They’re racists.
Racial prejudice, covert or otherwise, also partly explains why a majority of white males will vote against Obama.
Never mind that the man is an incompetent spendthrift; oh, no, not voting for the bastard means that white voters are racist. Here we are four years after this dreadful man won the last presidential election and the Guardian is still trotting out this tired and false accusation.
Of course, black people voting for a black candidate, that isn’t racist at all, oh, no….
As it is, I don’t have a horse in this race, but I would enjoy a bit of schadenfreude if Obama loses. I work on the kick the incumbent principle. But, frankly, much like our election in 2010, the USA has a poor choice of candidates.
XX Racial prejudice, covert or otherwise, also partly explains why a majority of white males will vote against Obama. XX
Along with a couple of others, I predicted this “racism card” LAST time he was elected.
Trouble is, all the hippy bastards, and the “Starbucks crowd” will fall for it hook line and dynamite (I fish EXTREEM). Not to mention the 100% communist media.
I have a feeling Obama will be joining the ranks of the US unemployed. Very shortly. Let’s see what the US electorate have to say.
It is not so much black people voting for a black candidate – although they may well be pleased to do so – as the ‘black vote’ in the US is historically Democrat.
But, as the link in the Guardian article you cite suggests, the floating ‘white’ voter is being actively pursued by Romney (as you might well expect) in an attempt to win. (http://tinyurl.com/clnbsdy).
Will he succeed? I don’t think so. All the sensible money is on Obama to win today/tomorrow.
It is not so much black people voting for a black candidate – although they may well be pleased to do so – as the ‘black vote’ in the US is historically Democrat
It depends what you mean by ‘historically’. The Democrats were the party of slavery and secession. The first election in which blacks voted in significant numbers for a Democrat was Wilson, who promised a lot, but then introduced segregation into Federal offices, which has been racially mixed before, and dismissed thousands of black workers in the process. That put paid to black support for the Democrats for a while.
It was only with FDR that the Democrats started being seen as “progressive” and even that was strongly regionally based. Al of the segregaionalist politicians in the Deep South were strongly conservative Democrat. They only switched to Republican when Kennedy and Johnson forced them to integrate. Black support for the Democrats is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Sorry, but wrong.
Did anyone still notice the amazing deficit inherited from the crooked & incompetent Shrub?
And that unemployment is back down to where it started from – it takes TIME to turn an economy the size of the US’ round?
And, sorry, but it is racism, usually – hence the “birther” crap, even against someone like Obama, who is only half-brown, actually …..
Because all that crap about Obama not being a “natural born” citizen and not elligible to stand for president was nothing to do with his skin colour? Just coincidence I suppose? Of course, failing to support Obama is not evidence of racism – I don’t much care for him myself, mostly on civil liberties grounds, which he has done nothing to preserve or improve – but it’s pretty stupid to pretend that a lot of opposition to him is not racially motivated, because it is.
I’m not pretending anything. I am merely refusing to brand a whole swathe of people as racist based upon nothing more substantial than their voting records. As for the birther nonsense, that is a small minority of gullible people who are happy to follow any wacky conspiracy theory that happens along.
To state categorically that a lot of the opposition to Obama is racially motivated is to make an evidence free assertion. I refuse to make such an assertion. You may have your suspicions, but that is all they are.
I am merely refusing to brand a whole swathe of people as racist based upon nothing more substantial than their voting records
Then perhaps you should have read more closely the words you quoted, which asserts no such thing, and said that his skin colour “partly” explained it. As indeed it does.
No, it doesn’t.
If it was Hillary Clinton in the running would The Guardian have the nerve to claim sexism as a reason for people not voting for her?
The suggestion is pure power politics, trying to shut people down on specious grounds. What is very obvious racism is that blacks vote 96-8% for Obama, and that is clearly based on nothing but skin colour, because he’s done stuff all for blacks but disproportionately increased their unemployment and poverty. But that’s the plan, keeping blacks down ensures their votes for those who proclaim against it. Perverse, but logical.
And economically, we still blaming Bush I see. This has been the very worst recovery since the war, and it’s the incompetent and divisive leadership from the President that’s made it so. Unemployment depends on how you measure it, and as proportion of working age population it’s far worse than when he started, it’s only the large numbers of people dropping out of any hopes of employment that make the figures look anything like 8%, compared apples to apples with 2008 it is more like 12%.
All the talk of racism is because his supporters sure as hell can’t defend his record.
The suggestion is pure power politics, trying to shut people down on specious grounds
No it is not. It is a perfectly reasonable and substantiable allegation, given the extensive complaints about Obama’s eligibility that was a leit motiv of angry white guys during his first term. Given that Obama is more right wing in his policies than Richard Milhous Nixon I think we can exclude a purely political motive for the extremes of passion that his presence provokes.
It is not a perfectly reasonable assertion, it is a scurrilous slur designed specifically to shut down dissenting voices. White male voters are no more a homogeneous mass than the “black community” or the “gay community” – all being artificial constructs designed to create division that assumes that people are identified by labels when they are not. We are all individuals.
It is not a perfectly reasonable assertion, it is a scurrilous slur designed specifically to shut down dissenting voices
Saying that some opinion or analysis is designed to “shut down” dissenting voices is one of the more unintelligent cliches of the right wing blogosphere, when confronted with an opinion it finds partularly inconvenient or annoying. It also is palpably untrue that any debate has been shut down, so for remarks that have allegedly been “designed” for that purpose they do not seem very effective.
“Saying that some opinion or analysis is designed to “shut down” dissenting voices is one of the more unintelligent cliches of the right wing blogosphere, when confronted with an opinion it finds partularly inconvenient or annoying.”
And yet the left do it over and over again, the most blatant being to scream racist at anyone doubting the wisdom of multiculturalism. The Laurie Penny/David Starkey “debate” providing a recent, and sadly typical, example. And Penny went a step further by using Twitter to falsely imply David was “violent” and then smearing him in The Independent.
The situation demonstrating that if you want to debate one of the left’s rising stars you’ll just open yourself up to lies and abuse.
Similarly, if want to discuss welfare you hate the poor, and if you want to discuss the environment you’re a climate change denier or flat-earther.
None of this is designed to foster debate, it’s all for the sole purpose of clamping down on dissenting opinions. And sadly it does an excellent job, making people afraid of voicing what they really think in case they get labelled.
You can call this a cliche of the right if you like, but it’s one of the trademarks of the left.
Indeed. That something is a cliché tends to be the case because there is an underlying truth behind it – as is the case here. That some people don’t like it doesn’t make it any less true.