Earlier this week I stumbled across on YouTube a set of videos called "The Lost Michelle Obama Tapes". From people in blackface to white slaves, and the "grand dragon" for the NAACP (("National Association for the Annihilation of Caucasian People"), it's like the people involved had a checklist of racist and bigoted stereotypes to use.

And the first part, with it starting out with an Islamic Call to Prayer?? Classy with a K(KK)

They call it a satirical comedy. But to be satire, something has to be based in reality. And to be comedy, something has to be funny. This is neither.

They're still up on YouTube. Grab a barf bag.

That none of the people who buy into that crap would have voted for Obama anyway, so at least there's that. I think they're part of the 25% who still support Bush.

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

I'll grant you that there are more racists on the right than in the Democratic Party, just are there more sexists, homophobes, etc. But don't think for a minute that we don't have our share.

I remember when people first started talking about whether Hillary was electable, a lot of people said that anyone who wouldn't vote for her because she is a woman wouldn't vote for any Democrat. We know now how false that is (some of us knew it then too). Same is true for racism and most other bigotries.

Many of the 25% who still support Bush loved Colin Powell (until he jumped ship) and love Condi Rice still.

There's no doubt that racism exists everywhere, in forms from simple preconceptions, to prejudice, to bigotry, to hatred etc.

I was thinking about some of the abject racists I've encountered and talked with over the course of this campaign. Some out there in the world, at a poker table in Atlantic City, or wherever. And I think that the vast majority of those who are that far gone don't participate at all.

An important feature of this campaign, over and above the policy and program implementation we hope to see in government, is a further deterioration and obsolecense of these attitudes and beliefs.

So for now its important to consider how these things affect the electorate, because ultimately it's the impact on the masses that I'm hopeful about.

I think you're right about the worst racists staying outside of politics. At least, that's been my experience too.

But what I'm talking about is just enough racism to cause someone to vote or not vote for someone. It doesn't take much. As you say, simple preconceptions, even at only the subconscious level, can cause someone to say, "I just don't think that guy's got what it takes..." I think there are a whole lot of people like that who normally vote Democratic, not to mention the ones who might have voted Democratic this year, because of the economy and the war.

You know, just as the "abject" racists, the real haters, don't participate in the political system, many not even bothering to vote, I think most of the "just enough" racists don't do much more than vote. We are much less likely to run into them in political grassroots.

I do also agree that there's less racism in America than ever before. But I think a lot of it lies just below the surface and could rise back up with relatively little provocation.

I think that there may be lots of people who find Obama uncomfortable, and they don't know exactly why. It could be based on race, even though those folks aren't consciously aware of it. That may be what you were saying, Jai.

Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark -- Make America All It Can Be!

The prof who taught my intro to psych class in college called it "covert" racism and it was one of his areas of research. Of course, that was 20 years ago and I would think that is becoming a less and less necessary topic for research. We really are a lot better than we were 20 years ago. I think the country made major "official" changes in the 50's and 60's, but the attitudes took decades more to change. I think we're on the cusp of racism (against African Americans) being a thing of the past. On the cusp. Not there yet. But on the cusp. As we get closer and closer, more and more of the racism that exists will be unknown to the "racist" and may even be explained away as being uncomfortable with that which one is unfamiliar.

Anyway, I think his name was Gaertner (my prof) and his research was interesting. (None of this would make sense today.) They would call people in New York and pretend to have dialed the wrong number for the mechanic, tell them they were broken down, it was their last dime and ask them if they would please call the mechanic for them so he could send a tow. If a black person made the call, they got significantly less help than white people. But using a statistically identical sample, they got equal responses for white and black callers if the help they asked for was more clearly something society "required" you to do for equals. (I forget exactly how they determined that.) One interesting point was that the disparity was worse among people who belonged to the Liberal political party than to the Conservative political party (NY has tons of parties.)

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

There are all too many examples of the racism below the surface that you mentioned, nowdays racism is more directed at different groups. Nowdays Hispanics and Arab Americans are more targeted than blacks, at least historically speaking. Not to say anti black racism isn't there, it still is sadly. But the situation is such now that hispanics are more targeted because of the immigration debate, and Arab Americans obviously as a result of 9/11 and the following Bush/Cheney fear mongering.

I think a lot of those slime emails circulating about Obama being a closet radical muslim, or being 47% arab is code talk on race. It's easier to stir anti arab/anti muslim sentiment than it is to get people riled about Obama being African American. It is unfortunately more politically acceptable, made so by the fear mongering of the neo conservatives and the constant drone of threats issued by the right wing noise machine.

It just moves who it applies to. A century ago, it was the Irish. That's completely gone. I think within our lifetimes, it may be completely gone for African Americans. But then the people who can only feel good about themselves by denigrating others will move on to another group--hispanics, homosexuals, Muslims, whatever.

I think during the Clinton administration, we made major strides toward getting rid of ALL discrimination and during the Bush administration we've backslid probably on everything a little, but mostly we've shifted to hating Muslims and hispanics (as you've pointed out).

During the Clinton administration, we got to the point where we could talk about these things. It was OK. We even went so far as to be able to discuss whether it was OK to discriminate against bigots. And we could talk about how to handle cultures that discriminate without discriminating against everyone in that culture.

Was that because Clinton was a liberal? Or was it because times were good and the best could come out in us? Probably both. Obama will have to be as effective as Clinton (and as lucky) in order for things to progress the way they did in the 90's. And Obama will be in a much deeper hole than Clinton was. Clinton inherited a huge deficit, but he didn't inherit Iraq. It may be a very long time before we can get back to making progress like we did in the 90's.

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

It's going to be a long road back from the abyss, how far we could have come if Gore had been CINC. We'd probably still would have had 9/11, but the responce to all of that would have been so different.

President Obama will have his work cut out for him, no doubt about it, on Iraq, on energy, on sound fiscal policy, on health care, on Afghanistan and on Iran and a resurgent Russia. President Obama will inheirit a first class mess.

Getting back to where we were in the 90s is a tall order, but I don't think the past 8 years have been a total waste. America learned exactly what a Republican president and a Republican Congress would mean for our country. We won't have a repeat of the Gingrich revolution anywhere near as easily with Bush's memory freshly seared into the minds of Americans. I don't think the gridlock of the 90s that thwarted so many of Clinton's policys is going to happen, particuraly with Hillary in the Senate.

Not because Gore would have ridden in on his white horse and stopped it, but because just about anything would have stopped it. Everything had to go perfect for the bad guys for it to come off. Anybody who cared at all probably would have stopped it.

But, yeah, it's probably best to take your strategy and not make the Republicans feel too guilty for having put Bush in there. Making them realize what they did won't motivate them to vote Democratic. It'll motivate them to stick their fingers in their ears, sing "la la la la I can't hear you," and pull the Republican lever.

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

But, I have an older relative, who lives in AZ, works at wal-mart, hates bush but was not sure who she was leaning towards.... because of emails like this that her "trusted" friend forwarded to her. (The perfect storm of neo-conism!)

I helped set her straight. She also confronted her "trusted" friend who said that "a jew would be better then HIM".

Racist.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden 08

http://barackobama.com

About what would happen if somebody said to me, "A jew would have been better than HIM." What do you say to that? There aren't too many things that leave me speechless. But I think that would. I just wouldn't even know where to start.

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

That was bullshit just like this is.

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

I've been with Obama for a long time, but I think the bloggers, media peeps and people in the Obama campaign, Axelrod etc, did themselves a real disservice by portraying the Clintons in that way. Truthfully a lot of those folks were sexists, or at the very least were spewing sexist talking points, Chris Matthews is a prime example.

That really wounded Obama, it is sad to see all the good democrats here that are ready to shut down and go home, or worse yet to go over to McCain.

Many of them I think might have been convincable had the Clintons been treated more fairly in the sense that they would not be accused of racism. A lesson Democrats should think about long and hard in the future whether or not we actually win this fall.

I think Michelle's speech at the convention was a first step in that, trying to define herself to voters.

But the sad truth is most people will not bother to do what I did, which was to read the whole thesis. Not just the snippets that the swift boaters find most useful and to take it out of context from the rest of Michelle's life, before and since.

Some folks are going to buy it, the main thing is to reach as many people as we can and let people know that there are lies about Michelle and Barack out there so that when they get that email from a trusted friend they don't take it at face value.

Lots of us Obama Bloggers are busy debunking the smears and tracking down the ones that we can, my personal favorite so far is that Obama isn't really African American but rather Arab American.

There is a chain email circulating claiming that Sen. Obama is 43.75% arab, 6.25% ethnically african and 50% Caucasian. The guy who seems to have started it all, a right wing nut case by the name of Kenneth E. Lamb who provides no evidence to back up his claim other than his own word. He encourages his readers to "go to Kenya and look up the records yourselves", as if most Americans can afford to fly to Kenya and dig through the records there. And as if the major networks didn't check this out particuraly after the McCain Panama story.

He also fasley claims that Obama won't release his birth certificate when Obama already has made it public. To top it off he recomends a absurd means of testing Obama's ethnicity, DNA testing. To that end he encourages his readers try to collect samples of Obama's hair, siliva or anything else that might contain Obama's DNA.

These guys are so crazy it is scary, and the worst part is the email is actually good enough to fool some people if they don't have guidance, I actually found out about it through Republican family members who came to me asking if it was true.

That's where we come in, so I guess you could call us Obama's good plan for fighting the smears, or at least an intergal part thereof.

i hope it works, but i fear that it will not work. some of us tried to do the same thing for john kerry.

Nick Kelly

Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.