Wednesday, May 07, 2008

A Disconcerting Truth

Update: I'm unhappy with this. I'm going to edit it. Changes'll be in red.

Or it would be, if the Old Media Pundits would only look that far.

I was watching Andrea Mitchell (a real trouper, BTW; I dunno about her politics but she is top-notch at her craft) on one of the locals and she was remarking how there was "a racial divide" in voting, and afterwards there was a sense of nudge-nudge, wink-wink on that point among the political wonks. I thought it was bilge; I don't like the policies of either Dem candidate but they do differ and I suspect people made their choices on based on aspects considerably more significant than chomosomes or melanin.

But okay, fine; let's play it that way. Let's say what the boffins imply is true, if y'all are pale-ish, a Democrat, voted in the Democrat primary and didn't vote for the Senator from Chicago Illinois,* you're some kinda racist. Further, let us note that the Senator from New York won Indiana by the slimmest of margins and that several Talkers Of The Right, notably one Rush Limbaugh, have been suggesting their listeners go kiss the mule and vote for Mrs. Clinton, as she was -- in said Talker's opinion -- way more defeatable than Mr. Obama.

With me so far?

So, then, we're left with only three possibilities:
  1. A slim majority of Democrat voters are racists.
  2. A significant percentage of Republican voters are so non-racist, they're convinced a candidate of color would do better than a white female from an established political family in the upcoming general election. (Look, if they were pure-dee one-drop idiots, they'd be sure the man stood no chance in the main event. Instead, he's seen by Mr. Limbaugh, et al as the most serious challenge Senator McCain faces; and I believe they are correct in that assessment).
  3. Both A and B are true.
Not exactly the way the media tends to paint members of either party, is it? But nothing else fits the observed facts. Hoosiers: we're confounding.
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* One can only imagine the masochistic delight among the more punctilious and less-rational on the Left: at the polls, they've had to decide if they're more comfortable being racist or sexist.

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