This Is a Test Can Barack Obama pass?

nationalreview.com ^ | July 5, 2008 | Michael Barone

[Free ThinkerNY]

‘They’re going to try to make you afraid of me,” Barack Obama told the audience at a Jacksonville fundraiser last month. “He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?” Obama was doing here by inference what many of his supporters do more explicitly. Obama’s candidacy, in their view, puts American voters to the test: Are they open-minded enough to vote for a black candidate? Or are they still so overcome by racial prejudice as to reject the first black candidate with a serious chance to win?

There are obviously problems with this. In a nation of 303 million, there are surely some people who won’t vote for Obama because he’s black. But there are a lot more Americans who aren’t willing to vote for him for other reasons that have nothing to do with race — because he’s a Democrat, because he’s taken liberal positions on many issues, because (to quote his own words) he’s young and inexperienced.

In any case, Obama’s candidacy by itself is not a test of whether Americans are unwilling to vote for a black candidate; to determine that, you would have to take into account whether those unwilling to vote for him would be willing to vote for a different kind of black candidate. And as it happens, there is such a test case. In the fall of 1995, Colin Powell, fresh from a boffo book tour, was (or was widely thought to be) contemplating running for president. There were plenty of polls matching him as the Republican nominee against incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton. And running well: A typical Gallup poll had him leading Clinton 54 to 39 percent.

[Riverman94610]

That day was one of the most eerie of my life.I was a “scene maker”back then and was interested in just about anything going on in right wing or left wing circles.
It was actually a PLP and SF State Black Student Union member named Bridges Randall who interrupted David Hilliard to make the announcement to the crowd.He said something to the effect of”Great news for the people-a pig has been offed in the Mission”.A large proportion of the crowd cheered vigorously.
Another weird component of that day were the thousands of Mao’s Little Red Books that were passed out.And Bobby Seale urging everyone to hold them up and shout in unison,”I AM a Revolutionary”.
If you lived around here back then,those times were surreal.It was as if the whole world had been transported into a Twilight Zone where common logic and humanity were cast aside in the name of this all powerful”Movement”which ruled everything.

[neverdem]

BTTT!

[MKAP001]

GO WEST! www.allenwestforcongress.com