Taking yes for an answer: Candidate Perry is down, way down in the new Washington Post/ABC poll.
And Candidate Cain is way, way up. For our money, Cain is a horrible candidate—and an American triumph:
BALZ (10/4/11): Among all conservatives, Perry’s support has been sliced in half, from 39 to 19 percent. Some of his decline may stem from shaky debate showings: A majority of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who have watched recent debates say the more they hear about Perry, the less they like him.We liberals don’t like taking yes for an answer. But that highlighted passage is a national triumph, just as it was last year when South Carolina Republicans elected Tim Scott to the House—he’s a black guy!—over the son of Strom Thurmond.
Cain picks up where Perry has faded.
Seventy percent of those who saw the debates say the more they learn about Cain, the more they like him. Among tea party supporters, Cain’s support has surged from 5 percent to 30 percent in a month. The businessman, who scored a surprise win at the Florida straw poll, now has the edge among solid tea partyers.
Over the son of Strom Thurmond!
God keeps sending signs that we won. Why won’t we say so? Good question…
Not as simple as this, but one reason we won't say so? Because we've come to the Rubicon that MLK had crossed just before he was murdered: class, distribution of wealth. We're terrified of these issues in this country -- and we includes so-called liberals (or rather, just plain liberals -- back in the day, a suspect class for precisely this reason).
ReplyDeleteRacism in this country, in its long history, can't be reduced to any one cause, but one big reason it has persisted is the way race has been continually used as a wedge by the wealthy and otherwise privileged to maintain the system of privilege that favors them.
For this reason I have mixed reactions to a Cain. Yes, a sign of real progress. But also, he can be used, by the right certainly. But to your point, Mr. Somerby, many on the left ignore him -- and generally play up racism even where it's not a factor -- because they don't really want to do the hard work of engaging the issues of class and distribution of wealth.
I think it's hard to look at largely cosmetic wins (polling well months before a primary vote happens isn't exactly the election of Barack Obama) because of stuff like this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0726/Wealth-gap-widens-Whites-net-worth-is-20-times-that-of-blacks
and this:
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html
etc. Heck, you're always posting data about how black students do worse on standardized testing than white students do. Even if everyone is improving, that's still a problem.
If God's sending signs that racism is over, maybe she's doing it a little prematurely.
The reason Scott beat the son of Strom Thurmond
ReplyDeleteis simply explained. As some might recall Thurmond the great defender of segregation had
a secret daughter by the families teenage black
maid. He paid his illegitimate bi-racial daughter
hush money right up until his death.This is a great embarrassment to conservative southern whites who had no desire to possibly rehash these
facts through the campaign of the legitimate white son. Thus lets put all that behind us and simply elect the unqualified right wing black guy
Mr. Scott.