McCain, apparently, and not that I've been listening or am much concerned at the moment, dissed some Republicans in North Carolina for airing a 'racist' ad. I haven't looked any closer because I expect the story has no legs, except for the following reported at Patterico:
It’s fair to call someone who votes against Obama solely because of his race a racist but there are other reasons than racism someone might vote for McCain. There are people like me who will vote for McCain because I don’t like Obama’s liberal policies, his lack of experience, and his questionable character. That doesn’t make me a racist, except perhaps in David Plouffe-world.
The irony is that this was a throw-away line in the interview. Plouffe was conceding that Obama has lost some voters to McCain, and it’s telling that Plouffe thinks votes have been lost because voters are racists. Clearly Plouffe believes that a segment of McCain’s support comes from one-dimensional racist voters.
That’s a sad and one-dimensional view of the electorate Obama craves to serve. As President, I don’t think Obama the uniter will be motivated to connect with racist McCain supporters … unless they happen to remind him of a racist old uncle.
The full National Journal interview is here.
Limbaugh was mouthing off against McCain on the matter this morning. I turned him off. McCain, I think, is guilty of either pandering or being more stupid than I thought. I tend to believe the former, and I'm not particularly saying much - I think that level of pandering (wrt McCain) on both 'racism' and 'global warming' is basically required to get the attention of a certain fragment of the American electorate.
What's a bit more interesting is that I don't see the pieces as aggregated. That is to say there are very few single issue racial or climatic voters. Rather, all of us have some fraction of our decision weighted on race or climate and a certain amount of pandering gets a certain amount of our support.
The fact that McCain will not get attributed any significant gain among 'the black vote' is demonstrable proof that 'the black vote' is racially motivated. It doesn't mean much only because there's not much meaning anyone can take from this kind of babble. Still it is a consistent indication that we're not really talking about people who aggregate into block bodies, rather that the lot of us angle towards or away from candidates according to these block-like ideas.
As usual, I give McCain the benefit of the doubt, and as usual I am sick to death of all the blather surrounding Jeremiah Wright. As for the Weather Underground? I'll deal with that separately.
Recent Comments