[Pen-l] racists for Obama?

[raghu <mraghu01@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a probably false story about a Democrat volunteer in W. Pennsylvania:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/on-road-western-pennsylvania.html
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So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/18/politics/politico/main4530664.shtml
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Anecdotes from across the battlegrounds suggest that there's a significant minority of prejudiced white voters who will swallow hard and vote for the black man.

"I wouldn't want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I'm voting for Obama," the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently.

[...]

"If you go to a white neighborhood in the suburbs and ask them, 'How would you feel about a large black man kicking your door in,' they would say, 'That doesn't sound good to me,'" said Democratic political consultant Paul Begala. "But if you say, 'Your house is on fire, and the firefighter happens to be black,' it's a different situation.

"The house is on fire, and one guy seems like he's calm and confident and in charge, and that's the only option," he said.

That is, in less dramatic terms, more or less the campaign's official talking point, a version of the longtime Democratic hope that class will - or at least should - matter more than race.

-raghu.

--
"To be or not to be. That's not really a question." 


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