AAPP: I'm with James Clyburn, the House of Representatives majority whip who said: "At some point, she needs to congratulate the man for having won. Those kinds of things are important to us who grew up in the South with these kinds of slights. That speech cannot be seen as anything but a slight."

http://aapoliticalpundit.blogspot.com/20 08/06/i-will-not-vote-for-obama-hillary. html

My girlfriends and I were sitting around at a baby shower one Sunday, passing the folded diaper napkins looking for the one with the little mustard `poo' when one of my white girlfriends openly said to a mixed group of women, "Well, maybe this baby will grow up when a woman is president.  Wouldn't that be nice?"

note: I posted this on myspace and I am posting it here because i want more people to read it.

No, they are actually not any more racist than the rich white liberal who is voting for Obama.

I think poor people, who are often uneducated, are more in touch with the way racism influence the lower economic class. When you are a poor, you are more protective of yourself and your family, which usually shares the same ethnic background you have, and poor people, regardless of their race, often cling onto people of their own race to get by in their jobs, does the media ever talk about the race relation between Hispanic and black people among the poor communities or asian people and black people? I think some white educated liberals who call poor uneducated people racist are actually the most clueless of all, because while they can talk about historical oppression and slavery against black people through their university studies , they haven't actually lived though the racial tension and racism that occur among non white groups in poor communities.

This is the elitism people talk about rich liberals have and I think that's why Obama is not getting the "working class " vote.

I suspect Obama does really well in states like Oregon , Iowa, and the west is because there isn't that many black people there, and those white people are either really well off, or they just never had to deal with black people and compete for jobs for them because there are not that many black people to ever experience that racial tension on a real life basis. So they might feel more sympathy about black people from an idealist or even elitist view, while in states where huge amount of African Americans concentrate in urban districts , there are more face to face racist tension among different racial groups, and people vote more along racial line, regardless if they are black, white, or in the case of Hispanic or others, they are even more threatened by a black man because the poorer you are, the more insecure you feel about other racial group who is trying to fight for your job - and usually white people who are well off, are not even involved in this kind of fight and so they have no clue what the hell racism is on that working class economic level.

And I feel a lot of people don't get that, especially those people who post on myspace, a lot of them probably are well off white suburban folks who have not experienced racism on that economic survival level...

As someone that has long championed civil rights, I have looked forward to the opportunity to vote for a qualified African American with a real chance at the nomination. Unfortunately, the choice in our primary was Barack Obama.

Inexperienced, naive, lacking substance, a cult-like figure, questionable character and associations, narcissistic, sexist, the list could go on and on. He seems to have the Bush quality of thinking he is right simply because it's him thinking it.

From the moment I saw him there was something I didn't like, and subsequent events have only increased my skepicism.

Obama represents many qualities that we don't want young African Americans, or any young people for that matter, to aspire to.  

I had a conversation today with a friend who is a researcher, which put things in an interesting perspective.  The point he made was that just because Hillary out-performs Obama with certain constituencies when she is head to head with him, doesn't mean that she will outperform him vs. John McCain.  Indeed if there is a correlation, it is probably a relatively small one.

Look at it this way.  Let's say you take a population of people and offer them ice cream.  They have two choices - vanilla or chocolate.  Let's for the sake of argument say that more people pick vanilla.

Then, on another day, we offer the same population ice cream again, but this time the choice is vanilla or strawberry.  The fact that people chose vanilla over chocolate gives you almost zero information about whether people will pick vanilla over strawberry.

And... it will also give you no information for predicting whether the same people would pick chocolate over strawberry.

This entire effort on behalf of the Clinton campaign to show that  HRC's stronger performance in one contest is predictive of what her performance would be in another is completely illogical.  Its like saying people who choose vanilla ice cream over chocolate will also choose vanilla over strawberry.

There has been much discussion in the blogosphere regarding electability.  Kos has some analysis up regarding HRC's appeal (or lack thereof)to independents, in essence an electability argument.

But in today's world.  The political strategy seems to focus on energizing the base.  And of course the base of the Democratic Party starts with its most loyal constituents, African-Americans.

If the Super Delegates break for HRC, and she becomes the nominee, it is quite possible that some percentage of African-Americans, who would have voted, might instead stay home.  Not vote for McCain, but just choose not to vote at all.

What impact would a decline in African-American turnout have? I did a little math.  My question was, what if 1 in 5 African American voters stayed home, fed up by a process that gave them Hillary as the standard bearer rather than Barack?

I took the totals from the 2004 election, and split them out based on the exit poll data (still available on CNN.com!)

Nationally, Kerry would have had over 2.3 million fewer votes.   This impact is greater or less state by state.  I looked at NJ and PA, and the results are striking.  20% fewer African American voters would translate into a loss of 82,000 votes in NJ and 126,000 votes in PA.  In NJ, Kerry still wins by about 158,000 votes, but in PA the election is essentially tied, with only 18,000 votes separating the two - Kerry still ahead.  

This assumes that McCain does no better than Bush.  

If he actually does better than Bush (perhaps because the right hates HRC more than McCain and so comes out to vote, and he does better with Independents than Bush 2004 did), and HRC does as well as Kerry with non-African American voters, but loses 1 in 5 African American voters to indifference, then both states could tip.  Other states, such as Michigan look the same, though I haven't the time to do the math.

But that isn't the end of it.  Think about how this plays out further downstream in close Congressional districts or State Assembly/Senate districts where the percentage of total Democratic votes cast by African Americans can be much higher than on state wide basis.  

If I am a Super Delegate, this has to weigh on my mind.

This dairy may be out of line with the progressive community, but I have been giving the subject of Tax Exempt Status for Churches a lot of thought in the wake of Sen. Obama's campaign.  Currently a Church, that is a Church Body or Pastor on stage, cannot endorse a political candidate or ballot proposal without loosing their tax-exempt status.  Many in the progressive community our quite pleased with the 501C rules in the wake of George Bush's religious voter outreach.  However, this was not always the case.  

There is a lot more I am writing myself about Donna's role in the DNC's decision to not seat Fl and MI.

In this blog the author posts real Email conversations Donna had with her.
Donna is out of her mind and is claiming that SHE saved Bill Clinton's presidency and that the nation still sees Donna as Gores spokesperson. So if Donna officially endorses Obama everyone will see it as Gore's position as well.

BTW: if Obama wins, Donna is speculated to be the probable chair of the DNC.
http://hillarysbloggers.soapblox.net/sho wDiary.do?diaryId=53

Please forward this to CNN and tell them they can no longer let Brazile pretend to be a "neutral" commentator.