It’s 9:45, and they are calling it for Obama and Huckabee. Three of the five Iowa farmers have voted, so they can predict the outcome.
Hucka-who should enjoy this win, because voters in other states get a little uncomfortable about candidates who think that they are on a mission from God. And watching coverage on CNN tonight, I believe that his campaign manager is insane.
Obama’s win doesn’t mean that Hillary’s washed up. Obama has had Iowa locked up for quite a while, because he’s from the next state over. This isn’t a huge surprise. However, Obama has been getting a lot more attention in the past month. I’m curious to see what happens in NH.
Conservatives love Obama. Bill Bennett and Kristol were cooing over him tonight. I’m puzzled about all these conservative smooches for Obama. Are they just happy to hurt Hillary or is it something deeper?
UPDATE: Must read this post by Greenwald on Hillary’s relationship with the press.
Apt. 11d 
I agree on Huckabee. Although, there are an awful lot of people who believe that the most important thing in a President is to believe in the right God, and to do so as clearly as possible.
I can’t agree with you on Obama. Iowa, particularly Western Iowa is nothing like Illinois, and is absolutely nothing like Chicago. The lad’s done extremely well for himself. What I thought was interesting was he came up as the second place vote for a lot of the lesser candidates’ supporters as well as bringing a lot of new voters into the fold. If he can do that in the General Election we’ll be in a good spot.
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Oh, I agree about Obama. He has done really well for himself. And I like him a lot. I could easily pull the lever for him. I was just saying that the polls have shown Obama doing very well in Iowa for a long time. His win wasn’t totally out of the blue tonight, though his margin of win was bigger than expected. It’s also really interesting that he is pulling in the supporters of the lesser candidates. I wonder where Edwards supporters are going to go.
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Another mid-west resident chiming in to say that “one state over” doesn’t really apply when you are comparing Chicago and Iowa.
We were counting the references to “god” in all the speeches. Huckabee won by a landslide in that one. Obama, interestingly enough, had none.
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One of the RBC fellows talks about why prominent conservatives don’t mind Obama so much.
There are a lot of rank-and-file conservatives, and not just in the South, who won’t pull the lever for a black man. Of course they won’t pull the lever for any Democrat either, so that hardly matters in terms of an election.
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Hillary’s third place finish, behind Edwards, does not bode well, however.
I’m not a Democrat, so I’m an outsider to this, but I would bet on Obama securing the nomination at this point, barring any huge scandals showing up.
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Obama and conservatives–interesting subject. From my fairly conservative perspective, Obama is by far less bad than either of his major competitors, largely because he’s not contemptuous, not overtly hostile, and not trivializing toward religious conservatives. He’s not going to say his favorite book of the New Testament is Job; he’s not going to stop going to church over a bike path; he’s not going to hire a violently anti-Christian writer as his internet media coordinator.
In other words, he disagrees with me; that a considerable difference from “he loathes me.”
There are a lot of rank-and-file conservatives, and not just in the South, who won’t pull the lever for a black man
Fewer than you would expect, I think.
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I tend to think the race issue is really a cultural issue these days. I don’t mean to say that Obama “acts white”. But he is not the black stereotype that many have a knee-jerk response to. Last night I heard a commentator on CNN compare Obama to Jesse Jackson and I thought, wow, is that really an appropriate comparison? Jackson came to political life via the civil rights movement and the pulpit, and it was obvious even in his patterns of speech. Obama went to Harvard Law.
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SC, my anecdata says otherwise; polling would probably be unreliable (what David Duke polled and the share of the vote he actually received, for example); and if you look at which movement people who previously publicly held segregationist views have historically gravitated toward, it’s not one on the left.
On the other hand, Alan Keyes won 27 percent of the vote against Obama in Illinois.
If Obama does win the nomination, let’s just see how much contempt comes at him from conservative quarters. I remember quite a bit directed at John Kerry. Purple heart band-aids anyone?
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“There are a lot of rank-and-file conservatives, and not just in the South, who won’t pull the lever for a black man.”
There aren’t a lot of Black conservatives (or conservative-friendlies), but I think that by and large, their race is a positive rather than a negative in their reception by the conservative masses. (You know the old joke about what you call the one African-American at a conservative conference–the keynote speaker.) Colin Powell has enjoyed this phenomenon, as has Condoleezza Rice. Clarence Thomas has a biggish conservative fan club–note the warm reception his recent memoir got. My very favorite African-American conservative would be Thomas Sowell. He’s very smart and very original and he also wrote a very interesting memoir, too. If he’d taken a slightly different career path, he’d be Supreme Court material. His books on the economics of ethnicity and culture are fascinating, and his “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” is almost too interesting to quote. I haven’t read Shelby Steele besides his “White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era” but his article on “The Loneliness of the ‘Black Conservative'” seems worth a look. The thing is that the available pool of Black conservatives is small, and seems skewed towards grumpy, introverted iconoclasts (and I mean that in the best possible sense), whereas a successful politician needs to be a cheerful extrovert with no need for personal space or privacy.
As to Obama, just about everyone thinks he has a nice personality, but he’s woefully underqualified. Anyone who doesn’t like George W. Bush and thinks him a light-weight should think seriously about yet again electing a nice but inexperienced guy as a break with the previous 8 years of politics and hoping that nothing much important is going to happen from 2009-2017.
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Those of us who think that Bush is a light weight think so because of his inability to learn and incorporate his new knowledge into his decision making process. His past history suggested that he was a light-weight, and his performance as president has continued to support it.
By no means is Obama a light-weight. I frankly have never in the slightest, understood the idea that the other candidates were significantly more “experienced” than Obama on any measurable scale. Huckabee was governor of a small southern state; Giuliani a mayor; Edwards & Clinton senators. Let me tell you that navigating politics in Chicago (as an outsider, no less) gives you a lot of political experience. It’s the hotbed of politics, and I’d guess that some of Obama’s current successes are a result of training in that firepot, where everyone has an opinion. (who is the “everyone” anyway, Amy, and how many of them voted for George Bush?).
The next person who becomes president is going to have to do a lot of on the job learning who ever he/she is. I would be concerned about a candidate who I thought incapable of learning (and right now Huckabee is the one who raises that concern for me — not because he isn’t necessarily smart but because he seems to be driven by belief and ideology and not learning).
bj
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Re Doug’s comment about southerners and blacks. I think the story there is a lot more complicated than northern liberals think (and I am a northern liberal). One thing about being a northern liberal is how much one’s life can be isolated from blacks. Southern life doesn’t include that isolation, which may breed racism, but also breeds knowledge in a way that a Minnesota (or Seattle) liberal may not have.
I agree that polling won’t be reliable, but I also don’t know how big a role the race factor will play among those who might have voted for the other democrat (and I don’t think many of those would have voted for the white woman, either).
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I’m not sure how much the race issue sticks to Obama. I don’t think that most people see him as black. Aren’t most blacks polling in favor of Hillary? Last night, when Bennett was having his Obama love fest, he said that one of things that he liked about Obama was that he didn’t talk about race or victimhood or affirmative action. He’s not Jesse Jackson, as jen said. This might appeal to some people and turn off others. I can’t wait to see how this all turns out.
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bj said:
“Re Doug’s comment about southerners and blacks. I think the story there is a lot more complicated than northern liberals think (and I am a northern liberal). One thing about being a northern liberal is how much one’s life can be isolated from blacks. Southern life doesn’t include that isolation, which may breed racism, but also breeds knowledge in a way that a Minnesota (or Seattle) liberal may not have.”
The historical kinship between Southern blacks and whites is worth pointing out. In the title essay of Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” Sowell argues that what some falsely think of as African-American culture is just a carry-over Southern redneck culture, and he lists a number of persuasive examples. In one of the least PC passages (sure to offend at least 140% of the population), Sowell summarizes a book entitled “Cracker Culture”:
“The cultural values and social patterns prevalent among Southern whites included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepeneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. This oratorical style carried over into the political oratory of the region in both the Jim Crow era and the civil rights era, and has continued on into our own times among black politicians, preachers, and activists. Touchy pride, vanity, and boastful self-dramatization were also part of this redneck culture among people from regions of Britain “where civilization was the least developed.” “They boast and lack self-restraint,” Olmsted said, after observing their descendants in the American antebellum South.”
I grew up in the Northwest and my family is only peripherally Southern, but ouch that hurts!
Although I don’t know a whole lot about American Protestant history, I’d point out from what little I know, the racial history of American Pentecostalism is exceedingly complex. Here’s a snippet from the Wikipedia article on Pentecostals.
“The role of African-Americans and women cannot be underestimated in the early Pentecostal movement. The first decade of Pentecostalism was marked by interracial assemblies, “…Whites and blacks mix in a religious frenzy,…” according to a local newspaper account at a time when the Supreme Court of the United States declared in its landmark case, Plessy vs Ferguson of 1896 that government facilities were to remain racially separate, but equal. The decision ushered the Jim Crow practices of apartheid in the United States with racially separate and unequal facilities in the U.S. The forward interracial, gender equality and enthusiasm of the Azusa Revival lasted until 1924, when divisions occurred along racial (see Apostolic Faith Mission), gender and doctrinal lines. Interracial services continued for many years, even in parts of the segregated Southern United States, although after the waning years of the Azusa Revival, the practice of interracial services were nearly non-existent in many white Pentecostal churches. The Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, prior to the split in 1923, made significant inroads across racial divides, with missionary ministry to the Bahamas and elsewhere. After the 1923 divide, the bulk of the black membership followed Overseer A.J. Tomlinson into the Church of God of Prophecy.”
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Re Obama not being seen as black. I think there are a number of people who don’t see him as such (as well as others who do). He’s not black; he’s a hapa, a hapa with an unusual mix for Hawaii, where he grew up. He inherits the racial ambiguity of Hawaii.
His wife is black, though, and most people would identify her as so.
I don’t know what role race will play, but I’m excited by the fact that it’s all mixed up.
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The connection between Black and White Pentecostals/charismatics has been somewhat less visible over the past few decades. Nonetheless, even later on, there has been a continuing relationship. Jim Jones’s People’s Temple was famously racially diverse, Pat Robertson had an African-American co-host for the better part of two decades, and the bishop TD Jakes presides over a megachurch in Dallas that’s 13% white. And back when we lived in DC, it was never white people reading the Left Behind books on the metro. These are very complex worlds. My extended family could be described as conservative Protestant Republicans and we talk on the phone multiple times a week, but I find it really hard to keep up with Evangelical life. It’s an extremely dynamic environment even if you’re trying to pay attention, and I don’t think it’s easy for outsiders to keep up. Which is why journalists and Republican big shots tend to interview and/or kiss the ring of people who were last important 20 years ago.
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Barack Obama was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents, who were white. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that he’s not always perceived as “black,” whatever that may mean. And as BJ pointed out, what Obama really is, is biracial.
Too bad that Ann Obama (Barack’s mother) is dead, as from what little I’ve read of her makes me believe she’d be one of the more interesting and feisty First Mothers around. However, Barack Obama being an orphaned only child means that there are no potential embarrassing First Siblings along the lines of Billy Carter or Roger Clinton, either.
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That many black people hold conservative values is not disputed. That they vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates is also beyond dispute. Wish I could find the cite, but I’ve seen surveys showing that once a position that they support is identified as a Republican position, support for it falls dramatically among African-Americans. That is to say, the Republican image is so bad among blacks that it will lead a significant share to re-think something they already believe simply because it is a Republican position.
bj, my comment was that many rank-and-file conservatives also outside the south would never vote for a black person. Though the more relevant point is that conservatives would not vote for any Democrat, regardless of race, so it makes no practical difference.
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“People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements.”
Charles Peters in Friday’s Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html
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