Rev Jackson shows his class again

[Winston]

Misogynist is harsh. Maybe the size of Hillary's hips just wasn't sufficient to attract Black voters of the male persuasion.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Winston
Also, how far off is this following.. observation. Honestly? The guy can't have the following he does based on the actual political substance of his campaign, can he. The one that to any neutral observer just isn't there to be found.

What did Reagan actually have going for him politically? I was an infant at the time, but sifting through all the BS, he seems to have had nothing more than a lot of inspiring speeches and a plan to beat the Soviets in a game of unsustainable-defense-spending chicken. Obama is a young, black, liberal Reagan. Sure, he'll be a piece of crap president (if elected), but twenty years from now we'll still be naming airports after him. As Samuel L. Jackson said in Pulp Fiction, personality goes a long way. I suspect his race is purely coincidental except insofar as being a black American politician who doesn't have a massive chip on his shoulder makes him a pleasant rarity.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Elok
What did Reagan actually have going for him politically?

The hostage crisis in Iran and he was running against Carter.

[Kidlicious]

I happen to agree with Obama, but you could have said the same thing about white parents. They don't do such a good job either, although they tend to emphasize the importance of education more.

But the thing that strikes me is that this guy got to where he is because of black people, and it appears that he just used them.

[Winston]

That comparison to Reagan is so far off as to be offending. If you would delve into the subject, you'll see that Reagan had a very robust politcal platform of monetarism, government deregulation, lowering of taxes, promotion of private enterprise and on and on.

What's more, as it turned out it worked beautifully. I see no signs of Barack Obama even beginning to compete here.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Self-identification of racism would be a lot less reliable, actually.

Well the question wouldn't be "do you hate whitey"; like any other question it could be carefully framed to not sound racist. Even if a majority of those who voted primarily based on race would supposedly deny it in an anonymous poll, the data would still be more conducive to determining causation than merely correlative data.

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I actually considered the socioeconomic argument, but AFAICT Hillary was actually doing much better than Obama among whites of the socioeconomic strata that are disproportionately black.
...
And, as far as I can observe (and I know Ramo was huge on this point, and he's the policy wonk around here) Obama and Clinton were very, very close on the actual issues.

Even supposing they were a 100% verbatim match on every issue under the sun, I used the words "more attentive" for a reason. Some cracker having the same "position" on a predominantly black issue doesn't mean she won't put it on the back burner once in office. It's a question of what constituencies to which you feel most connected (and/or indebted) and how you shuffle priorities based on that.

Don't get me wrong, based on all sorts of personal discussions I've had or overheard, TV & print interviews, and other anecdotal evidence, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if over 70% of black Obama voters made his being black their only factor or at least their primary factor, but the mere fact that blacks disproportionately voted for him doesn't establish this and asserting it could only rely on assumptions.

[Kuciwalker]

Again, I agree that the objections you raise to it as a formal statistical argument are valid; I'd already considered most of them.

Don't get me wrong, based on all sorts of personal discussions I've had or overheard, TV & print interviews, and other anecdotal evidence, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if over 70% of black Obama voters made his being black their only factor or at least their primary factor, but the mere fact that blacks disproportionately voted for him doesn't establish this and asserting it could only rely on assumptions.

And I do rely on assumptions. However, I think in this case that the statistics say basically what they appear to say is a decent one. This is the best controlled experiment we'll ever have.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Winston
That comparison to Reagan is so far off as to be offending. If you would delve into the subject, you'll see that Reagan had a very robust politcal platform of monetarism, government deregulation, lowering of taxes, promotion of private enterprise and on and on.

What's more, as it turned out it worked beautifully. I see no signs of Barack Obama even beginning to compete here.

Do you know what monetarism is?

[Winston]

Oh no. I thought this thread was going comparatively well.

[Elok]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The hostage crisis in Iran and he was running against Carter.

Well, Obama's running as a Democrat after eight years of Dubya, and Iran is now FUBAR in a different way. Anyway, I meant what did Reagan have to offer in the way of solid policy. I suppose the chief difference in that respect is that Obama wants to butt-rape our budget via huge domestic spending, whereas I understand Reagan was a more military type. Actually, you might say that's the big difference between Democrats and Republicans. Which is why I'm neither. Anybody who runs for office on a "stop spending money that doesn't exist, you jackasses" platform has got my vote.

[Winston]

A point that bears repeating: The President doesn't get to spend money, Congress does.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker And I do rely on assumptions. However, I think in this case that the statistics say basically what they appear to say is a decent one. This is the best controlled experiment we'll ever have.

Nah, I still say an exit poll would have been the least terrible controlled experiment possible for this particular topic. I know most of them did ask the question, but some googling couldn't find anything definitive:

Broken down by race, 13 percent of whites said race was important to them, and 75 percent of those voters sided with Mrs. Clinton. Of the 66 percent of whites who said race was not important to them, 58 percent voted for her.

...

4 percent of blacks said that the race of the candidate was important to them. The numbers were too small for the poll to measure how many of that 4 percent supported Mrs. Clinton and how many supported Mr. Obama.

Nine percent of black voters said race was not important; 9 percent of them voted for Mrs. Clinton and 91 percent of them voted for Mr. Obama.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...in-pa-primary/

The exit polls also indicated roughly 30 percent of Mississippi Democratic voters said race was an important factor in their vote, and 60 percent of those voters supported Obama.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...-racial-lines/

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Winston
A point that bears repeating: The President doesn't get to spend money, Congress does.

But it only takes one veto pen to stop the spending dead in its tracks.

[Winston]

Assuming the veto-prone spending isn't stapled onto highly desirable or otherwise necessary appropriations.

[Darius871]

Well yeah, there's that whole thing. Ok, so someone with a veto pen and iron cojones who doesn't care about a second term.