Could Obama fall victim to the Bradley Effect?

[QueEx]

Re: At Least 15% of Whites Won't Vote Obama

<font size="5"> <center>

The Bradley Effect</font size><font size="4">
Named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who is black,
when he ran to become governor of California in 1982; he was the
frontrunner in all opinion polls until the very end of the campaign.
But he lost on election day. A more intense version of the Bradley
effect has taken shape within the Democratic Party in 2008. </font size></center>

Will Obama become a victim of the Bradley effect?
In recent days, the Democratic Party establishment
has been debating his electability.


Speigel Online
By Gabor Steingart in Washington
April 30, 2008


There is a phenomenon in opinion research called the Bradley effect, named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. When Bradley, who was black, ran to become governor of California in 1982, he was the frontrunner in all opinion polls until the very end of the campaign. But he lost on election day.

Since then, the term has been used to denote a serious shift in voter preferences caused by racial prejudice against a candidate -- prejudice that voters would never admit openly, but then express in all secrecy in the voting booth.

A more intense version of the Bradley effect has taken shape within the Democratic Party in 2008. "There is no white America," Barack Obama has said. "There is no black America. There is no Latino America. There is no Asian America. There is just the United States of America." Many prominent politicians of all skin colors, from New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy to Jesse Jackson, seem to agree with him. But the public euphoria is increasingly bumping up against the resistance of ordinary Democratic voters.

Within the Democratic Party, which likes to call itself the "party of the people," cheering on and voting for a candidate appear to be two very different things. Voters who say in public that they are inspired are sometimes quick to change their minds and settle scores in the election booth. In fact, perhaps the Bradley effect should be renamed the Obama effect.


Uniter who Divides the Party

A significant segment of ordinary, middle-class Democrats, especially blue-collar workers and retirees, vote along racial and ethnic lines. The questions that interest them are politically relevant, but not politically correct. Is Obama an American with black skin color or a black man with an American passport? Is he a stranger or does he just seem like one? Is he part of the whole or just part of a segment of society? Ironically, the one candidate who is campaigning as a uniter appears to be dividing the party -- so much so, in fact, that the party establishment has spent the last few days debating Obama's electability.

The superdelegates now
have no choice but to pick
Obama.


When there was still something playful about the Obama euphoria, significant numbers of whites were voting for the black candidate and blacks for the white candidate. Obama found strong support among white voters in the Democratic primaries in Iowa, Kansas, Idaho and Colorado. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, captured the votes of many African Americans. But this lightness has now vanished, and animosity and open hostility amongst the electorate have taken its place. The Democratic divide has become all the more apparent in states with large blue-collar populations, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, even to those who until then had believed that the entire country had succumbed to what had been described as Obama's "messiah factor." In Ohio, as in Pennsylvania, an overwhelming majority of white, blue-collar workers voted for Clinton. By the same token, a huge majority of African Americans voted for Obama.


Growing Disenchantment

It seems as if the majority of African Americans are now forming a barricade around Obama in the increasingly heated primary battle. The Clintons have ripped open the divide with their clearly ambiguous remarks, and the Obamas have only widened that divide. One of the reasons that the hate-filled sermons coming from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, with his suggestion that "God damn America," were so troubling was that Obama had called him his "spiritual mentor" in the past. And it didn't help when Obama's wife Michelle said that her husband's bid to become president had made her proud, for the first time in her adult life, to be an American. Though refreshingly open, the statement was also politically naïve.

Reverand Wright certainly complicated matters for Obama this week with his rehabilitation tour (more...). He has once again energized the black and white debate -- only this time to the detriment of the Illionois Senator. Wright, though isn't the main force driving white voters' away from the Obama camp. The trend coincides with white voters' growing disenchantment with the candidate. His message of hope and change is beginning to sound like a broken record. Phrases like "We are the ones we've been waiting for" sound lofty at first, but they eventually lose their appeal.

Nevertheless, the debate that has now begun comes too late for Hillary Clinton. The superdelegates, who can vote for the candidate of their choice without taking voter preferences into account, in fact have no other choice but to nominate Obama. They will have to suppress the growing fear that the Democrats cannot win the election against Republican candidate John McCain in November if Obama is their candidate. Still, as long as Obama can hold onto his slight lead in the number of pledged delegates, he will be the inevitable candidate. In fact, there is now almost a national political obligation to nominate Obama. A vote by superdelegates against Obama would set off shock waves within American society, with incalculable consequences. Young people would be outraged, intellectuals would be bitter and violence could erupt in predominantly black urban neighborhoods around the country.


America's not Burning, but it Is Smoldering

An apparent rejection of her black rival would also do more to harm Hillary Clinton than help her campaign. A candidacy against the background of angry youth or even burning barricades would be of little value. Thus, it is not Obama himself who now offers the strongest argument for his nomination, but the history of his ancestors. In fact, with his history standing at his side, Obama hardly needs to try any longer. This history peers into the present, sadly and silently, from a time we commonly call the past. And yet this is a past that America cannot seem to shake.

It was only 144 years ago that the American South fought a civil war to defend its right to slavery. Civil rights activist Martin Luther King was assassinated 40 years ago. Twenty years ago, black presidential candidate Jesse Jackson failed in the primaries because he was unable to gain the support of white Democrats. Racial barriers have been lowered since then, but they have not disappeared altogether.

It may not be burning, but it is smoldering in America. After seven years of George W. Bush, the Democratic Party has vowed to reconcile the country with itself. And now it will at least have to try, even if it means losing the presidency.

To reach the author and join the discussion, please visit GaborSteingart.com.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,550351,00.html

 

[GET YOU HOT]

The term, the Bradley Effect derives its name from a 1982 campaign involving Tom Bradley, the long-time mayor of Los Angeles, California. Bradley, who was black, ran as the Democratic party's candidate for Governor of California against Republican candidate George Deukmejian, who was white.

The polls leading into the day of the election consistently showed Bradley with a lead. However, Bradley narrowly lost the race. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than that which had said they planned to vote for him, and that voters who had been classified as "undecided" had gone to Deukmejian in statistically anomalous numbers.

Similar voter behavior was noted in the 1989 race for Governor of Virginia between black Democratic candidate L. Douglas Wilder (right) and white Republican candidate Marshall Coleman. In that race, Wilder prevailed, but by less than half of one percent, despite pre-election poll numbers that showed an average lead for him of nearly nine percent.


A few questions come to mind...

Has Obama fallen victim to the Bradley Effect? Will it effect him in the upcoming Presidential Election? Does he need Clinton to win the election? Who is a viable candidate for Democratic Vice President? Do you trust the voting system, in the United States?

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Good Luck Brother Obama

 

[orange roughy]

I've been trying to make the same point with regard to the Harold Washington Mayoral Election in another thread. I find that whites will vote white no matter what, and that the elections come down to the motivated black electorate and a few percentages of whites who cross over.

OR

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>
Obama, Race And Undecided Voters</font size><font size="4">

“Many undecideds haven't really connected their negative
feelings about race to Obama yet. Their view of Obama is
unformed, and their negative feelings toward African-
Americans could be easily triggered when they finally tune in.”</font size?></center>

Against The Grain
by Dick Meyer
September 18, 2008

There's an unpleasant truth the Obama campaign may be avoiding: An important slice of voters who are still undecided about their presidential choice have some negative racial attitudes that could well be triggered before Election Day.

This shows up in private polls that probe more deeply into racial angles than the public polls have. This is potentially devastating for Barack Obama and the Democrats, but isn't an especially surprising finding when you think about it.

Most undecided voters simply haven't focused on the elections yet, something people who read columns like this find hard to believe. Those who have managed to ignore the loud and endless campaign tend to be less educated and well-off than the average voter, and more prone to negative racial feelings. If the white swing voters break in proportion to their racial attitudes, Obama could be sunk.

This polling indicates something else astonishing to the politically plugged in: Many undecideds haven't really connected their negative feelings about race to Obama yet. Their view of Obama is unformed, and their negative feelings toward African-Americans could be easily triggered when they finally tune in.

The Obama campaign has been accused of being hunkered down on "the race card," wishfully thinking 2008 is a normal campaign where the candidate's race is not a major new variable. They're said to believe that since all the meta-conditions (terrible economy, pessimistic attitudes about the direction of the nation, country at war, unpopular president) point to a Democratic win, running a tactically sound campaign with a traditional platform and a charismatic candidate is enough to win.

It may be.

But some who have been doing recent research on race believe there is a current of racism that has not been triggered and that is likely to be — perhaps triggered intentionally by Republicans, but also as a natural consequence of the undecided voters finally focusing. And plenty of pundits and advice-givers think Obama is not doing enough to minimize or counter the racial impulses of undecided voters. (I am not convinced there is any way to spin this: What is, is.)

Does this mean John McCain, to capture the undecided vote, needs to actively trigger subterranean prejudices? Hard to say. But it is clear that many legitimate issues in the campaign also have racial angles or, to be fair, will be perceived through a prejudiced lens by some voters.

The "inexperience" issue is one of them. Obama has, in fact, less big league experience in government and politics than McCain or any other party nominee since JFK in 1960. If a voter is so inclined, this can play out as Obama coming off as an "affirmative action candidate."

For example, in a recent column, I said, "If Obama were not black, if he were the same man (man, not woman) in white skin, he would most certainly be far ahead in the polls." I think this is an uncontroversial assertion: All the models political scientists use to predict presidential elections have the Democrat winning in a rout. But now the polls are tied in a knot. What is the variable that none of the models take into account? Race.

After the column ran, my inbox was besieged by angry missives declaring that I was a half-wit for not understanding that Obama was given the nomination, not because he earned it by getting more votes, but because he was black and got what he didn't deserve. He was an affirmative action candidate. These were not kind-hearted e-mails.

So as legitimate as the experience issue is, for some it triggers a notion that Obama is undeserving, presumptuous or "uppity," to use an old and ugly word. If Democratic pollsters see that, so do Republicans.

Similarly, many people felt McCain's famous ad that called Obama a celebrity like Paris Hilton was subliminally racist, subtly playing on racist impulses that fear black men with white women, or that preyed on the idea that black men succeed only in celebrity arenas like sports and music.

Since there has never been a viable black candidate for the White House, prediction is hazardous. But there is some evidence besides gut feelings, a sense of American history and this recent polling that leads to an uncharitable view of how race will affect the vote.

In the primaries, Obama did poorly with the kinds of people who tend to be undecided now — and they were Democrats.

In Obama's home state, Illinois, Obama creamed Clinton by 32 points, but Clinton carried 55 percent of the least educated white voters. In Ohio, Clinton beat Obama by a 57-point margin among less educated white voters. In Missouri, 17 percent of the white voters said race mattered to them and 65 percent of those voters went to Clinton.

The famous "Bradley effect" also played out in the Democratic primaries. In 1982, Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, lost the gubernatorial race despite leading in pre-election polls and election polls. In 1989 in Virginia, Doug Wilder was leading by 15 points in the final polls, but won by just 6,700 votes to become the country's first elected black governor.

Yes, that's old news. But an analysis by political scientist Anthony Greenwald for the Pew Center for People and the Press shows that in the early primaries and on Super Tuesday, pre-election polls did exaggerate Obama's performance.

The theory of the Bradley effect is that people don't like to admit prejudice to pollsters, or they don't recognize it in themselves. But working with the Gallup organization in 2005, political scientist David C. Wilson found that 17 percent of white people polled don't trust black people (39 percent of black people said they didn't trust white people).

There's another kind of polling worth noting. Since, as noted, few people are eager to reveal racism or bias, it is important to look at how African-Americans perceive racial attitudes. A CBS News/New York Times poll conducted this summer found that 70 percent of the black respondents said they encountered specific instances of racial discrimination. The figure is higher than it was in 2000.

If McCain's own campaign doesn't try to trigger racial antipathies, the Swift Boat types are likely to try. There surely is a current of resentment they can prey on, just as there is strong tide that carried Obama to the nomination. I doubt there are rhetorical devices and campaign strategies that can blunt something as elemental as racial prejudice. But if there are, I hope the Obama campaign uses them well.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94733622

 

[QueEx]

<font size="4">
Related Links:
</font size>


The Intersection Of Race And Politics
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93737975


Pollsters For McCain, Obama Discuss Gender, Race
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94729649


Does Race Matter In '08? The View From York, Pa.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94523754


Polls About Race Can Elicit Dishonest Responses
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93344864


`

 

[neoafrican]

Good thread.

This will definitely become THE major talking point if/when Obama opens up a stable 5+ point lead in October.

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>
Pollsters Debate 'Bradley Effect'</font size><font size="4">

Election Seen as Test of Theory
That Black Candidates' Leads in Polls Aren't Real</font size></center>

Washington Post
By Steven A. Holmes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 12, 2008


Not long ago, it was considered political gospel: Be wary of polls when an election involves an African American candidate, because many whites will voice support but then vote for the white opponent.

Now, poll-watchers are asking whether that could be skewing the numbers as Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee, moves ahead of Republican John McCain.

Most experts say they do not believe that the phenomenon, known as the "Bradley effect," is at work in this election. But some disagree. And if the effect has disappeared, it is not clear whether that is because polling techniques have improved or because the country has become more tolerant about race.

"The Bradley effect may have been an artifact of the country 20 years ago, but I don't think it's a factor now," said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. "Polling has gotten better, but I think, more importantly, the country has changed."

The phenomenon got its name a generation ago, after former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley (D), an African American, lost the 1982 gubernatorial race in California despite leading his white opponent in the polls on the eve of the election. Some experts suspected at the time that a portion of white voters, reluctant to appear biased, had essentially lied to pollsters about which candidate they were supporting. But whether Bradley lost because of hidden racism has never been clear.

A post-election analysis by Mervin Field, whose California Field Poll showed Bradley up seven points in the campaign's final stage, attributed the late shift to an unusually large number of GOP absentee voters, relatively low turnout among nonwhite voters and the coincidence of a handgun initiative on the state ballot.

He also highlighted the role of race, which may have been enough to tip the balance to Bradley's opponent, George Deukmejian (R), but emphasized that that alone would not have been enough to turnaround the Democrat's lead.

Even so, the racial theory gained credibility with a string of elections in the 1980s and '90s in which black candidates eked out victories or were defeated despite seemingly solid leads in pre-election polls. They included David Dinkins's close 1989 win in New York's mayoral contest, L. Douglas Wilder's tight victory that same year to become Virginia's governor and Harold Washington's squeaker when he won the Chicago mayoral race in 1983.

Finding hard evidence for or against a Bradley effect today is difficult, given the relative rarity of black candidates facing a white opponent before a majority-white electorate. Obama's performance in the Democratic primaries does not clarify the issue since he did worse than the polls predicted in some states, including New Hampshire and California, and better than projected in others, such as Virginia and Wisconsin.

Still, some academics -- mainly African Americans -- say the country should not be so quick to dismiss the theory.

"I'm one of those who believe the Bradley effect is alive and well," said Michael Dawson, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. It may have diminished with time, he contends, but has not disappeared.

There is little doubt that the willingness of white people to vote for a black candidate has grown measurably. A December 2007 Gallup poll found that 5 percent of white respondents said they would not vote for a black candidate for president. In 1958, Gallup determined that 58 percent of whites would not cast a ballot for a black presidential candidate, and as late as 1989, 19 percent said the same.


Black candidates have increasingly won elections outside majority black districts, including the races for lieutenant governor of Colorado, a state with relatively few black people, and for attorney general of Georgia, a state with a troubled racial past.

Improved polling also may have helped produce more accurate predictions in contests such as Harold E. Ford Jr.'s losing race in 2006 for a Tennessee Senate seat and Deval L. Patrick's successful run for Massachusetts governor that year.

Dawson, however, remains skeptical about the willingness of whites to vote for a black candidate -- and the ability of polling to capture that reluctance -- in a high-profile, racially charged presidential election.

"We're talking about different levels," he said. "President is different than mayor of Chicago."

Experts agree that it is often difficult to fully tease out the extent to which race plays a factor in voting decisions. People can be reluctant to talk about their racial attitudes, and plenty of reasons -- party, age, experience, political philosophy -- can explain why voters may support or oppose a black candidate.

Still, there is little reason today, some experts contend, for people answering public opinion polls to hide their true intentions.

"For people to lie, there generally has to be a stigma attached to telling the truth," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. "There is none affiliated with saying, 'I'm voting for Hillary' or 'I'm voting for McCain.' "

Kohut theorizes that polling discrepancies do not come from respondents who lie, but from people who decline to participate in polls. That is a growing problem, with studies showing that as many as half the people contacted for polls refuse to participate. Kohut recently conducted a study in which interviewers spent months repeatedly calling people back until they agreed to talk. He said that helped him see who is often missed in polling.

"Poorer, less-educated whites don't like to do these polls as much as better-educated people do," he said. "The refusals come from the same class of people who tend to be the most racially intolerant."

Anthony Greenwald, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, said he also does not buy that people are lying to pollsters. "What I do buy," he said, "is that there were lots of undecided people who didn't have an answer before the phone rang and were generating one on the spot."

Greenwald, who has studied the primary contest between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, said that when people in polls are prodded to answer a question, they know that, unlike in the voting booth, their response will have no consequences. So they may say they are supporting a candidate they have not actually decided on.

Pollsters say they build in controls to account for possible hidden racial feelings that can skew results. Kohut said he tries to elicit more-honest answers by matching the race of the interviewer and the respondent. Others try to push people to test the intensity of their backing of a particular candidate and often toss out whites who express tepid support for black candidates.

But Jon Krosnick, a professor of political science, communication and psychology at Stanford University, noted that black callers tend to get more pro-Obama answers in surveys than white callers do, no matter the race of the respondent.

"We don't have solid evidence that matching increases accuracy," said Krosnick, who does not believe the Bradley effect is real.

Harvard political scientist Daniel J. Hopkins analyzed elections involving African American candidates for governor and the Senate and found there was a Bradley effect when racially charged issues dominated the political discourse in the 1980s and early 1990s. As issues such as crime and welfare faded from the national scene in the mid-1990s, Hopkins wrote, so did the Bradley effect.

That raises the possibility that a return to racial issues could once again cause the phenomenon to reemerge, either nationally or in a key state.

"The most likely circumstance that could bring back the Bradley effect would be a racialized campaign," said Hopkins, a lecturer in Harvard's department of government. "If we spend the next month debating Jeremiah Wright or other racial issues, that would be the thing that would be on people's minds."

A spokesman for Obama said the campaign does not believe race will be much of a factor in voting. "People are more concerned about the state of the economy and our place in the world, and not so much concerned about ethnic or identity politics," said Corey Ealons.

Both those who believe the Bradley effect is a factor and those who dismiss it agree that, given the aura of history surrounding the current campaign, interest in it is high. "At literally every speech I make, I get questions on it," Newhouse said.

They also agree that this presidential election will be a highly visible test of just how real it is.

"If we don't see it now, then it's gone," Dawson said.

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...2008101102136.html?sid=ST2008101200232&s_pos=

 

[thoughtone]

Yes! Since when did Black folk start trusting whites

 

[Mo-Better]

Without question the Bradley Effect could come into play. However with the present state of this country and McCain clearly without a clue as to how to address the economic crisis I don't think that will happen. This country and the world cannot afford 4 more years of the same policies.

 

[QueEx]

<IFRAME SRC="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/bradley-effect-or-elephant-effect.html" WIDTH=780 HEIGHT=1500>
<A HREF="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/bradley-effect-or-elephant-effect.html">link</A>

</IFRAME>

 

[Crank_It_Up]

No, the "Bradley Effect" will not come in to play. For the simple reason that talk radio, fox news, and the McCain campaign itself have given far too many talking points to not vote for Obama. It's far too easy for a racist white voter to answer a poll as intending to vote for McCain citing any of those talking points instead of race.

This election is a good test to see just how much racism still exists. It's been quite an experience for me, some good, some bad, but in the end, Obama will win.

 

[keysersoze]

This Op-Ed by the NYTimes Frank Rich addresses the Bradley effect.

In Defense of White Americans

By FRANK RICH
IT seems like a century ago now, but it was only in 2005 that a National Journal poll of Beltway insiders predicted that George Allen, then a popular Virginia senator, would be the next G.O.P. nominee for president. George who? Allen is now remembered, if at all, as a punch line. But any post-mortem of the Great Republican Collapse of 2008 must circle back to the not-so-funny thing that happened on his way to the White House.

That would be in 2006, when he capsized his own shoo-in re-election race by calling a 20-year-old Indian-American “macaca” before a white audience (and a video camera). “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the young Democratic campaign worker for good measure, in a precise preview of the playbook that has led John McCain and Sarah Palin to their tawdry nadir two years later.

It wasn’t just Allen’s lame racial joke or his cluelessness about 21st-century media like YouTube that made him a harbinger of the current G.O.P. fiasco. It was most of all the national vision he set forth: There are Real Americans, and there are the Others.

The Real are the small-town white folks Allen was addressing in southwestern Virginia. The Others — and their subversive fellow travelers, the Elites — are Americans like the young man whom Allen maligned: a high-achieving son of immigrant parents who was born and raised in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs during its technology boom. (Allen, the self-appointed keeper of real Virginia, grew up in California.)

Cut to 2008. You’d think that this incident would be a cautionary tale, but the McCain campaign instead embraced Allen as a role model, with Palin’s odes to “real” and “pro-America” America leading the charge. The farcical apotheosis of this strategy arrived last weekend, again on camera and again in Virginia, when a McCain adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, revived Allen’s original script, literally, during an interview on MSNBC.

After dismissing the Northern Virginia suburbs, she asserted that the “real Virginia” — the part of the state “more Southern in nature” — will prove “very responsive” to the McCain message. All Pfotenhauer left out was “macaca,” but with McCain calling Barack Obama’s tax plan “welfare” and campaign surrogates (including the robo-calling Rudy Giuliani) linking the Democrat to violent, Willie Horton-like criminality, that would have been redundant.

We don’t know yet if McCain will go the way of Allen in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1964, when L.B.J. vanquished another Arizona Republican in a landslide. But we do know that Obama swept like a conquering hero through Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, last week and that he leads in every recent Virginia poll.

There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what “real America” is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don’t have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.

But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.

That includes acknowledging that the so-called liberal media, among their other failures this year, have helped ratchet up this election cycle’s prevailing antiwhite bias. Ever since Obama declared his candidacy, the press’s default setting has been to ominously intone that “in the privacy of the voting booth” ignorant, backward whites will never vote for a black man.

A leading vehicle for this journalistic mind-set has been the unending obsession with “the Bradley effect” — as if nothing has changed in America since 1982, when some polls (possibly for reasons having nothing to do with race) predicted erroneously that a black candidate, Tom Bradley, would win the California governorship. In 2008, there is, if anything, more evidence of a reverse Bradley effect — Obama’s primary vote totals more often exceeded those in the final polls than not — but poor old Bradley keeps being flogged anyway.

So do all those deer hunters in western Pennsylvania. Once Hillary Clinton whipped Obama in the Rust Belt, it’s been a bloviation staple (echoing the Clinton camp’s line) that a black guy is doomed among Reagan Democrats, Joe Sixpacks, rednecks, Joe the Plumbers or whichever condescending term you want to choose. (Clinton at one low point settled on “hard-working Americans, white Americans.”) Michigan in particular was repeatedly said to be slipping out of the Democrats’ reach because of incorrigible racism — until McCain abandoned it as hopeless this month in the face of a double-digit Obama lead.

The constant tide of anthropological articles and television reports set in blue-collar diners, bars and bowling alleys have hyped this racial theory of the race. So did the rampant misreading of primary-season exit polls. On cable TV and the Sunday network shows, there was endless chewing over the internal numbers in the Clinton victories. It was doomsday news for Obama, for instance, that some 12 percent of white Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania said race was a factor in their choice and three-quarters of them voted for Clinton. Ipso facto — and despite the absence of any credible empirical evidence — these Clinton voters would either stay home or flock to McCain in November.

The McCain campaign is so dumb that it bought into the press’s confirmation of its own prejudices. Even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1.2 million in Pennsylvania (more than double the 2004 gap), even though Obama leads by double digits in almost every recent Pennsylvania poll and even though no national Republican ticket has won there since 1988, McCain started pouring his dwindling resources into the state this month. When the Democratic Representative John Murtha described his own western Pennsylvania district as a “racist area,” McCain feigned outrage and put down even more chips on the race card, calling the region the “most patriotic, most God-loving” part of America.

Well, there are racists in western Pennsylvania, as there are in most pockets of our country. But despite the months-long drumbeat of punditry to the contrary, there are not and have never been enough racists in 2008 to flip this election. In the latest New York Times/CBS News and Pew national polls, Obama is now pulling even with McCain among white men, a feat accomplished by no Democratic presidential candidate in three decades, Bill Clinton included. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finds age doing more damage to McCain than race to Obama.

Nor is America’s remaining racism all that it once was, or that the McCain camp has been hoping for it to be. There are even “racists for Obama,” as Politico labels the phenomenon: White Americans whose distrust of black people in general crumbles when they actually get to know specific black people, including a presidential candidate who extends a genuine helping hand in a time of national crisis.

The original “racist for Obama,” after all, was none other than Obama’s own white, Kansas-raised grandmother, the gravely ill Madelyn Dunham, whom he visited in Hawaii on Friday. In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama wrote of how shaken he was when he learned of her overwhelming fear of black men on the street. But he weighed that reality against his unshakeable love for her and hers for him, and he got past it.

When Obama cited her in his speech on race last spring, the right immediately accused him of “throwing his grandmother under the bus.” But Obama’s critics were merely projecting their own racial hang-ups. He still loves his grandmother. He was merely speaking candidly and generously — like an adult — about the strange, complex and ever-changing racial dynamics of America. He hit a chord because many of us have had white relatives of our own like his, and we, too, see them in full and often love them anyway.

Such human nuances are lost on conservative warriors of the Allen-McCain-Palin ilk. They see all Americans as only white or black, as either us or them. The dirty little secret of such divisive politicians has always been that their rage toward the Others is exceeded only by their cynical conviction that Real Americans are a benighted bunch of easily manipulated bigots. This seems to be the election year when voters in most of our myriad Americas are figuring that out.

 

[VegasGuy]

This again.

Is there an Obama effect? Any stories about that QueEx cause I can't find 'em?

I'm asking because if there are whites who won't vote Obama after saying to posters they will, should the inverse also be true? At least considered? Whites who say they are voting Mccain but pull the lever for the O-man? I mean I got to think there are tons of white voters who live in lily white areas who might not ever put on a O-Man button or prop a sign up in their yard (might even post up a Mccain sign) but vote the O-Man anyway.

-VG

 

[DeSiRe]

personally i think people are too emotionally involved

honestly this election has ran alot longer than usual ones (due to the democrat primary)

politics are dominating pop culture more than it ever has

also...many underestimate a dynamic that is unique to right now that us has blacks have never had....syndicated radio

i believe our voice thru black radio will be more monumental than people want to admit

just look at jena 6....and that was only the beginning

 

[keysersoze]

This again.

Is there an Obama effect? Any stories about that QueEx cause I can't find 'em?

I'm asking because if there are whites who won't vote Obama after saying to posters they will, should the inverse also be true? At least considered? Whites who say they are voting Mccain but pull the lever for the O-man? I mean I got to think there are tons of white voters who live in lily white areas who might not ever put on a O-Man button or prop a sign up in their yard (might even post up a Mccain sign) but vote the O-Man anyway.

-VG

Good point. I think the inverse raises the level of an "effect" if it is substantial enough to alter an election.

I hope your right: let there be something known as the 'Obama effect,' where white voters say they will vote for the white candidate but vote for the other.

 

[VegasGuy]

Good point. I think the inverse raises the level of an "effect" if it is substantial enough to alter an election.

I hope your right: let there be something known as the 'Obama effect,' where white voters say they will vote for the white candidate but vote for the other.

I believe I am right. How much I'm right I guess we'll never really know but if you've ever sat next to older white people at these Obama rally's, they talk to you about their support and that's a task in itself.

They want to be nice but really unsure how to say how they support Obama and how they hope nothing crazy happens to him.

I had that chat with an old white woman at the rally just this past weekend. And I am willing to bet she didn't have an Obama sign in her yard.

-VG

 

[VegasGuy]

Good point. I think the inverse raises the level of an "effect" if it is substantial enough to alter an election.

I hope your right: let there be something known as the 'Obama effect,' where white voters say they will vote for the white candidate but vote for the other.

Seems we were on point about the Obama Effect Keysersoze. I didn't see a lot of Obama signs in my hood but Obama got a lot of those votes and dees peoples be white! lol.

-VG