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Michelle Obama - Baby Mama?
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Anonymous
He actually had several affairs when he was still married to Carol. Seems he wasn't happy, maybe because she was fat, and maybe because he had some PTS after being held captive. It wasn't as if he was being held in some kind of spa, and it seems that people seem to dismiss his treatment while a POW. Even Jeff said he had heard the rumor that John McCain earned special treatment, well it seems that the special treatment didn't keep him from being bound and beaten. One thing to remember is that it is really hard to know what is going on, or has gone on in some-one's marriage. Then when things do come out, they are often distortions of the truth.
There is a difference in being purposely racists, and being using a term that one truly doesn't understand, and know the full connotations of.
I never said all white mother's of black children did feel slighted. I said that I know several women who do. Now they are all Obama supporters, but feel as he he is forgetting something. Odd that you would ask what the white heritage is, but didn't find anything at fault when I was saying the Asian heritage. I said that my husband and I are teaching our children about our ancestry and heritage, just because you don't know the specific breakdown, doesn't make it any less valid.
I understand the difference between opinions and facts, despite your feelings on the matter, I am not an idiot. When you use such flippant remarks saying the term biracial is silly, it is quick to understand why someone would ask if you, or your children were biracial, and if you would have said it was silly if that was the case. Like I said before, if you had said that you were biracial, and felt it was a silly term, I would have asked you why. I am actually interested to know why you feel it is a silly term, and how you feel that you are identified, and how you identify yourself. I don't know if the mother's I know need to get over themselves, I think they are seeing that the view on biracial people needs to change. Everyone knows the stereotype, and they really hope that Obama is going to help change it, but are disappointed because he is only referring to himself as black. One friend said she would be heartbroken if she was ever dismissed in the way Obama is dismissing his mother. She is saddened by the fact that he is identifying with the man that left him, and not with the woman who raised him. Never did I say that these were my feeling, but those of women I do know.
While I wouldn't put much past the radical right, I wouldn't put much past the radical left either. If you feel that other news stations are not leftist, then you are not seeing the spin and distortion. Anytime you have a person telling a story, no mater how hard they try, it is difficult to not be biased. I have seen it on the local news, and the national news as well. This is why I don't watch Fox news, and why my husband won't let the Washington Post in the house. |
Anonymous
The idea that the Washington Post is some kind of "radical left" outlet is ridiculous. The concept of mainstream media representing any sort of leftist bastion is a myth dating back to the Nixon Administration. I agree that there is always a perspective or an inherent bias. But - unfortunately some might say - the "left" hs just never been organized enough or attracted individuals with a willingness to be lock-step in their coordination to form any kind of substantive presence within the mainstream media or elsewhere. What passes for "leftist" or "liberal" in the United States is distinctly conservative by comparison to any other industrialized nation. |
jsteele
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I want to clarify what I wrote given that my point has apparently not been understood. I was responding to this comment:
What I wrote was this:
As the last sentence states pretty clearly, you shouldn't believe everything you hear. The idea that John McCain, a pilot stationed on an aircraft carrier tasked with bombing North Vietnam, knew anything about troop movements is ludicrous. If his father had been able to secure privileges, it is not obvious from the poor treatment McCain received. The world is full of scurrilous rumors and outright lies. BTW, these particular examples were spread by right-wingers during the South Carolina primary. The idea that having a name like "Barack", let alone the middle name of "Hussein", has helped Obama more than it has hurt him is equally ludicrous. Yes, you may have heard that it was the reason he beat Hillary, but you would have to ignore the importance of their positions regarding the war. You would have to ignore that in 2006 when Americans were terribly divided by years of Bush/Rove smear and fear tactics, Obama gave a terrific speech at the Democratic convention about unity and hope. That was his introduction to most Americans. While every other Democratic presidential primary candidate was a Washington insider (I'm not counting Gravel), Obama was the leading proponent of "change". You have to ignore that Obama is an experienced community organizer who was able to combine traditional people power with Howard Dean's lessons on using the Internet to organize and raise money. This provided Obama an unmatched political organization that routinely filled stadiums beyond capacity and outmatched even the vaunted Clinton machine. I'm sorry, but you have to be willfully ignorant to ignore all of that and -- regardless of where you may have heard it -- proclaim that his success is owned to his name. |
Anonymous
Were he a white freshman senator from Illinois I don't think we would be the nominee, so if that's what you mean, I agree. I don't think the qualities JSteele enumerated in his post would alone be sufficient to have brought him this visibility. For example, he was offered the book contact for Dreams From My Father on the basis of being the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. That book (a memoir at 31 or 32!) catapulted him to prominence in Chicago and led to much of what followed. Were he white, he would not have won the book contract. In the same vein, I'd argue that Bobby Jindal probably wouldn't be a serious GOP vice-presidential contender in his first term as Louisiana governor were he not Indian. The times they are a changin'. |
Anonymous
You really overly simplify things. |
Anonymous
Maybe. But I'm echoing what some of the brightest political analysts have written based on analyses of the data. Clinton lost because "latte voters" and African Americans voted for Obama in huge numbers. The "latte voters" never much liked the Clintons anyway, but African Americans did. They have formed the core of support for all the Clinton candidacies (along with women for Hillary). No one other than a black candidate would have drawn African American support away from Hillary Clinton in the way Obama did. Put that together with the liberal activist-dominated caucuses and the proportional delegate allocation system which rests heavily on gerrymandered districts and you have the seeds of Obama's success in the primary. Another "latte"-type candidate such as Bill Bradley could have won the latte vote, but I think only an Obama would have pulled so many African Americans away from Clinton. If Obama wins the general election the reasons won't be as simple, of course, but I think the primary results are pretty easy to understand if you look at the data. |
jsteele
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I don't agree with your over simplification of the breakdown of Obama's supporters. But, for the sake of argument, let's accept it as fact. You describe two blocks: the "latte voters" (a term to which I object); and African Americans. Obama won the first on the basis of his anti-war stance. Hillary not only voted for the war, she refused to admit it was a mistake and even voted in favor of a similar resolution regarding Iran. So, if it is true that Obama's race was decisive because it helped with the black vote, it is equally true that his anti-war stance was decisive because it helped with the young and the well-educated. But, consider this: Neither Iowa nor New Hampshire have significant black populations. Polls before Obama's Iowa victory showed blacks in South Carolina favoring Clinton. Only after Iowa showed that white voters would vote for a black candidate, did black voters in South Carolina shift their support. Had Obama not won Iowa, it is quite possible that Clinton would have won South Carolina (or John Edwards). So, in this analysis, the non-racial basis of Obama's support is actually more important than the racial basis because his ability to attract white support enable him to gain black support. Had it not been for Obama's charisma, organizational capabilities, and anti-war stance, he would not have won Iowa. Being black and having the name Barack did not help him in Iowa. Without wining Iowa, he probably wouldn't have won South Carolina. |
Anonymous
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I disagree that being black and having the name Barack didn't help him win Iowa. On the contrary: A study I'm involved in suggests that the liberal activists who dominated Iowas caucuses were attracted to Obama's race and African roots. Remember, it was a caucus, not a primary. Very, very different representation of voters. However, I do agree that it was only after his victory in Iowa that African Americans moved to support him in large numbers, and I agree that this was because he had demonstrated his ability to win in a white state. And I agree that his anti-war stance helped him win over the liberal whites who caucused. However, I'll say again that caucuses and primaries are two different animals altogether, and they play to different strengths. Had a primary kicked off the cycle, things might have been different.
At any rate, we can certainly disagree on this. I'll just note that Michael Barone, Jay Cost, and other analysts have crunched the numbers extensively and they've come to this same conclusion. While they don't come right out and say that Obama won because he's black, they do conclude that the erosion of Clinton's black base allowed him to surge. The erosion of her base is due to Obama being black. Gerrymandering is, of course, intended to ensure black representation of majority-black districts. And the delegate allocation rules were developed in the wake of Jesse Jackson's last run, and were tailored to gerrymandered districts. Were Obama equally charismatic, gifted, anti-war and brilliant, but white, Asian or Latino, he would not have dominated gerrymandered districts to such an extent that Clinton was unable to reach the 25% threshold necessary to win delegates. Do you disagree with that? |
jsteele
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This question could be phrased several ways. For instance if Obama lacked charisma and supported the war, would he still have dominated black districts? Or, if he was charismatic, gifted, anti-war, but not able to gain white votes (think Al Sharpton), would he still have earned the same support? Obama dominated black districts not only because he is black, but because he was a black candidate who had a chance to win. Another way to look at it, if Hillary had opposed the war, would we even be having this conversation? True, once Obama hit certain thresholds, black support coalesced around him and gave him a tremendous advantage. Maybe even a decisive advantage. However, the achievement of hitting those thresholds (and I'm taking about things such as raising money, winning Iowa, putting together a broad-based and effective organization) cannot be overlooked or discounted. Had he not hit those thresholds, his race would not have helped significantly even in the black districts he eventually dominated. Otherwise, we would be in the last year of President Sharpton's first term. |
Anonymous
I for one would not want to see Al Sharpton as president! Re: your first question, I think Obama would still have dominated black districts had he not been so strongly anti-war. However, I completely agree that he did not dominate those districts solely because he is black. I agree that it is because he is a black man with a chance to win, and because he is so gifted in many ways. Re: your second question about Hillary opposing the war, I don't know. Among "latte" voters (I know, I hate the term too), there has always been significant dislike of her (and Bill). You may well be right, though. Had she opposed the war, we might not be having this conversation. (Although did you know Hillary was set to hire David Axelrod instead of Mark Penn, and Bill talked her into Penn? Penn didn't understand the proportional allocation of delegates and thought caucus states weren't worth contesting. So had she gone with Axelrod instead we really wouldn't be having this conversation!) Absolutely you are right that Obama's organization and fundraising should not be discounted, and I don't discount them. (They're the reason I believe he will win in November.) I simply think, looking at the math, it was two things that put him over the top: Caucuses and black congressional districts. Clinton could (should) have contested more caucus states. But in the end she lost in large part due to her inability to win delegates in majority-black districts that, previously, she would certainly have won. I think what you said is ultimately true: Once Obama hit those thresholds and black support coalesced around him, it was difficult for Hillary to win. That's because black support has always been a cornerstone of her coalition. And I think Obama was able to pull that support away from her because he's black. Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting just any black candidate could have done that. If I seemed to be saying so, I was unclear. |
Anonymous
None of us can know how any of this would have turned out with all there ifs, but I think that the last sentence about is worth discussing. I think that Hillary (and Bill) did a lot to drive black support away from the Hillary. From the early days in the race, Hillary had the support of most of the black political establishment (for lack of better words). They took this support for granted and instead of trying to reach out to black voters when Obama started doing well they insulted African Americans, making statements that go a lot of people angry and IMHO did a lot to help with voter turnout in support of Obama. I will vote for Obama and I hope that he wins in November, but at the start of this race, my vote was Hillary's to lose and she did a great job losing it. (FWIW, I am a black female, on super Tuesday, my mother called me from NY to discuss her vote, we both agreed that she had to vote for Hillary, by the time the DC primary came around I was solidly in Obama's camp). |
jsteele
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At risk of contradicting myself, I'll try to make two points: 1) The Clintons didn't deserve the strong black support they had; and 2) They probably didn't deserve to be tarnished as alienating black voters during the campaign. I base the first point on two incidents that were integral to Bill's winning the presidency: 1) The Sister Souljah controversy; and 2) The Ricky Ray Rector death sentence. If you don't know the details of these incidents, check Wikipedia, but my issue with them is that Bill used black people as props for making political points. If I were black, I would never have forgiven him. Heck, I'm white and still haven't forgiven him. Nevertheless, whether I thought it was justified or not, the Clintons came to have great support in the black community. Which brings me to my next point. Both Hillary and Bill made statements which were massively blown out of proportion and resulted in alienating many black voters. Hillary's statement that it took a president to enact civil rights legislation was inelegant and debatable. It probably shouldn't have been made. However, in its context, it certainly should not have been seen as attempting to marginalize the achievements of MLK. Its comparable to Obama's "bitter" statement in that a reasonable person could understand what was meant as opposed as to what was spun in the media and the Internet. There is a valid argument that Bill's remarks in South Carolina about Jesse Jackson were taken out of context. Its a shame that so much of this campaign has focused on "gotcha" moments in which the entirety of one's life and record can be outshadowed by a single remark and resulting media frenzy. Though, strangely, McCain seems immune from this sort of thing. Just days ago he agreed with a questioner that "it's tough in some respects" to be proud of America. While this is very similar to Michelle Obama's much publicized statement, it has not been repeated endlessly on the cable news networks and talk radio. |
Anonymous
| I don't agree with the Baby Mama term but let's not mix this up with her being a nice person. A nice person doesn't go to a racist church for 20 years. A nice person doesn't decide that she is proud of the country for the first time since her husband was elevated to god. I kind of think it's funny when all the liberals get mad when a consevative gets nasty..seems it's okay to just about say anything about a conservative so if you are going to be mad about this..make sure you are mad at all the attacks on Sarah Palin and FYI-Cindy McCain was attacked all the time and there was no outcry at all. |
Anonymous
Why resurrect this old thread after a month and a half to say the same old stuff? P.S. The reason we liberal piss you off so much is that it pisses you off that people disagree with you. It's human nature, and we liberals are just as likely to ask "Why do conservatives ...?" It gets neither side anywhere! |
Anonymous
My husband has a white mother and black father like the President. I think he thinks most racial terms are stupid, but he does not feel that he "happens to be black" because he what, doesn't have blonde hair? He is as black as he is white and terms like biracial, multi-racial, other, alternating black and white on check boxes and even "American mutt" come in useful to him. I have nothing against President Obama and many of my multi-racial friends choosing to self-identify as black, but please don't apply that to everyone who arose from similar circumstance. |