It is hard to ignore it in this campaign.  Race.  

For the first time ever, we have a presumptive nominee who is an African American.  There is no escaping it.  Race.  

Senator Obama delivered nothing short of an inspiring speech about it.  Race.  

But don’t we live in a colorblind society?  Shouldn’t race be inconsequential?    No.  And no.

Thoughts about being Black or White in America.

The demographic of white, working class fit's me to a "T". I am a Democrat and I live in the state of Kentucky. I have long been a supporter of John and Elizabeth Edwards and still am, in fact I even voted for John in our recent primary.
I, like most middle class Americans, have had dreams of a better life only to have the current administration dash them to the ground. I have seen my wifes job of 19 years go over seas I have watched as my business went under to rising fuel and energy costs. I now, like my wife, have an hourly job that barely keeps the bills paid.  

Putting my asbestos suit on. I am unambiguously trying to stir things up. Devils Advocate. Discuss. Tell me I'm wrong. But.

African Americans will be rioting on election day 2008. I'm likely to join them. When their voting rights are suppressed in the first election of one of their own are enforced, the result will be inevitable.

UPDATE Epilogue (10:40 CDT June 16, 2008): I could have worded things more delicately, but I'll stand by the main premise. Also, "concern trolls" are usually interested in raising doubts in order to support the opposite stance of the community. We all overuse the term in lieu of engaging in the substance of an argument. So, if I'm a concern troll, how is my diary going to inadvertently influence how black and white people vote? Yup. Logically, not at all. In the end, my point is more to ensure that caging doesn't happen and that enough working voter machines are in place in locales such as Cleveland and St. Louis (when they have NOT been sufficient in the past).

If you don't think it can happen, you haven't been paying attention for the last dozen years. Make me wrong (as usual) people.

This from cnn.com:

http://www.cnn.com/...

CNN correspondent and Grand Dragon Wizard Jason Carroll implies that Barack Obama marked himself as biracial on his census form.  By which he means that Barack Obama SHOULD HAVE marked himself as biracial on his census form.

Cnn's Jason Carroll

Surfing through the black-oriented political blogs yesterday, trying to get a sense of the reactions to Hillary Clinton’s concession speech, I was struck by the number of comments by those who still didn’t think Barack Obama was "black" enough to lay claim to being the first Democratic nominee.  

The fact that he grew up with a white mother, an Indonesian stepfather, and his two white grandparents have convinced these holdouts that Obama’s upbringing disqualifies him from the right to claim to be African American.

Of all the things we as black people have done to ourselves since we’ve been in America, none of them is more preposterous than this need to authenticate ourselves through this imaginary, ill-conceived litmus test, a measurement whose many permutations all contain the same common denominators – to have experienced at some time during your life a certain amount of shared suffering, poverty, or poverty-level subsistence.  

All day long I have struggled with emotions I did not anticipate when I came to work this morning.  As the delegate count for the Democratic Presidential nomination inched closer and closer to 2118 my heart beat faster and faster.  I became increasingly unable to focus on work.  I fought back tears welling up in my eyes and stifled the desire to shout with joy.  Every few minutes I thought back to my grandmother and our ancestors.  This has been a wonderful day for all of us.

I am a 52 year old "white" male.  I am a middle-class, professional living in eastern Washington.  I was born and grew up in Western Iowa.  In Iowa, Illinois and now Washington I have served as a PCO for the Democratic Party.  In 1976 I campaigned in Iowa and New Hampshire for Fred Harris.

Its hard if their campaign and the Clintons themselves dont stop. You Clintons supporters see no evil in the campaign and I respect it, but they ran a campaign against Obama and his supporters like the republicans would have ran and its hard to get over that. Think about it, you guys are sore because you lost, we are sore because of the insults (he's just talk, his supporters are just black or young or liberal and stupid), the put downs (he's so naive), the race baiting (he's just like jesse jackson), hurting Barack for the fall (making the bitter comments bigger than they were, scaring jewish voters even more about him, scaring the cubans in Florida, shiting on him in Ohio and Michigan, Gov Rendell's , fat piece of shit, calling Obama a weak candidate while pretending to praise him, etc) and the shit Bill said today. What are you gonna do, say oh we were just kidding? For the last 2 months we have known it was over and had to sit by and watch Barack be shitted on by the Clintons, the republicans party, Bush and McCain; and the last 2 weeks, forget about it. Before you jump all over Barack's supporters, blog to Hillary and her campaign and tell them to chill the fuck out.

Crossposted at trueconservative.typepad.com.

The most compelling demographic analysis I've seen lately: Alan Abramowitz's "The Incredible Shrinking Republican Base" on Real Clear Politics.

Short story: White Married Christians--the combined demographic--is and has been the base of Republicans' victories. Ignore income. Ignore gender. Ignore age. If you're white, married, and Christian, the odds are six or seven in ten that you'll vote Republican.

More below.

We've heard a lot about the "white working" class from the media and the Clinton campaign this year.

We've heard a lot, despite the fact that no Democratic candidate for the white house has won either the white, white working class, or white male vote since 1964 (though democrats have won the white house obviously). But it must be important, if the media keeps bringing it up, right?

Though, people "in the know", cite it's more a regional issue, than entirely a racial one (why do whites in almost every other region besides the historically racially charged South and Appalachia vote so well for Obama)in various primaries.

To add fuel to the fire, the media continues to dubiously transpose Primary results, to general election results. The media repeats this, despite the fact any pollster or strategist, can tell you, its a faulty premise (and they know it) to begin with.

But low and behold, look what I found in the NYT this morning. It was a article written by John Harwood in their caucus section, regarding the now infamous "white working class" vote.  Here's the link:  

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Update: My statement on the Irish is a little off. According to some posts below, the Irish immigrants I refer to are not the same as the Scots-Irish that Senator Webb discusses. I will definately do more homework on the subject and perhaps even pick up Senator Webb's book! Thank you for the informative posts.

There is a recent video on Huffingtonpost.com about Senator Webb's comments on the Scots-Irish voting bloc. After watching the clip, I was impressed by Senator Webb's nuanced analysis of this segment of the country. However, many of the comments to this article were negative. These posts exclaimed how insensitive the Senator's comments were. However, I do not believe Senator Webb was attempting to trivialize slavery, but simply offering an explanation for their votes and a solution for reconciliation.

Cross posted to Sinister and the Randi Rhodes Show message board.

As a white, working class voter, I've been pigeonholed like crazy in this election. Yes, I voted for Clinton during the primary, but my objections to Obama were certainly not racial. Rather, they were based on a few things. First of all, I was pissed at Obama for the whole Donnie McClurkin fiasco last year. I was infuriated that Obama would stand on the same stage as a vicious homophobe, and then not apologize and fire McClurkin from his "gospel tour" when McClurkin's hateful views were uncovered.

Beyond that, though, I didn't think Obama had enough gravitas to go with his charisma. I, like a lot of folks, first thought of Obama as an "empty suit" with little to offer but inspiring rhetoric not backed up by the experience necessary to make stuff happen.

Who won the WAR, EARLY is and was never in Doubt... Hillary no matter her absolute Race/Gender Divisive Primary Campaign, being the loser, she’ll have too campaign twice as hard as she is campaigning today, HARDER than any other 2nd place finisher in American history, or Democrats will lose in November.

Much has been made of Obama's supposed increasing problem in securing the white working class voters. I believe that this problem is greatly overstated and is mainly connected to white voters in particular areas rather than white working class voters in general. In particular Obama seems unable to compete with white working class catholics in the northeast as well as in Appalachia. Further, his performance among this group has been hidden due to the use of caucuses in the areas in which he did particularly well. In addition his difficulties with these demographics are not becoming worse as the Clinton camp would like us to believe.

While there are many things I'm going to miss when Hillary's candidacy ends, one thing I will not miss is the malarky that she's better able than Barack to win white, working class votes and that this supposed ability is critical to the Democrats winning in November.

So here we are three days after the nomination race is finally, completely, unattainble for the junior Senator of NY.  

The scene:

Backstage at an Obama rally, present day. Senator Barack Obama, walking back to his limo, runs into President William Jefferson Clinton in the hall.