The World According to Oatney

Not the way I'd want to win

Add this to the divisive debate over race in the presidential campaign: Whites who said race was important in picking their candidate have been about twice as likely to back Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as Sen. Barack Obama.

Exit polls of voters in Democratic primaries also show that whites who considered the contender’s race — Clinton is white, Obama is black — were three times likelier to say they would only be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee than if Obama were chosen.

The Democratic Party loves to publicly make the claim that it has moved beyond race, that it is the champion of social equality. Its leaders may talk the talk-and a few of them may actually believe the public rhetoric-but Democratic voters are far from this notion of socio-political nirvana championed by the national party. Race is the monster in the closet of the Democratic Party, because the Democrats have spent the last 50 years (and in some cases much longer) creating constituencies based on race, and targeting demographic groups based almost solely on race and ethnicity. These same people express shock and dismay when the groups that they have politically played the game of isolate and segregate over the years are now voting so sharply according to race in a primary where there are two candidates who happen to be people of different races.

Evidence of the Democratic race monster has already reared its disgustingly ugly head in South Carolina, where Bill Clinton pointed out that Jesse Jackson made a good showing there-clearly indicating that Barack Obama is winning his victories because of black voters-and in saying so, attempted to heap a level of discredit upon Obama's candidacy.

Many supporters of Barack Obama are making the grave mistake of believing that because Obama is doing well among college educated whites, this somehow equates to great levels of white support. Further, I've read and heard some Obama backers (by no means all, but a number of them nonetheless) subscribe to the hyper-elitist idea that whites who do not support Obama are only doing so because they are less educated and that the "intelligent" white Democrats are backing Obama. Most of the folks who have made that insinuation are college-educated white liberals-a group that tends to be notoriously elitist in the first place.

Both sides are playing the race card, but John McCain will not. Unfortunately for the country (Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives alike), the card will have been played like a fiddle by both Democrats, and the result will be a nasty election for surrogates. Because some group will feel alienated, the Republicans may likely win. As a Republican and a conservative, I can say that I'd rather win for a million other reasons than what may cause the GOP to win this year.

Labels: Conservatism, Democrats, Presidential Election, Republican Party

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 12:10 PM