“Democrats Are Conflicted Over Black Vote, Obama,” WSJ:
Democrats say it is critical that they turn out African American voters this November. But for Robin Carnahan, the party’s nominee for Senate in Missouri, that is proving to be a tricky proposition.
The key to energizing black voters is to persuade them that sending Democrats to Washington is important to President Barack Obama, strategists say. The Democratic National Committee plans to increase an ad campaign targeting black voters here and elsewhere to $3 million. A radio ad mentions Mr. Obama four times. An ad running in African American newspapers says simply: “Stand with President Obama..”
Yet, Ms. Carnahan is keeping a distance from the president and Democratic leaders.
In addition to winning African American voters, who strongly support the president, Ms. Carnahan needs support from voters who are skeptical of her party’s agenda in Washington. Her Republican opponent, seven-term Congressman Roy Blunt, charges that she would be a rubber stamp for the president, should she be elected.
Ms. Carnahan skipped a home-state fund-raiser with Mr. Obama in March. She opposed his recent plan to spend $50 billion on infrastructure. And siding against Mr. Obama, she has joined with Republicans in saying that tax cuts due to expire soon should be extended even for the wealthiest families.
“How do you run away from President Obama and at the same time get the people who really know and love Obama, more than they know and love you, to come out to vote?” asked Antonio French, a black alderman here.
The Democrats for years have been masters of forging identity politics coalitions in order to win elections — a process that begins, as I’ve often pointed out, with the initial philosophical move of deconstructing and delegitimizing the idea of the “individual,” replacing it with the construct of group identity, which then becomes socially ascendant (as well as politically manifest). This tack is enabled by carefully conceived challenges to Enlightenment epistemology, most especially (as I’ve long tried to show) attacks on where meaning lies, who gets to decide upon it, and why. From this linguistic battle is derived the determination of what comes to count as “truth”: is truth a man-made construct determined by interpretive consensus? or is truth something different from our linguistic attempts to capture it?
The problem with such a paradigm is, once you commit to a politics driven entirely by identity groups-as-political blocs, you run the risk of conflict within your coalition — and lack the proper appeal to individualism from which to untangle that conflict. After all, if competing truths are equally valid to competing identity groups — and they must be, based upon the philosophical assertions you as a “progressive” have built your own political identity upon — how do choose between them in those instances where such a separation needs take place?
Because “blacks” as an identity group have been tied politically to Democrats, Democrats running away from a black President risk alienating that part of their coalition that ties their Democrat-ness to being black.
Live by identity politics, die by identity politics, I guess.
Couldn’t confound a nicer bunch of folks.
(h/t TerryH)
Just to reiterate, keeping the House and Senate majorities favorable to Obama is somehow more important to black people – at least that is what I’ve learned from this article.
There’s a Christian thang argument afoot in another thread, an argument which I believe must embrace many of these same sorts of problems. The individual, taken qua individual, we see to be somehow merely human. So his political virtue — as a citizen — is merely human virtue and not specifically this virtue (Christian), that virtue (Confucian) or such and such some other virtue (Jewish, Mohammedan, etc.). This political individualism business is, to my way of thinking, necessarily secular.
As usual, they will consider all who don’t conform to be heretics, and cast them out. I’m not sure how well that will work in a climate where quite a few black people are running for office, from both sides of the aisle. I think it likely that we’ll see some major cracks appear in their narrative.
In my dream world, these events would signal the end of the concept of identity politics, though I know in reality that won’t happen so easily, if ever.
Curiouser and curiouser: Will Florida Democrats throw the black Senate candidate under the bus in order to support white liberal Republican Charlie Crist?
That should go over really well with black voters…
If everyone has their own ‘group truths’, what do they have in common that they can agree upon?
Princess Robin has bigger problems than the black vote. Just about everyone in the state hates her family, the corrupt bunch of trough dwelling lifetime politicians. Remember when the dems elected her dead father to the senate? While he was dead? Her slimey little brother just got $100 million plus in stimulus money for his windfarm, which money her other slimey brother voted FOR in congress. She’s an acorn loving dem, who, as Sec State refused to purge the names of the dead from the voter roles, (which is kind of funny when you think about it; dead candidate + dead voters = VICTORY). This family personifies just about every bad quality which it’s possible for politicians to have.
Kennedy-levels of drugs and sexual assault?
Don’t know. Never partied with the Kennedys.
“An ad running in African American newspapers…”
Segregated newspapers?!? Are they black paper with white print?
Mikey NTH :’If everyone has their own ‘group truths’, what do they have in common that they can agree upon?’
That government is the answer to all questions/problems, and all questions/problems are of the variety ‘How can I make everyone think/act like me.’
“How do you run away from President Obama and at the same time get the people who really know and love Obama, more than they know and love you…”
Oh, and how do they somehow “know” Obama moreso than a local figure? And in most instances, especially among the low information or previously uninvolved black voters, how is that presumed knowledge and love based on anything more than identity politics victimhood group affiliation?
Answer? It isn’t. I’d liken it to trying to defend the effed up actions of a family member, or continue to stand with them afterward, simply because of the ties of blood. And a bit more.
As the consensus across America that Obama is in waaaaaaaay over his head grows, there are some black Americans that are probably worried that his ineptness will color American’s views on the viability of black Presidential candidates in the relatively near future. And some realize thier misguided allegiance; like that lady that told him she was tored of defending him.
Once again, dismissive of the entire notion of individuality…
#10: That works right up to the point that you start running out of other people’s money to distribute to each of your constituent groups. Then they start getting nasty to one another.
Ahahahaha.
http://www.bostonirish.com/
http://www.irish-herald.com/
Those damn self-segregating Irishmen!!!
Yeah, I’m definitely an AJB-ist…
She also opposed requiring people to show photo ID in order to vote. Meanwhile, it still costs a ton of money and requires a photo ID to get a CCW license in order to equip oneself properly in order to exercise the most basic right of all, that of self-preservation.
She’s so awful that I requested a Democrat ballot in the primary just to have the pleasure of voting against her twice.
Everytime I think that AJB has reached the pinnacle of its idiocy, it proves me wrong.
Mikey NTH : ‘#10: That works right up to the point that you start running out of other people’s money to distribute to each of your constituent groups. Then they start getting nasty to one another.’
Yep , my favorite was during 2008 Dem Presidential primary where the left didn’t so much argue who was the better canadate, but rather, who was more entitled to the throne.
It pulls an example of an historically abused identity group, which managed to transcend ugly stereotypes and NINA policies and establish itself as a proud ethnic component of our great nation. This group has grown so successful that it laughs at the ethnic slurs that still get thrown at it, going so far as to adopt the most cartoonish — literally! — of these stereotypes for one of its most prized universities.
Yet it hasn’t the first clue as to why this identity group could be so successful, while the identity groups it ostensibly “protects” and “encourages” have only slid further and further backwards while under its loving care.
If it had any self-awareness, it would realize that its stewardship is harmful, and would step down from its self-anointed role. Of course, had it any self-awareness, it wouldn’t continue mindlessly to sing the praises of its failed policies, either.
Is there a word for that strange mixture of pity and annoyance that one feels when in the presence of a very noisy child, or a deranged elder, or a hopeless troll?
Yes.
And that word is bunghole.
Let me see if I got this right. Our president, one time community organizer. Jesse Jackson, community organizer. Al Sharpton community organizer. All of them are multimillionairs yet the groups they represent are still as jobless, ingnorant, and broke as they were in 1970.
Do I have that right?
Why are they considered experts?
Any black folk want to weigh in?
Squid, I think that’s the definition of stress: when the body overrides the mind’s desire to choke the living sh*t out of some *ssh*le who desperately needs it.
Mueller, that reminds me of what was said of the missionaries who went to Hawaii and were the founders of the prominent & successful families there. “They went to the islands to do good, and they did well”.
I didn’t see this was live, so I commented on Darleen’s post. Worth a look, I reckon (it mostly isn’t mine).
Regards,
Ric
Thousands of years they’ve spent proving that “Shilelagh oak is the only thing harder than an Irishman’s head” — a favorite saying of my Irish grandmother — and “Fighting Irish” is a cartoonish stereotype? Seems like more of a proudly worn reputation….
So, who really is the racist: The Tea Party member who has deep concerns over the fiscal policy direction the US has taken, or the Democrat Politician who has shunned Obama because they are afraid their working class voters will be turned off by the sound of his name?
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It pulls an example of an historically abused identity group, which managed to transcend ugly stereotypes and NINA policies and establish itself as a proud ethnic component of our great nation. This group has grown so successful that it laughs at the ethnic slurs that still get thrown at it, going so far as to adopt the most cartoonish — literally! — of these stereotypes for one of its most prized universities.
Yet it hasn’t the first clue as to why this identity group could be so successful, while the identity groups it ostensibly “protects” and “encourages” have only slid further and further backwards while under its loving care.
Yeaaahhh…
I’m a Mick myself, but the Irish are unfortunately NOT the most sucessful immigrant group in America, if you compare them to groups that came over around the same time as them, such as Italians, Poles, Jews, and Germans. They didn’t really catch up to the national mean economically until almost the middle of the 20th century.
This happened because the Paddies elected to solve their problems not by economics, but by politics and agitation (and a laudable if culturally unsurprising record of military service). Well before ACORN, there was Tammanny Hall.
I grew up in a mostly white, 90% Democratic town that was right next to a mostly black, Democratic city. Republican signs were torn down with a passion in our town. Just as an experiment, I’s like somebody to film a house in Gary with a Republican sign. It wouldn’t last long.
I think African-Americans were ahead of the curve. Their very low turnout on election day shows that they never trusted either party. They were right.