Blogs > Vote for McCain! Go ahead. But for this reason?

Sep 6, 2008

Vote for McCain! Go ahead. But for this reason?



This, from the NYT, about sums up what's wrong with politics:

One woman in the Cedarburg crowd said she had been up since dawn and had driven an hour to see Ms. Palin, not Mr. McCain.

“She’s me,” said the woman, Tana Krueger, 58, a Republican from Fond du Lac, Wis., who is a mother of six.

Ms. Krueger, a risk manager at a state hospital, said that she might not have come out to see Mr. McCain on his own and that while she might have voted for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had Mrs. Clinton been the Democratic nominee, she was now definitely going to vote for Mr. McCain because of his selection of Ms. Palin.

“I can just really relate to everything in her life,” Ms. Krueger said. “Children with disabilities. Teenage pregnancy.”

I don't think I need to elaborate on what's wrong with this. But just in case someone's thinking,"Ok, it's a bit dopey, but don't voters always want to identify with their candidates?" I say:"Of course! But when i comes to selecting the president of the United States of America shouldn't we consider if we share their agenda?" How could someone who was planning on viting for Hillary turn around and vote for McCain? IT MAKES NO SENSE. Then again, politics doesn't make sense. So maybe I am just being too persnickety.

This public error ranks one dunce cap on my Dunce Cap Scorecard. It's for ...

Bone-headedness: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

I suppose someone could say that blacks who vote for Obama because of his skin color should be similarly chastised. But they are taking into account, I would venture, his politics. They aren't voting for him solely because he's black. Were Clarence Thomas on the ballot instead of Obama I doubt very much that he'd receive many black votes.


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Dana Seilhan - 9/19/2008

My experience with the Palin debacle is that men on the Left are pounding the pulpit about women abandoning the Democrats to vote for Palin. They don't always say it explicitly, they refer to "women voters" and "HRC supporters" generally, but they can be taken to mean Democratic women and they know it. I always knew there were misogynists on the Left but this really takes the cake.

And if that doesn't work, they resort to calling us racists because we actually wanted the white woman to make history before the black man for once. Not like black men didn't have the vote and the right to run for office before we did. But don't tell that to leftist men. Any political move that doesn't put people of color first all the time, every time is construed as racist even when race has little to nothing to do with the decision.

I'm fed up with the Democrats because of this. My vote's going to either Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader, whoever ends up on my state ballot. And that's the end of it. At least the Greens bother to advocate for BOTH racial and gender equality, not just pandering to people of color and women when it suits their ulterior motives, as the Democrats do.

And to those who complain that I make my votes about gender and race, I would like to point out that "male" is a gender and "white" is a race also, and every time you vote for a white guy, you are making your vote about race and gender. Just because white maleness is considered the default in Western culture does not change that irrefutable fact.

richard jones (rj) - 9/7/2008

I'm Black and thoroughly convinced that you're wrong about most of the Black who have decided to vote for Obama.

In fact, as Dr. Boyce Watkins points out in the following blog, it seems that most of Blacks voting for Obama will be doing so because they see a need to get a Black person in the White House at all cost.

http://www.iamrj.com/2008/08/why-all-blacks-should-back-barack.html

One thing's for sure, they certainly won't be voting for him because he's running for president as a Black man per se; for, as Darren Hutchinson -- http://dissentingjustice.blogspot.com -- also noted months ago, Obama "has distanced himself from blacks in terms of politics and policy; he is a 'safe' black. At the same time, Obama has 'dabbled' in blackness to win black support."

And as far as Obama's policies are concerned, he's a politician-as-usual, who has shifted so much since his stay and participation in Illinois community organizing and politics that pinning him down is like riding a fake bull with a broke off-switch. You get my drift, and I would only say that tidbit more for McCain.

Sad, indeed.

richard jones (rj)
http://www.iAMrj.com