Barack Obama has some controversy over his comments at a San Francisco fundraiser.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/15/usnews/whispers/main4018730.shtml
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
1) some people were offended that Obama called certain voters "bitter". But some say the word "bitter" sounds powerless, whereas people don't want to be described that way
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/opinion/15herbert.html
But “bitter” has a connotation that is generally not helpful in a political campaign. Bitter suggests powerlessness and a smallness of spirit. Most people would prefer to be characterized as “angry” — a term that suggests empowerment — rather than “bitter,” with its undertone of defeat.
But the more offensive word is "cling" which is usually used in the context of "a child clinging to his/her blankie"
Voters dont want to be treated like children
2) People can vote for a candidate based on anything they want.
Sometimes, they'll choose ridiculous criteria like the candidates race, gender, accent, religion or sexual orientation.
However, any political issue is fair game.
I remember reading from a left wing editorial that went along the lines of "the poor farmer is better off voting on economic liberalism than on guns"
However, if a wolf is wandering on your farm, and threatening your livestock, economic liberalism isn't going to help!
Shooting that wolf is going to keep your livestock from being eaten, and keep your farm from financial ruin!
Or if a serial killer is on your farm, ready to chop up your wife & kids, economic liberalism isn't going to help!
If you are a farmer, chances are, you live in an isolated area, and it will take hours for animal control or the police to arrive! Having a gun and knowing how to use is properly is the difference between life & death! If you're unarmed in an isolated area, you could end up being defenseless against predators both human and non-human!
So don't give us this crap that people shouldn't vote on the issue of gun control!
It is the stereotypical upper-class urban liberals who have no clue about rural life that underestimate the importance of having a gun for defense!
Also, in the culture of rural America, hunting is a major way of life! It's a cultural value! Any politician that doesn't respect a voter's culture won't get the vote! Even if the politician has great economic ideas!
In the Midwest, many voters are big fans of economic liberalism. Many belong to unions. Democrats have an advantage on those issues! However, elite urban liberals who express hatred of the "gun culture" are giving the Big Middle Finger to many Midwest voters who may be receptive to the Democrats on economic issues! Those voters aren't going to support anyone who insult their way of life!
Let's look at another group of voters -- African American voters. 90% of African-American voters vote Democrat! But that doesn't mean 90% of African-Americans are far left liberals! Some are, but many are religious conservatives who are pro-life, anti-same sex marriage, and would want to censor "gangsta rap". Some are entrepreneurs who would like lower taxes, and less regulations on business! Some own guns to hunt or defend their family!
But many of those same voters wouldn't vote for a Republican!
Why? Before the civil rights movement, both the Democrats and Republicans were split on issues like segregation. However in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson (a Democrat) signed many civil rights legislation. That same year, Republican Barry Goldwater was running for President and part of his message was that the federal government shouldn't interfere with "states right" (meaning the state's right to have racist policies).
From that point on, African-Americans started to side with the Democrats, and many Southern whites started to side with the Republicans.
However, the Democrats started to have an image of "pandering to radical leftists (both black & white)", "unlimited welfare", "pandering to gun control fanatics", and "pandering to gender-benders". That made it difficult for the Democrats to gain support of many European-Americans in the rural areas. At the same time, the Republicans started to have an image of "pandering to southern segregations and anti-immigration fascists" as well as "pandering to religious fanatics" and "pandering to greedy country-club folks". That made if difficult for the Republicans to gain support of non-whites, as well as urban white voters in the Northeast and the West Coast!
In the 1990's, Bill Clinton tried to moderate the Democrat image by calling for "welfare reform", speaking out against Sista Souljah's racist rants, promising not to take guns from hunters and supporting the death penalty, while still promoting liberal causes like socialized health care, banning assault weapons, and keeping abortion "safe, legal and rare".
The Republicans had to find a new strategy to counteract the Democrat's new moderate image. So in 2000, while Bush & McCain (both competing for the nomination) tried to sound like "compassionate conservatives" in attempt to reach out to non-whites by promising stricter standards on education, reaching out to African American religious leaders and promoting a more humane immigration policy.
However, they also chickened out and pandered to white racists in South Carolina by refusing to criticize the Confederate flag! Bush was also accused by African-American left-wingers of being soft on hate crimes. (Nevermind that the white supremacist murderers in Texas were awaiting execution)
Bush was able to get more Latinos to vote Republican, but had minimal success in reaching out to African-Americans.
----
Also, some conservatives spend too much time on black-on-white crime (which is a serious issue, but majority of crime victims are violated by predators of the same race), glorify racial profilling and expressed unsympathetic views to ghetto residents!
Many African-American Radical Leftists make ridiculous claims of bigotry against Bush and other Republicans! The most idiotic example was Kanye West's "Bush doesn't care about black people" , nevermind that the Katrina emergency response disaster was the result of incompetence, not racism. By the way, the mayor of New Orleans (Ray Nagin) had screwed up, even though he was supposed to be in charge of the city! But since he was an African-American Democrat, he doesn't recieve as much backlash from African-American left wingers!
And Bush doesn't even send a strong response to those left-wing race baiters!
Now, there's many Republicans who are NOT racists, and would be excited to vote for Colin Powell, Condaleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell or Larry Elder!
However, many African-Americans view Republicans as "Southern white neo-Confederates who look down on African-Americans and don't respect them as people!"
Unless, John McCain does something that can show that he's concerned about African-American concerns, openly court the African-Americans who aren't Far Left Liberals, and not pander to white racists, the Republicans will have a hard time of getting rid of the "the southern neo-Confederate who don't respect African-American as humans" image in the minds of many African-Americans!
3) Some view the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as "rural European-Americans vs African-Americans" or "European-American Catholics vs African-Americans" or "African-Americans vs Latinos"
But there's another divide - the Divide between different groups of European-Americans.
If you wonder why European-Americans in various regions are so different from each other, part of it is because their ancestors come from different parts of Europe!
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/04/15/elitism/index.html
To those who know anything about American political history, the Sirota theory is clearly nonsense. The key factor in regional support for Obama among whites is not the number of blacks in a state but the number of Yankee pioneers in the 19th century. As Josh Patashnik in the New Republic (quoting a 2004 essay of mine in the American Prospect) has pointed out, Obama finds his greatest white support in what the historian David Hackett Fischer calls "Greater New England" -- the vast region from New England and the Great Lakes to the upper Plains and Pacific Northwest settled by New England Yankees in the 19th century along with culturally similar Germans and Scandinavians. Another historian, Daniel J. Elazar, identifies this Northern band as the home of the "moralistic" political culture, distinct from the "individualist" political culture of the mid-Atlantic and the "traditionalist" political culture of the South. The political culture of this region, influenced by New England Puritanism and Nordic social democracy, has long been antiwar and pro-education, hostile to big business and in favor of civil rights. The moralists of Greater New England have a deep aversion to political conflict and favor consensus, bipartisanship and harmony. This region was the home, after all, in the early 20th century, of the Nonpartisan League. In the early 21st century, if you throw in a few blue college towns in the red states, it overlaps neatly with the Stranger's "Urban Archipelago."
(skipped paragraphs)
The question, then, is not why Greater New England progressives would vote for Obama. He presses all their age-old buttons: opposition to war, nonpartisan reform. The question is why anyone would assume that such a candidate would appeal to other Democratic constituencies, other than blacks (voting in this case for the favorite-son candidate).
Indeed, the Greater New England moralist culture has been rejected by practically every other substantial subculture in the United States: Irish-Americans in Northeastern cities, Appalachian white Baptists and now, evidently, Mexican-Americans. And this has always been the case.
In other words, those who are descended from upper-class British settlers or the German and Scandinavian settlers are more liberal (mostly in New England, Midwest, Pacific Northwest) than those descended from the Scottish, rural Enlgish, and the Northern Irish settlers (that would be the overwhelming majority of the people in the South) as well as the Catholic European-Americans (including Irish, Italians, Polish) that are found in many Northern cities who have been most pro-Hillary Clinton! Maybe the Catholic tendencies might explain the support Hillary Clinton's been getting from Latinos.
From Micheal Barone on similar trends
http://jewishworldreview.com/michael/barone040308.php3
But looking at these electoral data suggests to me that there's another tribal divide going on here, one that separates voters more profoundly than even race (well, maybe not more profoundly than race in Mississippi but in other states). That's the divide between academics and Jacksonians. In state after state, we have seen Obama do extraordinarily well in academic and state capital enclaves. In state after state, we have seen Clinton do extraordinarily well in enclaves dominated by Jacksonians.
Academics and public employees (and of course many, perhaps most, academics in the United States are public employees) love the arts of peace and hate the demands of war. Economically, defense spending competes for the public-sector dollars that academics and public employees think are rightfully their own. More important, I think, warriors are competitors for the honor that academics and public employees think rightfully belongs to them. Jacksonians, in contrast, place a high value on the virtues of the warrior and little value on the work of academics and public employees. They have, in historian David Hackett Fischer's phrase, a notion of natural liberty: People should be allowed to do what they want, subject to the demands of honor. If someone infringes on that liberty, beware: The Jacksonian attitude is, "If you attack my family or my country, I'll kill you." And he (or she) means it.
Barone went on to mention that Obama has gotten most of his votes from places with 1) lot of African-Americans, 2)state capitals, and 3) large universities!
Whereas Clinton gotten most of her support in places with 1) lot of Latinos, 2)Jacksonian whites who are mostly descendants of the rural English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish who settled trhoughout the South! Barone didn't mention the European-American Catholics, he might say they're similar to many of those Southern Protestants he calls "Jacksonians" Some might say that many Latinos share similar values to those European-Americans, despite the anti-immigration backlash going on! Which is probably why Bush & McCain wanted the Republicans to reach out to Latino voters (with some success in the 2004 elections) and why Hillary Clinton has been getting Latino supporters!
Meanwhile, while the African-Americans are culturally different from the white New England WASPs, German-Americans and Scandinavian-Americans, they tend to vote very similar. Many of those European-Americans were Lutherans, Unitarians, Quakers & other Christian sects that protested against slavery and for the civil rights movement! Also, those European-American groups share a similar belief among many African-Americans on economic liberalism, gun control, and a less militaristic foreign policy.
Barack Obama grew up in a white liberal family, and is of African ancestry. He spent lots of time on liberal college campuses as a student and a professor! He also spent time in the mostly African-American South Side Chicago! So he's been able to get the massive support of the African-American and the Northern Protestants (New England WASPs, + the German/Scandinavians whose religious affiliation include Lutherans, Unitarians, Quakers, etc) . Most one-racial people (meaning those who aren't mixed race) in those 2 groups would probably have a difficult to get the enthusiatic support from both groups like Obama is easily getting! But Obama is from both worlds, so that makes it easy for him to be the liberal messiah!
