I agree with Holder's statement for numerous reasons. I think you should investigate why he said it, or at least offer a rationale as to why you disagree, rather than casting aspersions about his personal views....I do think people, including you, are afraid to address issues of race.
I did offer a rationale as to why I disagree. Based on my observations, there is
not a general fear or reluctance to discuss race. At least, not in the sense that (I think) Holder meant. I mean, if Holder meant that some white people are afraid to speak truths because they'll be accused of being racist, I'd agree with that. But I'm not sure otherwise what the hell he's talking about.
Take Ferguson. Were people really
cowards when it came to discussing it? Were they "afraid" to discuss the racial aspect of it? Good God, it was a media obsession for weeks, and everyone had an opinion on it. But again,
what specific racial issue to you believe I'm "afraid" to discuss? Try bringing it up the specific racial discussion you think I'm afraid to have, and we'll see. Because honestly, I think this is a crap accusation.
I am widely considered extremely knowledgeable when it comes to U.S. political history and theory. I don't need to have lived it.
Are you a published political author or something? Because otherwise, we're all just guys on the internet, and patting yourself on the back doesn't change that, or make any thing you say more credible.
But even if you were a published author, you're claiming expertise regarding
contemporaneous public perceptions and comment, and your opinions are necessarily based on second and third hand information. That's simply ridiculous. Even the greatest historians of modern times wouldn't claim to have better knowledge of how Lincoln was perceived in 1864 compared to a literate person who actually lived back then. That's why historians value so highly contemporaneous, first-person accounts.
Anyway, unless you've gone back and read all the articles that were published back then, watched voluminous news broadcasts of the period, and engaged in discussions with lots of people
during that time, your knowledge of how Reagan was perceived at that time is inherently limited. You're basically forced to parrot what
other people have said or written about how he was perceived. In other words, no matter how much internet reading someone does, he's not going to know what it was like when the Cavs played in the Coliseum nearly as well as a guy who had season tickets.
To compare Nixon to Obama is mindboggling.
Except I wasn't. I was comparing public attitudes to Nixon to public attitudes towards Obama. Although if you run down the list of things for which impeachment was sought, much of what Nixon was accused of doing back then -- wiretaps, secret bombings, using the IRS to target political opponents, etc.., is not exactly unknown today.
Even at the time, Reagan wasn't regarded as negatively by his opponents as Barack Obama. Democrats never opposed him with the same level of vitriol as the Republicans have always opposed Obama.
Says you. I lived through it, and disagree. I read the newspapers every day, watched broadcasts, etc., and the left absolutely hated him. From support for the Contras, "starving" old people and the homeless, the AIDS epidemic, being a warmongerer, etc., the hate was at least as strong. A great many people actually considered him a murderer because of his actions in office.
This is a boldfaced lie. I volunteered for Kerry's campaign in 2004. This is total nonsense. We saw nothing like we did in '08 in '04. Nothing. Swift Boat doesn't remotely compare to the shit we had to deal with in '08.
Again, opinion. While I wouldn't deny that there undoubtedly was a nasty racial undercurrent among a small percentage, the general election saw much harsher tones towards Kerry than anything dared -- except among a small fringe -- with respect to Obama in 2008. It was kid gloves for fear of being labeled a racist.
The best example of this is cocaine. Proof that Bush had used cocaine as a young man was widely considered the "Holy Grail" for Democrats in 2000 and 2004, with the belief it would be a political death-blow. But though Obama freely admitted using cocaine, it couldn't be used as a political weapon against him because the "ooh, if we talk about the smoking pot and using cocaine, it'll look racist." So he got a complete pass.
We believed it was always between 8-12% soft voter support from African-Americans due to his race, that would help in the primaries. However, this was nullified completely by the ~15% soft voter support for Clinton due to her being a woman. This was a continual problem throughout the campaign, balancing the appeal to minorities and women across racial lines. In Ohio, race was the deciding factor.The general election is less relevant. Mathematically, when evaluating racial bias, we look at primaries or races between candidates who are ideologically very close to one another. Clinton and Obama fit the bill there perfectly. It would be far far less useful to analyze the general election.
I'll trust your expertise regarding the Democratic electorate in 2008, but do you recognize that you've changed the point we were actually discussing, which was the hatred and vitriol directed towards Obama? Not only is that different in tone from what may be a mild preference for voting for a person of your own race (which is something that may apply to people of any race), but presumably, we're also talking about completely different groups of people. After all, most of the alleged hatred and vitriol directed against Obama now is (presumably) by conservatives/Republicans, who are not the Democratic primary electorate you are citing. So to me, if we're discussing the hatred and vitriol directed towards Obama
by the right, then the
general election is the appropriate measuring stick.
It's simply inaccurate to claim the "majority" African-Americans supported Obama due to his race, that's preposterous and borderline racist in itself.
I didn't claim that to be the case. You should reread what I wrote. That being said, I don't see how opining that Obama's race was a determinative factor in the votes of a majority of blacks would be racist in any case -- borderline or otherwise.
No I didn't. Ken Blackwell is an Uncle Tom, I thought that was evident.
Now that's racist. And even if it was intended as a joke by you, the phrase as applied to black conservatives is all too common.
The vast majority of Blacks tend to vote for the most liberal candidate.... I never said the majority of Republicans were racist.
Well, now we're getting somewhere. Because while some people like to insinuate (or flat-out state) that that anti-Obama vitriol is motivated by race, how do you separate race as the causal factor versus the fact that he is just more liberal? As you said yourself, if you're trying to isolate race, you need to find people who are pretty close otherwise.
As much as the GOP hated Clinton, they hated Hilary more because she was perceived as being much more liberal. And if Obama attracted more black votes because he was even more liberal than Hilary, shouldn't we expect the conservative reaction to him be even more harsh, regardless of his race?