The Politico’s Roger Simon has a new item that raises a depressing point that probably warrants some additional scrutiny.
I was talking the other day to a prominent Republican who asked me what I thought John McCain’s strongest issues would be in the general election.
Lower taxes and the argument he will be better able to protect America from its enemies, I said.
Republicans have a pretty good track record with those two.
The Republican shook his head. “You’re missing the most important one,” he said. “Race. McCain runs against Barack Obama and the race vote is worth maybe 15 percent to McCain.”
The man I was talking to is not a racist; he was just stating what he believes to be a fact: There is a percentage of the American electorate who will simply not vote for a black person no matter what his qualities or qualifications.
The question, of course, is just how big that percentage is, and whether it includes anyone who might otherwise be willing to vote for a Democratic candidate. Simon noted an AP poll from earlier this month that “about 8 percent of whites would be uncomfortable voting for a black for president.”
That, of course, is a ridiculously large number of people who are willing to admit to a pollster that they judge people based on the color of their skin. It’s compounded by the suspicion that there are plenty more who are also motivated by race, but are too embarrassed to admit it out loud while participating in a poll.
I’m reminded of a CBS News poll Kevin Drum noted a month ago: “Most people say they personally don’t care if a presidential candidate is black or white…. However, since most people either don’t want to think of themselves as racist or else don’t want to admit it, we might take that with a grain of salt. A more accurate accounting, perhaps, comes from what all these colorblind folks think about their friends. Answer: 33% say that ‘most’ of the people they know wouldn’t vote for a black candidate. This means that either a lot of Americans are very cynical about their friends, or else a lot of Americans are stone racists.”
It’s little wonder, then, that Republicans simply expect nearly one in seven voters to oppose Obama in a general election (should he win the Democratic nomination) simply on the basis of skin color.
Simon also pointed to this Washington Post item published yesterday:
Sometimes you don’t know what you’re up against until you’re up against it.
Barack Obama’s campaign opened a downtown office [in Scranton, Pa.] on March 15, just in time for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. It was not a glorious day for Team Obama. Some of the green signs the campaign had trucked in by the thousands were burned during the parade, and campaign volunteers — white volunteers — were greeted with racial slurs. More episodes would follow, according to staffers and campaign surrogates.
It’s the 21st century for crying out loud.
Now, my hope is that we’re talking about lunatics who wouldn’t vote for a Democrat anyway, and may not even be registered. In this sense, knuckle-draggers wouldn’t necessarily be in a position to influence the election’s outcome.
I’m also curious to see if the duration of the campaign has any effect. People who might have initially hesitated to support an African-American candidate (or, for that matter, a woman candidate) have the chance to get over the identity questions and consider the issues and the people on their merits. In other words, Obama gets the chance to win people over, by virtue of a lengthy process.
But to think that 15% of the United States is more racist than rational, more bigoted than decent, is almost too painful to believe.