Yeah, but does it matter? The New York Times endorsed Mrs. Bill Clinton while she was in full negative mode. Complaining about her negativity now seems a bit disingenuous to me.
Especially since it's her only hope.
"I don't care too much for Obama," Maria Norgren, the daughter and granddaughter of steelworkers, said in the parking lot of the Giant Eagle shopping center here, near the Obama rally.
"I don't even think he's American," added her husband, Edward, who lost his job when the steel mills closed and now mans the counter at the Puff Discount Tobacco and Lottery shop next to the Giant Eagle.
"His father's from Nigeria, right?" asked Maria, wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt.
"I think he just wants to be president because he's black," said Tim Hetrick, smoking a cigarette as he waited for a bus among the crumbling structures of downtown McKeesport. A Democrat, he's thinking about voting for McCain in November.
"It's a racial component, too," Maria Norgren added. "A lot of black people are voting for him."
Some might attribute that sentiment -- and the Norgrens' -- to bitterness. But Edward Norgren sees it differently. "I'm not bitter," he said. "I've moved on in my life." He just doesn't like Obama.
He just doesn't like Obama.
This is some pretty interesting stuff. I was especially amused by Mr. Hetrick's speculation. It's obvious their biggest problem with Obama is that he's Black. And you can't even really address their concerns because the only want to do it is to stop being Black.
You can't get open discussion of the fact if you're Black. You get some nonsense assertion that is far, far away from their real concern. Nash McCabe, of ABC News debate fame, is a flawless example.
Nash McCabe is the voter from Wednesday night's presidential debate who noted that Barack Obama doesn't usually wear a flag pin and asked, "I want to know if you believe in the American flag."...
But to understand why Obama rubs McCabe wrong is to go beyond the question of what a flag pin has to do with patriotism — it's not really about the flag pin, she said in a telephone interview Thursday — and consider McCabe's life....
But she sees a difference between the two. In Clinton, she sees someone who has struggled for years, just like her, and has earned the right to be president. In Obama, she sees someone who rose like a rocket, always has a smooth explanation for everything — whether it's about his former preacher or the flag pin — and who makes it all look too easy.
"That's what upsets me about Barack Obama," she says. "He takes everything so nonchalantly."
How does this come down to whether someone "believe[s] in the flag"? It doesn't..."it's not really about the flag pin," so it is literally impossible to answer her, and she gets to feel his answer in unsatisfactory, he's ducking, whatever.
All things considered, I'm pretty pleased by how it's all developing. I like the fact that the truth is coming out.
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Agreed
So do I. America now stands on the same precipice where Germany stood before the rise of National Socialism. McCabe and her peers are today's version of 18 Century sailors who had much more in common with slaves but psychologically identified themselves with the merchants and captains.
My two cents
My two cents worth:
McKeesport, Pennsylvania is a sad, broken and impoverished little town in a state filled with sad, broken and impoverished little towns. The impoverishment in places like McKeesport is more than simply material. There is also a paucity of cultural resources that is reflective in the lack of exposure and knowledge that many of the residents of these communities have about the larger world. I visited McKeesport once in my duties as a Pennsylvania state employee and once was enough.
I think that what really troubles Nash McCabe and Tim Hetrick and the rest of these so-called Reagan, now Hillary, Democrats, is not just that Obama is black but that he is black and the trajectory of his life has brought him rewards and gifts that will never come their way. In their hearts, they believe that black folks really are inferior to them and not deserving of any success, at least not any success that surpasses their achievements.