Media Discover Race and Gender. I have said here, all along, that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can be elected President of the United States, because the United States is not Wonderland but a country with strong racial and gender attitudes in every region. I repeat that now. The media awoke to that reality only in mid-March, however, finally admitting that Democrats may have a real problem in November because the Clinton campaign had begun to 'play the race card', and some Obama supporters have publicly implied that a woman cannot be elected President. Ya think?
+
But media pundits continue to chat empty-headedly about the Democrats' current candidates as having a real chance to defeat McCain. Let's be plain. The reality is that neither Obama nor Clinton is electable. Period.
+
On January 31st of this year, when John Edwards dropped out of the Democratic race, I lamented, "Another Republican President. Great", and said that that President was likely to be McCain. Today, AOL hilited an Associated Press report that a new poll shows that McCain has wiped out the lead of both Democrats, and the general election now appears to be essentially a tossup. A reader poll within the AOL feature shows that 53% of readers think McCain will win, 30% think Obama will win, and 17% think Billary will win.
+
I have said that people lie to pollsters if they would not want the pollster to know what they actually think, because they feel it is less than respectable. We are all acutely aware that it is politically incorrect to say that you would not vote for a woman nor a black man, so some people pretend they would have no problem voting in the politically-correct fashion even tho they in fact do have a huge problem with voting any such way.
+
One means that pollsters use to try to get to the truth is by asking two questions: first, how would you (the interviewee) vote, and second, how do you think others would vote? The second question is more indicative of the true feelings of the person interviewed. In a CBS poll reported March 19th, 62% of respondents said that the U.S. is ready for a black President, and 59% said the Nation is ready for a woman President, BUT 33% say that "people they know" would not vote for a black candidate and 45% said "people they know" would not vote for a woman.
+
Plainly, then, if the Democratic candidate is black or female but the Republican is a white male, the black or female candidate doesn't stand a chance, because people who would vote on the basis of issues alone would split narrowly, but those to whom race or gender matters would produce a landslide for the white man.
+
More Bigotries (or Strong Preferences). A Gallup poll in February 2007 showed that 11% of respondents (admitted they) would not vote for a woman, 24% of respondents (admitted they) would not vote for a Mormon, but only 5% said they wouldn't vote for a black person and 4% for a Catholic, even tho we've never had a black President and of our 43 Presidents, only one was Catholic. People are such miserable, disgusting liars.
+
Still, some forms of bigotry are open because they are socially approved. 43% admit they would not vote for a homosexual, and 53% say they wouldn't vote for an atheist. Actually, I suspect that more people would in fact vote for either of those types of people, because in the case of a socially-approved bigotry, fear of what the pollster might think of them works to exaggerate the bias rather than minimize it, the opposite dynamic as works with a socially-disapproved bigotry.
+
Wouldn't it be nice if this country really were as liberal as commentators are pretending it is? It would be adorable, almost as adorable as if we elected a kitten President. But that's not going to happen either. A rhinoceros, maybe, but not a kitten.
+
I find it ludicrous that when the very term "liberal" is for all practical purposes a "dirty word" that even many liberals avoid, in favor of terms like "progressive" instead, we are nonetheless supposed to be so liberal as to elect a black or female President. What nonsense.
+
American elections are popularity contests, little more than class-president elections in junior high. Lost in the endless chatter about the "horse race" are the issues, because, at end, they don't actually count for much. Just as high-school student-government candidates run on things they cannot possibly deliver, like better cafeteria meals, candidates for major political office run on things they don't really believe they can achieve either. The voters know that. They vote for personalities or, more often, familiar names or faces. Fame is a substitute for substance, personality a substitute for character.
+
A poll discussed today on some cable news show said that many women (27%, as I recall; I can't find the story on the Internet yet) think worse of Hillary Clinton today than when she first announced her candidacy. That's because before she entered the race for President, she was known only as the wife of Bill Clinton and a former First Lady. But as they came to know her, women realized they don't like her. To know Hillary is to hate her, and 52% of people (male and female combined into one figure) have already said they would under no circumstances vote for the bitch. So why is anyone, in media or out, taking — or pretending to take — her candidacy seriously?
+
Starting on October 27, 2007, at latest, and repeatedly thereafter, I have suggested that this country would not elect Mitt Romney (because he's a Mormon), nor Rudolph Giuliani (because he's a pro-gay, pro-abortion Catholic from New York City), nor any black man, nor any woman. I stand by that, and both Romney and Giuliani were knocked out of contention despite all the pretense from pundits that they both had a real chance of winning the Republican nomination.
+
Why are media pundits such liars?
+
And when are we going to talk about issues in depth?
+
John McCain has been a staple of many talk shows, including Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart, for years. He is the perfect Republican candidate, a Teflon Man. He actually was shown on television recently saying that if people lose their houses to foreclosure, it is because they made stupid choices and it is not for the Government to bail them out. Let them take a second job or cut back on other expenses — or, presumably, sell the house and move into an apartment (or trailer) they can actually afford. And he got away with it! There was no huge crush of condemnation on every side. Still, his handlers apparently got the message that he can't go around saying things like that, because today McCain feigned concern for people facing foreclosure, in order to foreclose the possibility that his extreme hard-heartedness would turn people off despite his jovial persona.
+
We have had far more coverage of the "horse race" this election cycle than any other I can recall, but almost no coverage of issues. How are we to solve the Nation's problems when we're not even talking about them? Does anyone outside the professional political class (officeholders, political reporters, pundits, and the like) know the difference between the Clinton healthcare plan and the Obama healthcare plan? I don't. How are we going to reverse decades — 22 years and counting — of the Republicans' Plutocratic Revolution, in which fewer and fewer people control more and more of the Nation's wealth, if we keep electing Republicans who WANT the United States reduced to the Northernmost Nation of Latin America, not in the sense of speaking Spanish but in the sense of having a society of grotesque socioeconomic and political inequality, in which the top 5% — or 2% — control 98% of the Nation's wealth and power?
+
The Democrats are still not talking about personal debt and usury. The only debt they talk about at all is foreclosure, but that relates to only a small portion of the population, whereas credit-card debt at appallingly high interest rates affects the great preponderance of the Nation's population. The Democrats say not one word about a national usury law nor undoing the Republicans' bankruptcy "reform" that made bankruptcy almost entirely unavailable to ordinary people. No, to talk about the hard realities that most people suffer would make sense, and might actually win Congress for Democrats even as Democrats go down in flames in the race for the White House.
+
McCain, as I have said before, is out of his mind, but unless he makes an astoundingly insane decision, like choosing Condoleezza Rice for Vice President, his election is a foregone conclusion. His vicious, contemptuous remark about people losing their homes did not produce a tsunami of public revulsion, so he could apparently get away with another gaffe of comparably monumental stupidity because he is a genial old man, Ronald Reagan Redux.
+
Real Democrats, real progressives/Liberals — yes, I said it, the forbidden word "Liberal" — need to accept that John McCain is President Presumptive, and focus on creating a veto-proof majority for Liberals in both Houses of Congress, because McCain promises to be a vicious, plutocratic beast, just like Bush2, who will wield his veto to protect the wealthiest at the expense of the poor and middle class every time, and keep the United States in Permanent War against all Islam for the sake of Israel — unless Congress can stop him and ram thru its own program over his many, many vetos. But all the attention and all the money is being poured into a hopeless contest for the White House that Democrats cannot possibly win unless they reject both Obama and Clinton and go with a compromise candidate, specifically John Edwards, NOT Al Gore. It's as tho Congress means nothing, and Democrats feel that if they lose the White House, they might just as well lose Congress too. The only problem is that if the Democrats lose the White House and Congress, or even win Congress but by less than a veto-proof majority, the people of the United States, and of the world, lose, and lose big.
+
If the Democrats continue to push two unelectable candidates, the race for the White House is over. What matters now can best be summed up in three words: veto-proof Congress. Or perhaps these three words: Congress, Congress, CONGRESS!
+
(I would ordinarily show here the current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, for Israel, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", but that website was not working when I started to write today's post. Its placeholder was titled, "This page has been hooked up". What does that mean? Had Zionists hacked in, and shut it down? The site has now repaired some of the damage, but the U.S. and U.K. casualty totals appear to be reversed. Near as I can tell, U.S. deaths are now 4,032)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:09 AM