About That Frothing Racism
The big news is that Clinton stays alive. I don’t know why anyone would be surprised. She wasn’t exactly dead in the water, no matter what the pundits were saying last week.*
How does she live? Ugly. That’s the story line, anyway. According to everything I’ve seen this week,** it’s because Americans are closet racists, and the gap-toothed semi-literate erstwhile Klansmen of West Virginia have underscored the point. NYT:
Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said race was an important factor in their votes. More than 8 in 10 who said it factored in their votes backed Mrs. Clinton, according to exit polls.
Two in 10 is the big number being bandied around. One in five West Virginians admits to being an anti-black bigot. The assumption that has been applied to earlier reports on racial polling is that those are just the ignoramuses who are willing to admit race is a factor, so in fact there must be a much higher percentage of frothing white bigots.
This AP breakdown is getting less ink:
One in four Clinton voters and about one in 10 Obama voters said race was an important factor in their vote.
That’s interesting. It turns out that among those two in 10 for whom race was a factor, there are a bunch of people who voted for the black candidate. Unclear whether this is because they are frothing anti-white bigots, or if they are a more benign variety that simply simply decided to base their vote on the color of the candidate’s skin because it’s a black man’s time, something like that.
So what exactly does that mean, race was a factor? I had the impression it means whites are frothing bigots who won’t vote for a black man, but I’ve learned it’s somewhat more complicated than that. Check this out, it gets even more complicated. Here’s the AP again:
THE REV. WRIGHT FACTOR
Two in 10 voters said Obama shares the views of his fiery former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “a lot” and three in 10 said Obama shares Wright’s views “somewhat.” Nearly a quarter said Obama shares Wright’s views “not much” and a quarter said the candidate doesn’t share his one-time preacher’s views at all.
That’s even more interesting. It suggests two in 10 voters are highly concerned about the frothing anti-white racism and anti-American sentiments expressed by Obama’s 20-year spiritual counselor. That’s exactly the same number as those who said race was a factor. Does that mean they aren’t necessarily opposed to a black man, but they are alarmed by a black racist? In fact, half of all voters had some level of concern about it.
The AP exit poll breakdown doesn’t get into Obama’s unfortunate disparagement of small-town gun-toting religion-clingers, and what role that might have played in influencing West Virginian voters. I don’t know if that becomes a further tipping point as a “race factor” for people who are concerned about the expressions of bigotry in this race … by Obama and people associated with him.
Here’s another interesting result:
About one in five Clinton voters said gender was an important factor in their vote. Nearly as many Obama voters said that.
One in five colorblind Obama voters are male chauvinist pigs. I’m a little surprised that one isn’t getting played up, seeing how Obama is pummeling Clinton overall in this primary campaign. Well, women never get any respect.
One last fascinating set of numbers:
UNFAIR CAMPAIGNING
As in other states, West Virginia Democratic primary voters were more likely to accuse Clinton than Obama of unfair campaigning. Even half of Clinton’s own voters said she campaigned unfairly, as did three-quarters of Obama backers. Three in 10 Obama voters said their own candidate campaigned unfairly while more than half of them said Clinton hit below the belt.
So among the bigots who voted for Clinton, half of them didn’t approve of her campaigning. But nearly a third of Obama supporters didn’t approve of his. Unclear if that is that he gave West Virginia a pass, ceding the state, giving voters little opportunity to see him up close and perhaps reinforcing the impression that he is an anti-small-town elitists; or if they think he somehow contributed to the impression that their state is a dismal swamp of throwback racism.
Clearly we need a better breakdown to understand what happened in West Virginia and what is going on in America at large. For all I know, West Virginian Democrats may be a bunch of bigots who keep grandad’s hood and sheets neatly folded in the closet. Their top Dem is a former Klansman, after all. It’s obvious race remains a potent factor in America, especially when you look at the lockstep vote of North Carolina’s black Democrats last week, who demonstrated considerably less tolerance for the white woman than white West Virginians did for the black man, even if they didn’t get accused of racism for doing it.
* Last week’s Clinton obits here. Speaking of which, at last check the cat seemed to have Ambinder’s tongue.
** Heart of Darkness, Monkey Jokes and Funny Feelings, Bigotry Alert.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:00 am on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
2 Responses to “About That Frothing Racism”
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May 14th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Consider the following simple math: fractions such as 10%, 20%, …, even 49% represent FRACTIONAL (i.e., less than 1.0) RATIOS of opposing opinion, namely, 49% vs. 51% is an opposing opinion ratio of 0.96 to 1. That makes for speculative deductions, at best.
But a fraction of 92%, which corresponds to the fraction of black voters who vote for Obama, represents an opposing opinion ratio of 92 to 8, or more tellingly 11.5 to 1, is monolithic! There is nothing speculative about it. The black vote for Obama is strictly a single issue vote: skin color.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
[...] Obama’s drubbing on Tuesday in West Virginia (and Boston’s Jules Crittenden explained the racism smear), it was back to work in the Senate where Obama and Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton continue their [...]