Evan Bayh not Running for Re-Election

Try rereading the post. He said "many."

 

Sorry, I missed it in the disclaimer. Just shows that he saw how awful his statement was. Sorry, I'm not in the target category, but I still think it's a terrible generalization that would not fly for other categories of people.

 

Whether many or most, it missed the larger point: that a large number of older white Americans who didn't vote for Obama are assumed racist without proof.

 

Well that makes it ok then...

 

The fact that it's an unsavory allegation doesn't mean it's not true. The fact that some people aren't racists doesn't mean that other people aren't.

 

The fact that there's no concrete proof it's true doesn't mean we should give it the benefit of the doubt.

And the fact that some people are racist doesn't mean another group can be called racist because there's a chance some of them are.

 

No one's calling the group racist. The statement was that the group contains a number of racist people. It probably also contains a number of people who would say they weren't racist, but would say that a black guy didn't need to be president.

As for giving the benefit of the doubt without concrete proof, we do that all the time. It's called religion.

 

I have older relatives who would swear on their last dime that they weren't racist.

They just don't understand why "the blacks" think that "they should get everything."

 

No, I didn't see how awful my statement was. Many does not mean most, and all along Obama's electoral problem was with older white people. And I heard seniors I know who consistently voted Democratic come right and say they weren't sure they could vote a black person for president. A few did. Many of them didn't.

However, I will say it's not totally fair for me to put this solely on older white people. From Slate:
http://www.slate.com/id/2198397/

In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn't vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American. And that's what Democrats in a Northeastern(ish) state admit openly. The responses in Ohio and even New Jersey were dispiritingly similar.

As for Bayh, I'm sure he would have gotten a lot of questions from older white voters not about the damned Negro, but about his votes for health care reform. It's becoming clearer that MANY older voters are afraid that if everyone gets Medicare, which they love, then they will get less of it. KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE! I get the feeling that in less troubled times, Bayh would happily vote his wife's interests and say no to health reform, figuring someone across the aisle will cancel his vote, and he can have it both ways. Not now he can't.

 

The context made clear implications. Let's break it down:

Sadly, I think you're correct, given how during the primaries white people over 65 -- a large part of the electorate -- could not bring themselves to vote for Obama.

Unprovable and undisprovable. How do we know how many white people over 65 didn't vote for Obama because of race? How do we know that those who DID vote for Obama did so because he was a man, unlike Hillary?

Heck, how many of them couldn't do so in the general election

Old white guys veer Republican. This isn't news. It's not as though this was a heavily-Democratic block that suddenly flipped to the GOP to get away from the yucky colored.

or how many of them are showing up screaming at town hall meetings for government to stay away from their Medicare.

By the by, framing it as a hypothetical or a rhetorical question doesn't free you from the responsibility of casting aspersions.

What was Biden except for a way to tell old white people that the black man with the funny name was not so scary?

Well, he was a qualified individual with a long Senatorial career and a choice that very few people quibbled with. Now suddenly he's a token to appease the crotchety old racists?

(NOTE: I'm not calling all older white people racists. But you have to be a fool to believe that race had NOTHING to do with many older people's objections to Obama.)

And an indirect ad hominem following a weak "well, they're not ALL racists" disclaimer.

How could anyone take offense at that?

That seemed arbitrary and gratuitous.

 

Might have been. Doesn't make it untrue.

 

Don't understand the purpose, though. Religion is stupid? I guess you'll find people who'll be in you, ahem, amen corner for that, but how that relates to a stereotype view of old white Americans is going over my stupid, cross-humping head.