Obama should win just so these folks can see how stupid they look after eight years. Assuming they don't start a race war, of course.
Fortunately, they won't be voting Democratic anyway. But I do thank Hillary for shining the light on this mess, however accidentally.
Rural Kentucky points up a difficult reality for Barack Obama
"I believe that he's a Muslim," said Susan Horton, 56 and white. She leaves her living room whenever Obama comes on the television. "I think that if he gets into office, there's going to be another bombing."
"He's not patriotic," said Brandy Trulock, a 21-year-old mother of two. "If you can't salute the American flag, I don't think you should be allowed to run for president."
At his never-ending garage sale, Terry Jordan sells secondhand bluejeans, ceramic tchotchkes and anything else he can get his hands on, displaying his wares on a flatbed trailer and a few rickety folding tables. He makes about $100 a week to supplement his $720 monthly disability check.
He's all Democrat, all Clinton and, if Obama wins the nomination, all for Republican John McCain. He doesn't trust Obama, has serious questions about the Muslim rumors and truly believes a black man will not survive long as president of the United States.
Jordan claims there's nothing Obama could say that would change his mind.
From the resolute tone of his voice, and the sight of the rebel flag tattoo on his left arm, there's little reason not to believe him.
Those guys aside, it's not like folks are walking around wearing their best bed linen.
Anyone thinking a black politician could come onto the national stage and simply win these Kentuckians over is being naive, residents say. And it's not, as some outsiders might believe, because the town's voters are ignorant.
"To attribute it solely to ignorance would be totally inaccurate," said Melody Chaney, a financial adviser in Munfordville and a Clinton supporter. "It's a matter of education, their upbringing and their background, peer pressure. There are lots of factors that contribute to this."
The day after Obama won the Iowa caucuses, Chaney said, every client she spoke to expressed shock.
Nor is it like Hillary would have gotten their vote if they had any other option.
"Right now it's not that Hillary attracts the white vote," said Jack Bunnell, 79. "It's that Obama's black."
And you want to know a secret?
There's people outside of Appalachia that feel the same way.
You know some of them.
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"But I do thank Hillary for
"But I do thank Hillary for shining the light on this mess, however accidentally."
I think it was intentional and grew out of internal polling figures.
Haven't they been part of the base all along?
I saw Sen. Jim Webb this morning on MSNBC (or CNN) and he was talking about the Appalachians. He talked about them being "trapped" in poverty the same way many blacks have been "trapped." But he claimed their cry was "if you are poor and white you are out of sight." That may well be true because they seem to be so busy trying to run away from being associated with "nigras" that they don't seek benefits that could get them out of it or let anyone know. Look at how many generations these whites have been there and they haven't progressed since the Civil War. When was the time that they got to vote in a primary and when was the last time their vote was noticed? If everyone were white in this race, not only wouldn't Hillary be the choice, we still wouldn't have heard a peep out of them or probably have registered that W. Virginia has the lowest percentage of college grads of any state and the second highest poverty rate. Yet, they are still stuck on not wanting anything to do with Negroes. It's pitiful but not new. It's centuries old. TPM had a write up about Appalachia that was quite interesting. WV broke away from VA during the Civil War. They wanted nothing to do with slavery yet also wanted nothing to do with the slaves either. Their Irish-Scottish heritage is why Pat Buchanan goes ballistic because you are basically talking about his "folks" (somebody ought to send him a ticket to Ireland to see how many immigrants from Asia/India have made it unrecognizable).
Where are we all heading?
Anyone read this article by Jim White below?
"Anyone But Obama
May 17, 2008 by guywhite
“Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual.”
- Michelle Obama.
Many have accurately noted that John McCain is not a great choice. But what’s our only other realistic option? It’s Barack Obama who is a horrible choice, probably the worst one ever.
Yes, we can make an ideological stand and vote for the Libertarian or Constitution Party candidate. I did that in the last 3 elections. But this is not the time because the possibility of President Obama ruining our country for four years is just too horrifying to imagine.
When FDR and Winston Churchill faced of choice of Stalin or Hitler, they chose Josef Stalin. Not because they liked him. Not because he was going to do what the West wanted. But because Adolph Hitler was an unacceptable choice.
Sure, they could’ve pumped weapons and intelligence to the Polish resistance, but the two Western leaders realized that the Poles - while honorable and more pro-American/pro-democracy - just don’t stand a chance of defeating Nazi Germany. There was a proper time to support Polish fighters, even when it looked like they could never win. But World War II wasn’t that time. The possibility of Hitler dominating Europe, from Britain to the Ural, was just too awful to imagine, and so a decision was made to support Stalin.
Obama is not Hitler. But he’s an unacceptable choice.
I can’t imagine living in a country led by Obama. McCain will not damage the country nearly as much.
Reagan, Bush1, Bush 2, Mondale, Dukakis, Dole, Clinton, Kerry, Gore, etc. were all “close enough” choices. We survived Clinton, and we survived Bush. We could make an ideological stand there.
We can’t make an ideological stand this year. Not with Obama possibly having a filibuster-proof majority in Congress. Between having a dominant majority in Congress and the ability to shut down all opposition with the charges that criticism of the President is “racist”, we’ll slide into a near-dictatorship where the President will abuse his power in the name of what he believes is good (and “good” is defined as black empowerment since blacks see progress only when they are “empowered”).
Obama is a dangerous ideologue and demagogue. A populist demagogue scares me much more than a regular sell-out politician.
He will spend trillions, much of it on “black” programs. He will spread university speech codes to the society at large. He will incite blacks and use the power of the government to back up their mobs.
Obama will destroy this country. I really believe that.
Anyone but Obama. Anyone. I would prefer to have Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan as President because they’re honest enough to get whites to speak up against them.
Obama, on the other hand, talks about unity. But it is unity under his umbrella where everyone agrees with him, and those who disagree are destroyed.
This is a wrong election to make an ideological stand by voting for a Third Party or sitting out. Anyone but Obama. Anyone."
Anyone read this article by
No. But now that I have, I see nothing but a series of unsupported assertions.
“Barack will never allow
“Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual.”
- Michelle Obama.
Too many white folks want to wrap black folks in a black blanket even when that person is not talking about anything having to do with being black. Their paranoia, guilt and fear of black people keeps them on edge. Michelle Obama is talking about a shift in the nation's public policy and political paradigm. She is not talking about trying to make white people give up their culture, language or beliefs.
Assassination Chatter and the End of Legitimacy
I copied a portion of this essay by David Bromwich, a professor of literature at Yale, from the Huffington Post.com. Although it is brief, I believe that it deserves to be read in its entirety and its points given serious consideration by those of us who are genuinely concerned about our political culture.
Assassination Chatter and the End of Legitimacy - David Bromwich
"We have seen a return this year to the politics of delegitimation by the extreme Republican right. Yet what has been most surprising is the complicity, and then the open participation in that process by the Clinton campaign. Race was always going to be an element in this year's election. But the comparison of the front runner Barack Obama to the marginal candidate Jesse Jackson on the pretext that both had won South Carolina was a shocker when people heard it come out of the mouth of Bill Clinton. Again, the talk, by Hillary Clinton and her operatives after Ohio, of "the commander in chief test" which (it was said) she and John McCain had "passed" but Obama mysteriously could not pass, was a second stroke of the same kind. There was no scientific or political content to the statement. Its significance was gestural. It was an effort to delegitimate Obama, and its truth could only be shown by its success or failure.
"Hillary Clinton's recent careless-careful mention of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, in answer to a question about why she would stay in the Democratic race when all the numbers are against her, raised the tactics of delegitimation to a pitch as weird as anything the Clintons can have seen in the years 1997-98.
"The most disturbing element of her remark was this: that it chose to treat assassination as just one more political possibility, one of the things that happen in our politics, like hecklers, lobbyists, and forced resignations. The slovenly morale and callousness of such a released fantasy is catching. So when, a few days later, the Fox News contributor Liz Trotta was asked her opinion of Senator Clinton's statement, Trotta said: "some are reading [it] as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama...Obama. Well...both if we could!" Liz Trotta laughed as she said that. Later, she apologized, as Senator Clinton also has apologized."
I don't have any investment
I don't have any investment in whether or not any particular candidate wins or loses. I think building your advancement strategy around having "your guy" in office is short-sighted and will result in transient gains at best. That said, I am nevertheless very invested in whether or not Black people can physically survive an attempt to exercise their legitimate right to participate in the process. It has to be made clear, immediately and forcefully, that attempts to intimidate Black candidates and those who would vote for them will carry painful consequences. I think the best way to send that message at this moment is to do everything in our power to make Fox News suffer financially. If we think that anything short of that will induce them to show restraint and prevent them from further escalating an already dangerous situation with each passing day of the campaign season, I think we are sorely mistaken.