Now, watch him bring the same level of expertise to presidential politics.
Already, there is reason to believe that race is weighing Obama down. A survey this year by CBS and the New York Times found that 94 percent of respondents would vote for a black presidential candidate. But when asked if "most people" would, the number dropped to 71 percent. Notre Dame political scientist David Leege estimates that 17 to 19 percent of white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents will resist voting for Obama because he is black. That's far more than the percentage of Republicans who may vote for Obama because he is black. And it's a major reason that this election -- despite Obama's myriad advantages -- remains close.
To blow it open, Obama needs to bring Leege's number down. That may be possible, because even racists can be wooed. Think about it this way: Many of the voters who right now won't vote for Obama because he's black would probably vote for Colin Powell even though he's black. That's because they don't see Powell as a racial redistributionist, a guy who would favor his community at their expense. There's no rational reason to believe Obama would, either. But because, unlike Powell, Obama is a liberal Democrat who enjoys overwhelming black support, that's what many racially hostile white voters assume.
For these voters, Obama can't make race go away by ignoring it, especially because the GOP and the media won't. He needs to acknowledge their fears and do something dramatic to assuage them. Paradoxically, his best shot at deracializing the campaign is to explicitly make race an issue.
He can do that with a high-profile speech -- and maybe a TV ad -- calling for the replacement of race-based preferences with class-based ones. That would confront head-on white fears that an Obama administration would favor minorities at whites' expense. It would be a sharper, more dramatic, way of making the point that Obama has made ever since he took the national stage (but which some whites still refuse to believe): that he represents not racial division but national unity.
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Say what now huh? This is
Say what now huh?
This is what racist whites need to understand.
Things have been and still are in their favor. If black progress came at their expense, that would only equal things out. Cause right now, their lives, such as they are, have come and maybe still comes at black America's expense.
The lack of intellect on these issues drives me crazy. Everyone agrees that racism lost most legal support in the 70s. The backlash began in the 80s. Exactly at what point did Black America progress so far that any more programs to assist minorities is now making the playing field unlevel to our advantage. I must've overslept that morning.
Reject race-based affirmative action indeed.
That isn't to say Beinart is accurate in his analysis. That's just to point out that the only way to pander to racists is to support racism. Er...duh!
The backlash began in the
"The backlash began in the 80s."
1968 would be more accurate.
I read Beinart's piece. He fails to explain why people who won't vote Obama because of the color of his skin will change their minds because Obama announces his intention to change affirmative action. Specifically, Beinart does not explain why taking such an action will change their perception of Obama as a "liberal redistributionist Democrat" and vote for him. Beinart is an idiot. We need to stop pretending that people this stupid have any useful advice to offer to address any public policy matters.
Colin Powell is pro-Affirmative Action
He got booed at the RNC Convention when he came out for it.
Remember?
Just sayin'.
Of course, all this is bullshit until these mofos will admit who the TRUE beneficiaries of Affirmative Action Are :
WHITE WOMEN
Until that's admitted, without hesitation, this talk is utter nonsense.
ADA, Vietnam, and Watts
Peter Bienart is the classic Establishment liberal in the mold of Dean Acheson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. They're so remote from the action and so entrenched in privilege that they are incapable of accurately gauging the luxury of their views.
these are indeed some
these are indeed some serious issues. I am content to sit back and watch how this plays out.
Dean Acheson
Several days ago I couldn't sleep and turned on the television at some ridiculous hour of the early morning. The one and only thing worth watching was the movie Thirteen Days starring Kevin Costner about the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. When the dimensions of the emerging crisis begins escalating, President Kennedy decides that he needs to expand his circle of advisors in order to develop a response to the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He tells his brother, Robert, and aide, Kenny O'Donnell (played by Costner) to get Dean Acheson to come in and participate in the discussions because he wants some "wise old men" to help him sort things out.
Acheson, however, proves to be more hawkish than any of Kennedy's generals, with the possible exception of Air Force General Curtis LeMay. He wants to bomb Cuba despite the risk of setting off a shooting war with the Soviet Union. Later, Kennedy tells Robert and O'Donnell that there are no wise old men. They are on their own to figure out this mess and save the world from a nuclear war.
At a much lower frequency, Beinart's advice to Obama strikes me as having the same sort of heedless recklessness as Acheson's was to Kennedy. Beinart wants to squeeze the square peg of a policy prescription into a round whole of unintended and unpredicted consequences.