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Originally Posted by scout
I think there is going to be a lot of surprised pissed off people come November when the Democrats pick up a few seats in the House and Senate but lose the White House. Obama scares a lot of people because he's only been in the Senate for a what 2 years? with hardly a voting record to see what the man really stands for. Once again the Democratic party has disappointed many people by nominating someone almost impossible to vote for on the issues. Oh well maybe next election.
Then again I could be wrong. Only time will tell.
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scout...do you think Obama's four years in the US Senate (he was elected in 2004) and eight years in the Illinois State Senate make him less experienced than Bush's six years as governor of Texas (and a failed oilman and mediocre baseball team owner).
Obama may "scare a lot of people" (your words) because of lack of experience and /or his character or past associations (pan's reasons) or other reasons that may or may not be based on emotion rather than policy positions, but it is reasonable to question if those same standards are applied to white candidates or if there is an underlying "hidden" motive.
Racism exists in American...to deny it is to deny reality. And to believe it stops at the voting booth is also naive, IMO.
Here's another scenario, called the "Bradley effect" in which voters say publicly that they will vote for a black candidate, but act differently in the privacy of the voting booth
The name Bradley effect is derived from a 1982 campaign involving Tom Bradley, the long-time mayor of Los Angeles, California. Bradley, who was black, ran as the Democratic party's candidate for Governor of California against Republican candidate George Deukmejian, who was white. The polls on the final days before the election consistently showed Bradley with a lead. In fact, based on exit polls on election day, a number of media outlets projected a Bradley win that night; early editions of the next day's San Francisco Chronicle featured a headline proclaiming "BRADLEY WIN PROJECTED". However, Bradley narrowly lost the race. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than polls had predicted.
Similar voter behavior was noted in the 1989 race for Governor of Virginia between black Democratic candidate L. Douglas Wilder and white Republican candidate Marshall Coleman. In that race, Wilder prevailed, but by less than half of one percent, despite pre-election poll numbers that showed an average lead for him of nearly nine percent. Again, the discrepancy was widely attributed to white voters who had told pollsters that they backed Wilder, but who did not actually vote for him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
Will it be a factor in this election? Based on Obama's showing in the primaries in many "white" states, perhaps not...but those were primaries, with only the democratic base voting. There is no way of knowing it if will hold in the general election.
Obama may lose and it may be because of policy, experience, character or any combination of factors that may also include race.
For the record, I am not attributing any motives to any voters here in TFP, but rather projecting the possibility to the broader electorate.