Miss Hillary say she have de white vote, so Barack better run an’ go hide. Dem white folks is mighty powerful down heah on the plantation!
Seriously, do we still have a “white” vote in America? I may be naive but I refuse to believe it. As Barack would say, I think better of the American people than that.
I believe — I want to believe — that the “white working class voters” are a figment of the media’s perverted imagination, a desperate invention to brighten a slow news day. And the “blacks” — Oh my God, “the blacks!” — are another media creation.
I don’t know any “blacks.” Do you?
I know many people with dark skin, who may or may not vote for a candidate of color. The ones I know base their vote on several criteria, the caliber of the candidate, his or her honesty, reliability, judgment and education. In these perilous times, they are looking for someone they can trust to steer the ship of state with a steady hand, not someone with a hair-trigger temperament who might blow up the world.
The same is true of my friends with slightly different skin tones, my Oriental looking friends, my Indian-looking friends, my Hispanic-looking friends… They don’t vote on the basis of some imagined tribal bond. They base their precious votes on their concept of their country’s future.
I wonder whether media commentators are so cynical because many of them are former political hacks who have “been there and done that” — and in many case “done that” badly. Pat Buchanan, for example, got only a few thousand votes when he had the audacity to run for President. Yet there he is telling far more successful politicians than he what they’re doing wrong.
Whatever the reason may be for their cynicism, the commentators (and pollsters) do the public a great disservice when they talk about the “women voters” or the “white working-class voters making less than $50,000 a year.” I do not believe Americans vote in blocs like Sunis and Shiites.
I don’t believe Catholics vote for Catholics and Protestants vote for Protestants any more than I believe dishwashers would vote for a candidate who used to be a dishwasher.
Sadly, some female voters may want a woman president because they feel that as women in the workplace, they have been discriminated against, and they want to score against their male oppressors. But I can’t believe those “sistahs” add up to a meaningful force in the political arena. Similarly, it would be unnatural for persons of color not to feel proud when they see a cultured, cerebral “brother” displaying the charm and sophistication of a Barack Obama. But that’s not enough to build a “black vote” for Obama.
At the beginning of the Democratic primary campaign, Hillary Clinton had more support among black voters than Obama, but she (and Bill) antagonized many of them with comments that were perceived as racist.
That’s why so many black voters turned to Obama.
I don’t know why “white voters” (“working-class” or otherwise) would want to support Hillary. From a documentary I saw on television, she was a civil rights activist when she was young and idealistic, and supported Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She doesn’t offer white voters anything that Obama does not. As Democrats, they both advocate policies that would benefit the “working class.”
And, by the way, when did America get a “working class”? My American wife has always insisted that this is “a classless society, where anyone can rise to any level.”
You mean she’s been wrong all this time?
Say it ain’t so!
