Why are white people so upset that black people are so happy?

Dude! You gotta start coming to the meetings!

Yes Mewa.

"White people" are "so upset" and the reason for this is that "black people are happy".

Can you PM the details of the next meeting.

Many won't because "white guilt" is big business. See the careers of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

You know, the more I think about this, the better I think this line of emotional thinking is.

Mewa, put your money where your mouth is. Log off, go out in the real world and get in just as many white people's faces as you can. Talk really loud so that everyone can hear your preaching.

The more your run your fat fucking mouth, the more you will alienate white's who aren't 100% on the Obama plantation.

Good luck, Urkel.

I'd be satisfied if we got another fat lady story out of him.

This whole thing is just depressing. I don't care that the blacks voted for a balack man, if I were black I probably would have done the same. What bothers me is the media and others glorifying him before he is even in office and the fact that they didn't really cover what the man stands for in an unbiased a-political way. OK, he is black, that does not mean that he should be above criticism or given a free hand with excuses being made for him no matter what he says, does, or put on his new "president-elect" website. The fact is that we are going to have someone more liberal than Ted Kennedy with unfettered power due to congressional majorities that back him. This should be a concern for every American IMHO. The whole check and balance system is way lopsided right now.

I have OBAMA in big soap letters on my rear car window.

I have a Confederate flag decal on mine.

No dice.

You're a known liar. We need proof. Take a pic.

Make sure you get your tiny head somewhere in the pic so we'll know it's authentic.

You mean you haven't seen any cars with OBAMA plastered all over it in your neighborhood?

Don't care. I'm talking about whatever piece of shit you drive. Stand close to the camera so we can see your head.

Sorry, no pics of me and the car.

No, since Barry won, I don't see many cars anymore.

Did they all get repo'ed or something?

Except that we're talking about the proportion of voters for a candidate, not total votes received.

Nah, race was pretty much the only and primary factor. See below.

These are all very interesting rationalizations, but I think the evidence is against you on this Raoul.

Consider the following -- as recently as December 2007, Hillary and Obama were splitting the black vote evenly (this can be confirmed on 538.com).

If the reasons you mentioned above were indeed valid, then why were they splitting the black vote up until then? Shouldn't we have seen some evidence of the rationalizations you mention? In fact, the reality that they were splitting the black vote so evenly up until that point flies in the very face of the fatigue/platform argument; because there were no measurable policy/platform shifts during that time period that could be attributed to the candidate preference change that we would see just a few weeks later.

So then, what did change? It was when in late January 2008 when the Obama campaign decided to frame the Clintons as racists did Obama start to get all the black votes. I repeat, there was no change in the platform, Obama had already been on the scene, there was no major policy change etc that could have resulted in this kind of shift.....the only thing that changed was that now, the Clintons were supposedly "racist". It became increasingly obvious at that point that black racism would clearly become corollary to Obama's victory, just as sexism would also later play corollary to his victory. Btw, in case anyone's interested, a few months later, the Obama campaign would come out after the fact, to say "Oops, we really didn't mean to say the Clintons were racist, it's clear they didn't cross the line." Of course by then, the charge of racism had already been made. It really is quite remarkable if you think about -- calling someone a racist is a very serious charge, and to use it at one moment, and then recant it later, I don't know....it just implies a very cavalier attitude towards what is racist and what isn't. One can't help but be astonished at the opportunistic implications.

One final thing to consider -- we've also mentioned some other traditionally Democratic voting blocs and some people have cited Asian Americans, Latinos, etc as also continuing historical trends and voting Democrat. Fine, that's a fair statement. However if you go back to the primaries and see how these populations voted, you'll notice that their votes were much more split among the Democratic candidates than black votes were. I think that in and of itself is very telling. We saw the expected diversification of these voting blocs, but the only place that didn't seem to match up was in the black vote.

If that is what concerns you, you should blame Bush for enabling it, not the media. After the primaries, Obama's primary argument had been that this election is a referendum on George Bush, and a majority of the public agreed, so if you're upset with the results, you should have advocated for different policies during the Bush admin.

I've been trying to think of a cogent answer to this thread since I saw it, but all I can come up with is - I'm not! The only thing bothers me about Obama is that he's a gun-grabbin' democrat.

If black people are happy, well, okay, that's fine.

Your assumption of why he won. I don't agree. I think his charisma and his "hope" along with McCain's ineptitude won the day for him. A stronger GOP candidate would likely have won IMO.

Nope. See Raoul's post about O'Bannon. Obama ran very good campaign and had an assload of cash. And, furthermore, democratic turnout increased by a wide margin across ALL races, not just blacks.

Don't you think that it's a bit presumptuous to assume that the increased turnout among black voters was due solely to the fact that he was black?

That's just as ridiculous as suggesting that anyone who doesn't like Obama is a racist.

As I understand it, Obama learned from the mistakes of the last couple of Democrat campaigns, and put a team together that did a damn sight better job of getting supporters across the board first to register, then to get out and vote.

That said, one of our papers claimed today that your 'enthused, popular' election had a turnout of 66%, while our last 'apathetic, nearly ignored' election had a turnout of 61%.

Dear mods, please change the word "upset" in the subject line to "butthurt".

I imagine part of it was that everyone was so annoyed that the last two elections were photo finishes, that more people got off their asses and voted this time. I just happens more democrats got off their asses, 'cause they REALLY hated the results of the last two elections.

The pendulum of happiness has swung. It will swing back one day. People are not mad about someone else's happiness, they are worried and scared.

While you're here, what the hell does your signature actually mean?

Ask Mikey, I'm sure he is familiar with that whole proposition thing in California.

Ah, so homosexuality is the abomination. So why is it named after Obama?

Oh, I spelled it wrong

Your point completely undermines your argument.

Black people knew Obama was black when they were evenly split between Clinton and Obama. If they had decided "Let's all vote for the black guy," they would have been 80-90 percent for Obama from day one.

Whereas the reasons I mentioned would not have been necessarily have been super apparent to anyone in December 2007.

Generally, no one knew about how disciplined or aggressive the Obama campaign staff was.

Everyone thought that Hillary had it in the bag, and so some people wanted to line up behind the presumptive nominee.

Some people probably thought there was no way a black candidate could get nominated, and if they got nominated they would likely lose to a typical Republican.

Some people hadn't heard of Obama before. Obama had given the Democratic convention speech, but he hadn't done a ton of campaigning by December 2007.

And no one knew whether Obama had a better chance than Hillary among the general public.

Speaking personally, I was not enthusiastic about Obama during the early primary season, figuring that he would get to the general election and get slaughtered. I did vote for him because by the time it rolled around to the Illiniois primary, he had shown himself capable of getting victories.

The Obama campaign didn't frame the Clinton as racists AFAIK.

There were things that Clinton surrogates said that were questionable.

Geraldine Ferraro said the only reason Obama was where he was was because he's black.

And Robert Johnson said a bunch of negative things about Obama.

Even about these, I think the campaign proper was slow to pull the race card.

Even accepting that the depiction of the Clintons as racist came from the Obama campaign, it wasn't the only thing that changed.

Obama had begun to win victories in places like Iowa, which made people (including me) think, "Hey, maybe he could succeed in a general election."

Press coverage of Hillary began to be really harsh and coverage of Obama began to be really positive. Even right-wing media started to praise Obama thinking it would weaken the eventual nominee Hillary.

It came out that Obama was outdoing Hillary on the fundraising front.

Any of those could account for people -- black or otherwise -- switching.

In every presidential general election before this one, white candidates got nearly 100% of the white vote, and white candidates also got nearly 100% of the black vote.

Over 96% of whites voted for white guys in the presidential election of 2004. I saw no rage or outcry.