{"id":60,"date":"2007-11-28T16:23:28","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T16:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html"},"modified":"2007-11-28T16:23:28","modified_gmt":"2007-11-28T16:23:28","slug":"r-f-g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html","title":{"rendered":"R + F &gt; G ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The most important political question in the Democratic race is whether Barack Obama will win the black vote.  We forget  that in 1988 Jesse Jackson won 13 primaries and caucuses while appealing to a smaller sector of the white vote than Obama does.  If Obama were doing as well among African Americans as Jackson did, he\u2019d now be in the lead.  He\u2019d sweep the south and probably the nomination.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nYet the African American who has a real chance of becoming president is doing <a href=\"\u201d\">worse<\/a> among blacks than the one who didn\u2019t.  In one national poll, Hillary Clinton was beating Obama 57 to 33 among blacks. If Obama loses the nomination it will be because of the black vote.<br \/>\nThe two most common theories for this phenomenon are:<br \/>\n1) Hillary\u2019s women-ness trumps Obama\u2019s black-ness for African American women.<br \/>\n2) Schooled in the obstacles facing blacks, African Americans believe that the nation will not elect a minority as president so they don\u2019t want to waste their vote.<br \/>\nThat second point reminds me of Jews and Lieberman in 2000.  When Lieberman ran as Gore\u2019s Vice President, I remember many older Jews worried that \u201cthe country is not ready for a Jewish president.\u201d No group is more pessimistic about discrimination than the discriminated. However, in the end they did vote for the Gore-Lieberman ticket. Once in the voting  booth, world-weary pessimism  gave way to hope and pride.<br \/>\nHow is Obama going about making sure this happens? In part, it&#8217;s simply by winning early.  They believe that if he wins in Iowa and\/or New Hampshire, he&#8217;ll convince blacks that he really can be President. But there&#8217;s something else. Obama\u2019s campaign has been <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2007\/10\/obama-apes-bush-04-tactics.html\">very faithy<\/a>, and there\u2019s no voting bloc in the Democratic party that\u2019s more religious than African Americans.  So if Obama wins the nomination it will be because he won the black vote, which will happen if his faith-talk helps cancel out the appeal Hillary has among African American women.   This formula  (Race + Faith &gt; Gender) strikes me as shrewd as it enables him to appeal to African Ameircans powerfully without spending a lot of time on explicitly racial appeals, which could undermine his white support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most important political question in the Democratic race is whether Barack Obama will win the black vote. We forget that in 1988 Jesse Jackson won 13 primaries and caucuses while appealing to a smaller sector of the white vote than Obama does. If Obama were doing as well among African Americans as Jackson did,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>R + F &gt; G ? - Casting Stones<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"R + F &gt; G ? - Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The most important political question in the Democratic race is whether Barack Obama will win the black vote. We forget that in 1988 Jesse Jackson won 13 primaries and caucuses while appealing to a smaller sector of the white vote than Obama does. If Obama were doing as well among African Americans as Jackson did,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-11-28T16:23:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"R + F &gt; G ? - Casting Stones","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"R + F &gt; G ? - Casting Stones","og_description":"The most important political question in the Democratic race is whether Barack Obama will win the black vote. We forget that in 1988 Jesse Jackson won 13 primaries and caucuses while appealing to a smaller sector of the white vote than Obama does. If Obama were doing as well among African Americans as Jackson did,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html","og_site_name":"Casting Stones","article_published_time":"2007-11-28T16:23:28+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html","name":"R + F &gt; G ? - Casting Stones","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-11-28T16:23:28+00:00","dateModified":"2007-11-28T16:23:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2007\/11\/r-f-g.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"R + F &gt; G ?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/","name":"Casting Stones","description":"Casting Stones","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}