Newsweek has a new poll which they believe supports the claim that Barack Obama’s race may well explain his difficulty in winning over white voters.
Mind you, the magazine’s claim is based on the poll showing Hillary Clinton doing better with white voters, while being forced to admit that John Kerry and Al Gore did no better than Obama is doing at the moment. The possibility that Clinton is doing better with whites than these black and white men might have something to do with white women, particularly working-class white women, does not occur to them.
Rather, the magazine’s racial claims are based on answers to questions they compiled into a “Racial Resentment Index.” This idea is not new; they borrowed it from an earlier Pew poll.ÂÂ
Some of the questions asked to create this index are themselves questionable. For example, the very first question is, “In general, do you approve or disapprove of giving preferences to blacks and other minorities in things like hirings, promotions, and college admissions?” First, this is a topic where poll wording matters a great deal. Had the poll asked about “affirmative action” instead of racial “preferences,” the answers would likely have been much different. It is unlikely that the pollster was unaware of this. Second, it can be argued that racial preferences that are not used to remedy proven prior discrimination are a form of institutionalized racism. Thus, the poll has a distinct political premise which assumes opposition to racism is proof of racism.
The poll then asks, “As a result of such preferences, do you think less qualified people get hired, promoted, or admitted (often, sometimes, hardly ever, never)?” This question has the same flaws as the first.
Another question in the index asks whether respondents agree or disagree that “Poor people have become too dependent on government assistance programs.” Notice anything missing from this question? That this question is part of a “Racial Resentment Index” says more about those who came up with the question than those who answered it.
But you need not take my word for it. Barack Obama has stated that affirmative action programs should ultimately become “a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society†and that when his two young daughters apply to college, he said they should be treated “as folks who are pretty advantaged.â€Â Obama has also said that welfare policies for many years may have worsened the erosion of black families — and there is no reason to believe it was any different for poor white families.
In short, the creators of the “Racial Resentment Index” believe conservative positions on racial preferences and whether the government creates poverty by subsidizing it are inherently racist. That is, to use a technical term, crap. Accordingly, the poll establishes two things: (1) more conservative Democrats (and voters) are less likely to support the most liberal member of the Senate for President; and (2) Newsweek has a left-wing bias. Both of these propositions were obvious before the poll was taken.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Update: Allah-lanche!
Yesterday Barack Obama fuckin’ lit it up down here in South Florida. The Jews, the Cubans and then Broward County, baby – Obama packed ’em in and brought down the house. Scared the diapers off the pasty old folk from Ohio. Lot’s of retirees from Appalachia were shaking like teen virgins about to lose it.
Oh I get why dried up Hillary is looking tired. Obama is a dancing machine. He’s a three-packed house per day campaigner. No, really. I get why that little troll blabbers about herself being a fighter. Little bitch has been put through a hand wringer and hung out to dry by the tireless Obama machine. She must feel like she’s going through a 12-round shit-beating everyday because, frankly, she is. The black man with the funny name is got too much mojo, too much groove in his step, and he’s steppin’ alright, right toward the steps of the House!
Hillary is hanging around for the assassination. Maybe she can coax an deer rifle out of the crowd to put that uppity black man down. Poised in wonder and never in doubt, Karl’s favorite white failure is bitterly clinging to her bullet and Bible, like a good little Midwestern evangelical.
O!
Newsweak? Left-wing bias? Who would have thunk it?…:)
Yo Hammer Boy. Don’t your knees get sore from so much time spent on them fellating your Obamessiah-in-Chief? Give the poor bastard a rest, son, and leave a little bit for M’chelle.
Karl,
You am a RACIST!
Don’t you know by now that you are not allowed to say stuff like this anymore?
The Messiah am gonna get you when he is elected!
Also, who’s the babe in yellow on Fox News this morning? I am way too old to have to wake up and see a woman who makes me want to cry because she is wearing clothes.
Uh-Oh!
Well Karl, I think I have just placed myself in the same paddy wagon as you. I forgot that “Fox News” will be two words that will be “verboten” once the Messiah and the Dems take over the whole government….
Boy, aren’t we excited? (Damn! Did it again. Did I actually have the the lack of class to use the word “boy”?)
And don’t anyone DARE to mention Bobby Kennedy…
No, I get it. More than ever. That Obama is ahead by ahead by a century. What I saw yesterday was unbelievable. He’s on, and it’s on. This dude can flat out knock down the unbelievers. He could be the most gifted politician in modern American history.
I’ve never seen so many doubters get turned, nor as many believers pump their fist in the air with pride. Your grandchildren will be asking you about Barack Obama. Anything can happen, but I think Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States of America.
This one here, this one is very, very special. Most of you haven’t a clue nor a chance against the fearless one. He’s the shit. End of story.
Your snark doesn’t matter L-Doggie. Barack Obama is history in the making and you’re just a dick. JFK and Robert Kennedy were good Americans who gave their last drop of blood for the greatest country on earth. Anyone who says otherwise should be kicked to the dirt.
O!
Wonderful, energizing speaker? OK.
But what are his policies?
Barack Obama has stated that affirmative action programs should ultimately become “a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society†and that when his two young daughters apply to college, he said they should be treated “as folks who are pretty advantaged.†Obama has also said that welfare policies for many years may have worsened the erosion of black families  and there is no reason to believe it was any different for poor white families.
Sound like the thing I would say. Not a hint of socialism here.
Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd?
Nothing can be done to stop the shouting.
If every tongue were still the
noise would still continue.
The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing:
O!bama Hey bama, bama, bama O!
Bama, hey bama, O!bama
Sing me your songs,
But not for me alone.
Sing them for yourselves,
For you are blessed.
There is not one of you who can not win the kingdom.
The slow the suffering,
The quick the dead.
Christopher Reeve was unavailable for comment, temporarily.
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Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/24 @ 7:39 am #
No, I get it. More than ever. That Obama is ahead by ahead by a century. What I saw yesterday was unbelievable. He’s on, and it’s on. This dude can flat out knock down the unbelievers. He could be the most gifted politician in modern American history.
Wonderful, energizing speaker? OK.
But what are his policies?
After 15-months of campaigning, and (pick a number) over a thousand speeches, 21-televised debates, policy white papers available for the world on his web site, surrogates on cable TV news, dozens of interviews on the Sunday morning political shows and evening cable news political shows, and yet you, you’re asking for me to spoon feed you Barack Obama’s policies? Life ain’t a big milk-ready nipple, pal. At one point you have to take responsibility for your ignorance. Or maybe you’re doing a low-IQ Sean Hannity act, who can really say.
Adjust your lifestyles for the Brave New Obama Nation, all I’m saying.
If everyone would stop responding to thor’s tongue in cheek, over the top Obamasturbatororation, maybe he’d cut back on the instances of such.
Though that would make this site less interesting. Cause some of the shit is funny.
Ready yourself for Obamalot, blood.
I’m sure Rob’s question was purely rhetorical, Hammer Boy. The problem is we DO know what his policies (Marxist to the core) will be, and that is what scares the hell out of anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together.
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/24 @ 7:58 am #
“If everyone would stop responding to thor’s tongue in cheek, over the top Obamasturbatororation, maybe he’d cut back on the instances of such.”
Very well, O Mighty One. I get the message…:)
Ever the cynic is Jeff, and madness lies just over there, yada, yada, but just you wait until the Denver convention. The guy has the it. He is truly effen gifted in front of a live audience. You can help but like him. He outdraws Pearl Jam in Portland, and that’s not easy math.
You mean, the guy has IT. All caps.
You’re slipping, thor. I think you need to find a font that smells of ambrosia and greens and gives off the otherworldly glow of hope.
— Though I’m pretty sure you need a Mac for that.
Circle the wagons! Don’t respond to reports from an eyewitness. Over the top, all of it! Spoon-bending, that’s all! Remain unfettered and stiffen in the face of Obama’s legions. That he will win means nuts!
I’ve given in. I’m voting for Obama, well, I’m pretty sure I am. It’s too obvious. He unquestionably has the look of a winner.
That thoroughbred can gallop.
Whose not responding the reports of an eyewitness? Some of just ain’t that impressed with practiced oratory and the cult of personality, and would rather look at other of Obama’s less impressive attributes.
But, by all means, TESTIFY!
This dude can flat out knock down the unbelievers. He could be the most gifted politician in modern American history.
I’ve never seen so many doubters get turned…
Doubters and unbelievers don’t go to tent revivals.
Barack Obama has stated that affirmative action programs should ultimately become “a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society†and that when his two young daughters apply to college, he said they should be treated “as folks who are pretty advantaged.†Obama has also said that welfare policies for many years may have worsened the erosion of black families  and there is no reason to believe it was any different for poor white families.
Which would explain why he routinely speaks out against and votes against those policies in Senate budget meetings. Wait, what? He doesn’t? Never mind.
Where’s Elvis when you need him? That nigga could bring it.
Ever since the new Indiana Jones movie came out I think of Obama’s followers as those people that drank the blood of the great Khali and were all turned into true believers. Someone needs to burn thor with a little fire and clear his head up.
Superman V? YES, WE CAN!!!!!
Eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable. Unless you’re reporting a UFO, or that the ‘O’s poops are pellet shaped and made of gold.And the wind he breaks is as a scirroco of the scent of roses. He turns water into diet Pepsi! I seen it!
Thor seems pretty jazzed up to vote for this guy. Can he give a reason other than he likes the way the guy gives a speech? Probably not.
The pollsters have cited some conservative policy positions which could be arrived at for entirely legitimate and defensible reasons and defined them as racism. Thus, more conservative voters, who we would expect to be less attracted to the more liberal candidate, are deemed racists by definition.
Newsweek is already running “Why he lost?” stories? Well, I won’t say they’re premature but assigning blame to resentment towards turning the Presidency into an affirmative action “must hire” position is going to be a tough sell. As will Barone’s assessment that Wright + Ayers = Poison. I think I’ll stick with “incredibly bad liar with a minuscule resume and far too small a base”. That will hold up.
It’s funny that thor assumes my question means I don’t know. The fact is, I have a pretty good idea what Obama’s positiond are, and what his policies will be. And I think they’d be disastrous.
My point was that mature people don’t vote for the best speaker. They vote for the policies — or, at least, against policies.
But, to borrow a line from fark — “You know who else was a great speaker?”
That thoroughbred can gallop.
It’s the strength bred into those thighs, donchaknow.
Thor is that guy who, when invited to a Pentecostal church for the first time, jumps out of the pew and runs around the room waving his arms in the air and speaking in tongues.
Guys like this are not predisposed to be libertarians or Burkean conservatives anyway. Let him go…
Barry can put out all the white papers he wants, and attempt to cast himself as this post-racialist, post-partisan, peace out kinda dude. But it is belied by his resume, paper-thin that it is.
And frankly, away from the teleprompter, Barry ain’t no great shakes as a speaker.
Anyone reckon we’ll be seeing a re-make of “Putney Swope” inside the next year an’a half? I do luvz me some Bormann 6. I mean, branding and all.
Thor sounds a lot better in the original German.
#26 – Yes, the parallels are striking aren’t they.
– I can picture thor rushing down to his neighborhood tailor, almost peeing himself, so Uber anxious to get fitted for his brownshirt wardrobe. “Seig O!”
– BTW – Along those lines, if Yomamma manages to snare the nomination, and at this point hes a shoe in if for no other reason than the fact that the Left would have to acknowledge their sexism exceeds even their racism for things to reverse, I await with great happy anticipation watching their puzzlement when they see the mustard come off the hot dog in the debates with McDinosaur, where he has to actually think on his feet, sans the telepromter.
From the text of the chronicles of the Obamessiah:
“Oh Lord, gird and guide me away from the evils and failings of affirmative action that I may end this flawed and damaged program,” spake the chosen one, “but NOT JUST YET!”
Thus, the poll has a distinct political premise which assumes opposition to racism is proof of racism.
There’s also no doubt that not buying Newsweek is proof of racism.
Obama is just another liberal promising to give everything to everybody by taxing those bad white rich folks who run the oil companies. No free market solutions, no private sector incentives, just some quasi-socialist rhetoric, which if adopted will futher bankrupt the country by driving the economy into the ground. And then he can just say, well I inherited this mess from Bush! Great, we need another excuse machine. He states that he’s for working together to solve problems, yet he can’t point to a single piece of successful bi-partisan legislation he sponsored.
The 1990’s were prosperous due to a Republican Congress passing pro-growth legislation. President Clinton just signed it, and only after vetoing it first. He listened to Dick Morris who told him to adopt the Republican legislation as his own, hence his re-election. It was the only smart thing he did during his administration. His real legacy is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, which he should have used with Monica Lewinsky.
Comment by thor on 5/24 @ 7:03 am #
Seek immediate medical help if you have an erection lasting longer than 4 hours, a condition known as priapism.
90’s prosperity can also be attributed in part to antecedent events in the 80’s, without which etc, etc. Killing runaway inflation, for instance. With a, y’know, intentional recession. Lowering marginal tax rates, reforming the tax system through simplification, reducing burdensome unnecessary regulation, stuff like that. And too, it seems to me that much of the vaunted prosperity of the “Clinton years” was illusory, over-burnished bubble happy BS. Folks tend to forget that before the Dotcom bubble we had a biotech bubble.
Note to thor: See Dans post on amphibian aphrodisiacs. Information you can believe in! O!
“Barack Obama has stated that affirmative action programs should ultimately become “a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society—
Except when it is implemented to elect a black guy as President.
Thanks Sdferr, for listing many of the other reasons why President Bill Clinton’s assertion that his administration’s policies brought about prosperity in the 1990’s is a bunch of garbage.
I was a Democrat for 25 years until I finally got fed up with their incremental socialistic agenda. I know of no serious economist who can articulate how we can tax our way out of the national debt. I kept waiting for Paul Krugman and Robert Reich to do so, but unfortunately they must not have courses in Capitalism at the Ivy League universities. Milton Friedman must be an answer to a multiple choice question on a Harvard Economics exam.
Even France’s, Nicolas Sarkozy, knows more about economic freedom than most of our Congressmen do. Cut the corporate and marginal tax rate, and revenues into the Treasury increase. The problem is spending always increases along with revenue gains. Every time politicians see a surplus, they conclude they haven’t spent enough.
Now if we can just get rid of the Federal Reserve, debt based money system, and fractional reserve lending, we can prosper without the so-called “boom-and-bust” business cycle.
De nada, homey.
Help Me understand the validity of this poll & isn’t Newsweek a profit making entity with a seat on the Stock exchange…? It has a bias & a natural self serving position…!!!! The amount of emotionality this poll has elicited, seems to point to a real raw spot that still exist covertly amoung many Americans regarding the unspoken issues & feelings of race. So why is everyone so shocked with these alleged results!!!?
These are the real questions I need addressed: Who was polled (ages,gender,demographics etc.) Was a Scientific/Controlled group used? What was the total number of people polled, and what was the rationale for why Newsweek focused on Whites Only…not Blacks/ Hispanics/Native Americansor other racial groups.
Doesn’t Newsweek want to know what and how beliefs about race, religion or culture influence voting and the political decisions citizens make across all groups, parties &/or affiliations?
I want to know can anyone point me to the origonal polling questions & data?
Thanks