A quick recap of Obama’s wins this weekend:
- Maine
- Louisiana
- Nebraska
- Washington (State)
- Virgin Islands
- The Grammys
What’s interesting isn’t so much that Obama won a Grammy, but that he was competing with Bill Clinton for the award, and that both Clintons and Obama have previously won Grammy Awards.
Another interesting trend, mentioned here (among many others) is that Obama wins in a landslide in every caucus. We saw that he can win plenty of primaries, too, but he really shines in the caucuses, which tend to be poorly-attended. Combine that with him having very enthusiastic supporters, the type of people that will spend hours at a caucus, and it’s not too surprising.
“The Votemaster” (at Electoral-Vote.com) has an interesting cartogram up. The Hillary states (pink) versus the Obama states (purple) almost seem to resemble the general 2004 vote: most Kerry states went for Hillary, and most Bush states went for Obama. We still have Wisconsin and Virginia this month, with 23 delegates up for grabs. Texas is coming up in March, and the latest polls (late January) show that Clinton has a lead. Whether this will remain the case or not is to be seen.
The interesting thing is that Obama wins in places where people have to vote in public. In a cacaus everyone sees who votes for who. Racism and sexism show up more clearly in that situation. I don’t know if that is at play here or not but it is something I wonder about.
Racism and sexism show up more clearly in that situation.
I’m not sure how big of a deal they really. People are good at constructing covers for “unpopular feelings.” For example, gay marriage–I’m pretty certain that there exist 0 people in the world who oppose gay marriage because of the tax implications, but a lot of people know that if they come out and say, “I think gay people are repulsive,” they’re not going to get far in their lobbying. It happened with the Holocaust and slavery, too, in the form of pseudoscience and such that “proved” racial supremacy and inferiority.
I think the same will happen here, but on a simpler level. Lots of people hate Hillary for non-gender reasons. No one (or at least, not many people) are going to stand up in a caucus and say, “Women make terrible leaders,” but plenty of people will stand up and fault her for other reasons. And no one but them can really be sure what the real reason is. The came can be said for people opposing Obama–they might be racist, but no one’s going to come out and say, “Blacks have no position in government.” They might fault him for his stance on issues in the past, where no one can really be sure they’re racist.
(And when people jump up and accuse people of being racist for opposing Obama, or being sexist for opposing Hillary, they come across as nutjobs.)
It’s an interesting point, but I think it’s just so easy to mask, yet so hard to unmask it.