
But in an election without precedent, it's hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.
The AP-Yahoo poll used the unique methodology of Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to report embarrassing behavior and unpopular opinions when answering questions on a computer rather than talking to a stranger.
Other techniques used in the poll included recording people's responses to black or white faces flashed on a computer screen, asking participants to rate how well certain adjectives apply to blacks, measuring whether people believe blacks' troubles are their own fault, and simply asking people how much they like or dislike blacks.
"We still don't like black people," said John Clouse, 57, reflecting the sentiments of his pals gathered at a coffee shop in Somerset, Ohio.
Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word "violent" strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with "boastful," 29 percent "complaining," 13 percent "lazy" and 11 percent "irresponsible." When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.
Among white Democrats, one-third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.
The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites."
Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn't.
Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks "intelligent" or "smart," more than one third latched on the adjective "complaining" and 24 percent said blacks were "violent."
Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they "try harder."
The survey broke ground by incorporating images of black and white faces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. That test suggested the incidence of racial prejudice is even higher, with more than half of whites revealing more negative feelings toward blacks than whites.
Researchers used mathematical modeling to sort out the relative impact of a huge swath of variables that might have an impact on people's votes — including race, ideology, party identification, the hunger for change and the sentiments of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's backers.
Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton's white backers plan to vote for McCain.
Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries — particularly whites with high school education or less — were motivated in part by racial attitudes.
The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
— — —
Associated Press writers Nancy Benac, Julie Carr Smyth, Philip Elliot, Julie Pace and Sonya Ross contributed to this story.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/troubling-phone-polls/?nl=pol&emc=pola2
http://www.nysun.com/national/jewish-voters-receiving-anti-obama-calls/85900/?print=0635181221
All,
Still more rancid evidence of exactly what kind of racist political scum we are dealing with in the McCain campaign against Obama...
Kofi
September 17, 2008Troubling Phone PollsBy KATHARINE Q. SEELYENew York TimesA Caucus reader in Florida tells us that she too was called by a research firm that has been telephoning other Jewish voters and delivering negative information about Senator Barack Obama.
After readers reported to various Web sites — including Politico , The New Republic, and Talking Points Memo — that they had received offensive calls, Politico reported that the poll was sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, which is working on behalf of Senator John McCain.
Matt Brooks, executive director of the coalition, told Politico that the firm was trying to “understand why Barack Obama continues to have a problem among Jewish voters.”
Our reader, who is a 60-year-old Jewish woman and lives in Orlando, said she was furious about the call, which she received Sunday about 5 p.m. She said that the questions included being told things like Mr. Obama had a long relationship with pro-Palestinian leaders and that the church he attended had an anti-Israel slant (The New Republic lists the questions since its writer was on his computer at the time he received the call).
Our reader she said that while the questions angered her, she answered them because she was “curious to see where they were going.” At the end, she said she told the young-sounding woman who was asking the questions that she should be “ashamed of herself.” She said the woman agreed.
The calls were made by Central Research, based in New York. A recording on the company’s answering machine says: “This is Central Research. We are a political polling company.” She then leaves instructions for callers who want to be put on a do-not-call list.
Jewish Voters Receiving Anti-Obama Calls in FloridaBy KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press | September 15, 2008New York Sunhttp://www.nysun.com/national/jewish-voters-receiving-anti-obama-calls/85900/MIAMI — Jewish voters in Florida and at least one other state are being targeted by a telephone survey tying Democratic presidential nominee Senator Obama to Palestinian Arab causes, an advocacy group alleged today.
The Jewish Council for Education in Research says at least two women in separate states were push polled, or asked questions intended to influence voters while pretending to take a poll, yesterday afternoon from a caller who said he was from Research Strategies.
Joelna Marcus says she became uncomfortable when the caller asked if she was Jewish, whether she was Orthodox, and how often she attends synagogue.
The caller then asked if Ms. Marcus would be influenced if she learned that Mr. Obama had donated money to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The caller also asked how she would vote if she learned that someone on the Illinois senator's staff had close ties to Palestine.
Ms. Marcus, a 71-year-old former college professor, said she was furious.
"I said you're not polling me. This is un-American. This is unacceptable," Ms. Marcus, a snowbird who lives in New Jersey and has a house in Key West, said. "And then this is the scary part. He said if you had not said that you were Jewish, you would have been disqualified."
Deborah Minden, who lives in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh received a similar call yesterday afternoon. After asking basic demographic information, Ms. Minden, 56, said the caller said, "I'm going to ask you some things about Senator Obama and you tell me if it would make you more or less likely to vote for him."
The poller then ticked off a list of accusations including that Mr. Obama's church had made anti-Semitic statements and that Mr. Obama had met with Hamas leaders.
A spokesman for Senator McCain, who is on a two-day swing in Florida, did not immediately comment tonight.
"We see this as a disturbing but not unexpected ratcheting up of the kind of misinformation and outright lies about Obama's record that we've literally seen since he declared his candidacy," the co-executive director of the Jewish Council for Education & Research, Mik Moore, said. The organization has endorsed Mr. Obama for president.
During the Republican presidential primaries, Mr. McCain alleged push polling had taken place and asked for an investigation into thousands of calls to New Hampshire voters that disparaged him and supported rival Mike Huckabee.
