Plainly, no one can confidently predict how large a factor racist attitudes will play in the November presidential election. In the privacy of the voting booth, people's fears and prejudices may be more powerful than the marked (and widely documented) shifts in both American law and American culture these last 40 years or so. How can they be persuaded to act on their best instincts and not their basest?
Here, it is well to recall that part of Jimmy Carter's famous Playboy interview of 1976 that almost derailed his campaign:
The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it.
The significance of Carter's words goes well beyond their role in an election. What Carter was saying, I believe, is that all of us have lust in our hearts. The only relevant question we are entitled to ask is whether we act on that lust or keep it in check. The only demand we are entitled to make of ourselves as of others is that we not behave lustfully.
Any effort to persuade voters who are bigots that they are morally wanting is likely to fail. If they've not long since gotten that message, the hope that they will at this late date experience attitudinal change is almost surely misplaced.
It will be difficult to refrain from condemnation, but useless to engage in it. What we can say to such people, quite explicitly, is that they are entitled to their private sentiments - but that they are not permitted to let those sentiments determine their vote. There's a huge difference between lust in the heart and lust in the public square; there's as great a difference between bigotry in the head and bigotry in the polling place.
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"Should" people vote from racist or bigoted motives (whether for or against a candidate)? Of course not. Will they? Of course.
The book, "Obama Nation" -- from what I've read, it is a bound-and-printed, super-long hate-the-N-Obama email. More of the Big Lie technique. I've read Obama's own words.
Suggesting that Obama was using the "race card" when he said he would have opposed Justice Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court -- please. I am not black, I am a liberal American Jew, and a lawyer, and I thought Justice Thomas was a bad choice at the time; I have read a few of his opinions since his appointment and cannot say I have been moved to change my mind. The objection is not so much political (despite my differences with the Justice on many issues of policy) as with the quality of his work, before and after his nomination; I differed just as sharply (and sometimes even more so) with former Chief Justice Rehnquist, but the clarity of his opinions and the legal reasoning in those opinions compelled respect.
Will Obama as President act exactly as Obama the candidate spoke? It's highly unlikely -- no president in my memory (going back to JFK) has acted exactly as he spoke when a candidate. In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson ran as the peace candidate!
We have a clear choice in November. John McCain will continue the Bush policies, for the most part, if he is elected, the policies of a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The policies of people who think things are pretty much fine just as they are, the policies of what can be imposed with 50% plus one vote. The policies that took a country united in the aftermath of 9/11 and made the U.S. a country more seriously divided than at any time since the Vietnam War.
We need a president who, unlike Sen. McCain and President Bush, understands that an army of occupation must inevitably be defeated. We need a president who understands the art of the possible, who has a genuine respect for the Constitution and the individual liberties it is supposed to guarantee.
And, yes, we need to put aside racist motives, or intellectually anti-racist motives, and elect our next president based on as good a guess as we can muster up, to answer the question of who will do a better job for America.
It's fitting that Leonard Fein compares Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama. Carter's inaction when our U.S. embassy was taken over in Iran in 1979 encouraged radical Islamic extremists to attack American targets repeatedly throughout the following decades, secure in the knowledge that we would not fight to protect ourselves. Obama is straight out of Jimmy Carter's "wishful thinking" school of foreign policy. In addition, Carter's fallacious, anti-semitic "Apartheid" book and Obama's 24-hour flip-flop on Jerusalem make if apparent that neither Carter nor Obama is a friend of our democratic ally Israel. Disastrous economic policies is another similarity. Carter's presidency was characterized by stagflation and sky-high interset rates (the prime rate hit a record 21.5% during his presidency). Obama's plans to raise a bevy of taxes will likely help push the ecomony into a deep recesssion. Thinking citizens oppose Obama because one Jimmy Carter was enough. Race has nothing to do with it.
Obama will bring change not more of Bush. He is not a rich guy who owns 7 houses. Congress will not let him be a king and make all decisions by himself. I'm middleclass. I need a president for me!
jackie.- BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, YOU MAY REGRET IT,then it will be late to rectify.Did you read the book OBAMA NATION.It is very interesting.My opinion- VOTE FOR OUR COUNTRY not the PARTY. GOOD LUCK
MY OPINION-VOTE FOR DEMOCRATIC LESISLATURE-republican presiden t.
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