US Presidential 'Race' issues

Last week I picked up on the dormant "race" issue in the US Presidential Elections ..... as far as I know, I may have been the first to publicly note that a high ranking black Republican, who was a 'life long friend' of the white Republican candidate, was nevertheless going to vote for the black Democrat candidate.

His reasons were transparently weak .... 'the Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin didn't have the experience to be a possible President' .... well neither does Mr Obama, who shares a very similar political record with Mrs Palin.

I noticed on Friday that the BBC had picked up on this theme (modesty forbids that I claim a secret reader!), and was running a story on Democrats who would not be voting, or even voting Republican, for 'race' reasons.

As I have previously suggested in a blog on Obama, "the secrecy of the ballot box allows for many a private opinion to be exercised" and we may still see a wave of voters using Mr Powell's apparent decision to choose race over party as the excuse for them to do the same, with unpredictable results.

Et Tu Colin!

George W Bush, the 43rd and Republican President of the United States of America, is discovering that when you are down, you really find who your friends are .....

Today, a man he promoted to high office, Colin Powell, has betrayed him and the Republicans by declaring his support for the Democrat presidential contender Barack Obama. He is somewhat disingenuously claiming that its the appointment of Sarah Palin as VP contender by John McCain, that has led him to switch allegiance like this, because she "simply isn't ready to be president" but presumably Mr Obama is.

Just for the record

• Sarah Palin entered local state politics in 1992 and entered national politics in 2006.
• Barack Obama entered local state politics in 1997 and entered national politics in 2004.

That looks very similar to me, and in fact, if anything, Mrs Palin has five years practical experience more than the Ivy Leaguer Mr Obama, who spent his time editing the Harvard Law Review, instead of dirtying his hands in small council politics.

The fact is, that this looks remarkably like some sort of 'racial solidarity' in action, disguised as something else so as not to allow 'whites' to justify doing it openly as well.

However this may well come to be seen as the first split along the racial divide, with a top Republican, who was after all considered a possible black candidate for the Presidency on behalf of the Republicans (rumour has it that his wife dissuaded him, because she believed he would be assassinated), preferring to back a Democrat (who just happens to be Black), against a Republican 'personal friend' (who just happens to be White).

The reason I felt moved to blog about this is that on the radio this Sunday morning, a guest (either Kevin Day or Joe Challands - I think it was him), was just back from the 'States', said that there was a feeling over there, that a lot of whites, including Democrats, would not actually vote for Obama when they were in the booths, because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for a black man. He was implying that they were telling pollsters etc that they would vote for Obama so as not to seem 'Racist', but that they were not actually very keen on him.

Now I have long had a suspicion ('..... the secrecy of the ballot box allows for many a private opinion to be exercised') that this might be a factor on the day, however with only 2 weeks to go before the election, I was wondering if the "Race question" in the US may actually have disappeared, because there was no obvious sign that any doubts bases upon race were being expressed.

Now however, I am convinced that it will in fact be a big, if 'unspoken' factor in this election, and that the public defection of Mr Powell, on demonstrably very weak grounds, may free a lot of white consciences about what they were secretly thinking, because now a black man has broken ranks and apparently chosen race over party loyalties.

PC politics has meant that whites are not allowed to ever publicly mention race as a consideration, but the privacy of a ballot box still allows that Non-PC opinions can be expressed .... in a fortnight we will see if the white US still considers this to still be an issue in politics.

If its a very close result, then it will have been the word that dare not speak its name, that will have come into play.