Ahh...baseball and politics. Back when I was in Little League...the photo-oping mayor of our town borrowed my glove to throw out the first pitch for Opening Day...and I was thrilled. A few years later our out-of-photo-options mayor was indicted...and, again, I was thrilled.
Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of “fairness,” because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.
Unfortunately, baseball’s rules—pesky nuisances, rules—say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up
After Tuesday’s split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat’s Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party’s rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party’s rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama’s delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium’s Zip code.
Repoz
Posted: May 08, 2008 at 08:50 AM |
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This was early 90s, dad was close to retirement. He worked for the state. And they werren't men promoted ahead of him.
I grant your point about hiring practices when he was hired. But I think the bigger point is that the people put ahead of him weren't anywhere close to as qualified as he was (I mean that in terms of time in and experience in supervisory jobs - had they been close to equal in those regards, I imagine Dad would have been cool with it (or cooler, anyway)). Does that not matter to you? Do you really think racial harmony will be achieved by promoting less qualified minorities (and women) ahead of more qualified white men?
He worked for a state government.
Regardless of whether or not you think this was fair, or right, you can't seriously expect people it happens to to not be upset about it. Go ahead and dismiss that anger if you like, it won't change how those folks view candidates and policies. It's much the same as the folks telling minorities to suck it up and stop whining about they've been screwed in the past. That, alone, won't win many voters of that type, whether or not it's right or not.
Honest answer, bunyon, though in terms of getting the bigger picture it would help to know the state in question. But a couple of specific responses:
This was early 90s, dad was close to retirement. He worked for the state. And they werren't men promoted ahead of him.
I might not have reacted as I did had you said this in the first place. In terms of raw numbers, the great bulk of affirmative action beneficiaries have been white women.
I grant your point about hiring practices when he was hired.
Which is a huge part of the counter-argument, especially wrt African Americans. It's hardly irrelevant---though I'm not saying that you're saying that it is.
But I think the bigger point is that the people put ahead of him weren't anywhere close to as qualified as he was (I mean that in terms of time in and experience in supervisory jobs - had they been close to equal in those regards, I imagine Dad would have been cool with it (or cooler, anyway)). Does that not matter to you?
Of course it matters. The question of "qualifications" isn't nearly as cut and dried as many people like to pretend, but in the cases when it's pretty clear-cut, as you say it was in your dad's case, it's tough to argue for the sort of leapfrog hiring practice that you describe. But I think that you might also admit that these sorts of cases are not always so clearcut as all that, and that they are often exaggerated, and exploited for not-so-nice purposes by not-so-nice people.
The overall question of affirmative action is hopelessly bogged down in a mix of history, prejudice, and a way-too-abstract a conception of justice (on both sides, I hasten to add). You're never going to get it right no matter how hard you try. It would be nice if all fields of employment were like professional team sports, but they aren't. "Merit" in the narrow sense of the word often has little to do with who gets picked and who doesn't. The polite word for this is "networking," and although it can be racially benign, that's not always the case. And if whites are doing most of the hiring, its effect isn't always beneficial to black people.
Countering that, you have both formal and informal affirmative action schemes, and if they're run by the bureaucratic and CYA imperatives, then in lots of cases people like your dad will suffer, and there's no real excuse for that other than it demonstrates one particular side of human nature---and in this case results in what seems to be some sort of a quota system. By saying this, of course, I'm accepting your dad's version of events. It's no slight on your dad to say that there may have been another side to the story.
How the hell do you resolve all this? God knows. Obviously the Platonic goal is a work force hired on a broadly meritocratic basis, where race (in all cases) and gender (in most cases) are not factors in either hiring or "steering" by high school counselors---which is how many minorities and women over the years were channeled into lower forms of employment.
And just as obviously, there is a major conflict in some cases between pure meritocracy (however broadly defined) and the competing ideal of a work force that's roughly representative of the demography of the local population. (At this point, I leave out certain niche fields that for benign reasons have attracted disproportionate numbers of one particular group or another.)
On the one hand you want to be fair to the individual, but at the same time you also have to acknowledge that a society that is marked by one group cornering a disproportionte number of the best paying jobs is not the best of all possible societies.
And to square the circle, it's obvious (to me, anyway) that two broad societal changes are going to have to happen. Without them, all you're talking about is charity and band-aids.
First, the whole culture of learning has got to penetrate much further down than it does now. I'm not sure how you can accomplish this in a free society when it often seems as if we honor the superficial over the substantive almost as a matter of reflex, but to the extent that the problem is swept under the rug, we will inevitably gravitate towards an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the factor of race will only accentuate this.
(And when I say "the whole culture," let me be a bit more specific. By that I mean both---both---the largely disfunctional culture of broken families and homes, disproportiately but by no means exclusively an African Americn phenomenon; and---AND--- the larger societal culture that we old grouches like to deride: Mindless and largely passive forms of entertainment that cater to the lowest common denominator; and the general hostility towards any sort of thinking that doesn't reduce itself to sound bite arguments. The political ads are only one of the more depressing examples of this---and the fact that they WORK is even more depressing.)
And second, we have to make some sort of a break with the whole every man for himself mentality that's been so accelerated in the last three decades. In the abstract, the idea of pure individualism and individual responsibility is bracing and benign. But in practice, what we've gotten by taking this philosophy to its seemingly logical conclusion is the withdrawal of the middle and upper classes from the public school systems, leaving those behind with fewer and fewer examples of good role models among their peers, and making the gap worse (with a handful of exceptions that get all the attention) with each generation. And you are not going to solve this by privitazation, charter schools or home schooling. These aren't necessarily bad in themselves in all cases, and for many individuals they may offer the only form of relief, but their overall effect is to isolate the left behinds even more than they were before.
And bunyon, the result of all these complex and historical interactions is that people like your dad get plssed off, but plssed off largely at the wrong people. Neither he nor those women who got hired over him put all this machinery in place. They just happened to come along when they did, and there is no rational reason why they should hold each other responsible for where they happen to have wound up.
We like to think that we ourselves are solely responsible for our own fates, and to a huge extent we are. But that's only part of the story, and to the extent that we deny the other (collective) part, we're only going to be having this same conversation a hundred or a thousand years from now.
Regardless of whether or not you think this was fair, or right, you can't seriously expect people it happens to to not be upset about it. Go ahead and dismiss that anger if you like, it won't change how those folks view candidates and policies. It's much the same as the folks telling minorities to suck it up and stop whining about they've been screwed in the past. That, alone, won't win many voters of that type, whether or not it's right or not.
Tough to argue with that. But to relate this to the specifics of this year's election, I'm not sure how this falls on the shoulders of Barack Obama, beyond his symbolic presence as a black man.
Speaking of bravado.
You make some decent points, but I think you are overrating McCain and underrating Obama based on your own intense seemingly somewhat angry partisanship. One big thing Repubs will pick up on is that "Obama is too liberal", but as Andy said upthread, Demos said the same stuff about Reagan in reverse, and I know, although I was very young at the time, that many liberals badly underrated the value of Reagan's charisma because of their dislike of his message.
Obama is not Reagan on the stump--he lacks some things Reagan had and has some things Reagan didn't--but he is not Dukakis, Gore, or Kerry, either. It is worth noting that even post-Wright, he didn't do much worse in PA than expected, and did better in NC and IN than expected. Yes, the Democratis Primary is a different field of play than the general, but he has some things going for him I think you either miss or view with contempt, and he is a skilled campaigner and speaker.
Well, you make some good points, and I think like you say, the country as a whole tilts slightly right. But it's important to note that while people are sick of BUSH, they are not sick of being Republicans--they are mostly proud of that, as they should be, if that is what they believe. So, it is not unexpected or surprising that it will be close, nore should it have been in 1976.
One white, one black.
The first was black. Dad (and a fair number of others) werre pissed. He kept working hard, though and within a year it was clear the lady (who was actually very nice) was out of her depths. She took a payoff and moved to another organization. Dad figured he was in. They promoted a white lady no more experienced than the first woman. He was within a couple of years of retirement and basically phoned in those years. The second lady was also pushed out after a dismal performance and Dad was no longer a candidate due to being close to retiring and a less than sterling recent record (as he admits). He did have the chance to tell his superiors where they could shove it. Which is something.
Dad wasn't pissed at the ladies. He was pissed at the system - at the politicians who pushed a system that rewards and promotes based not on merit but on identity to replace another system that did the same.
Tough to argue with that. But to relate this to the specifics of this year's election, I'm not sure how this falls on the shoulders of Barack Obama, beyond his symbolic presence as a black man.
The history of racism in America can't be escaped and it is going to rear its head in any election featuring a black politican. That history includes affirmative action and there is a lot of lingering anger out in the land about it. It may have been meant well - it may have done some good even - but a lot of folks didn't like it, whatever the merits. That largely lies on Democratic shoulders and it's an actual issue even if the pain and suffering was nothing compared to what blacks went through in America. Your original post basically made light of it. It's a real issue and a politician will discount it at their peril.
You're right it's complicated. But ignoring it or acting as if the anger is false or unjustified won't be productive. (as it isn't when whites tell blacks to forget the past). As long as we keep wailing on each other, it'll just keep going on.
I think the solution is to start young. Just handing over jobs and responsibilty won't work if the person doesn't have the skills and training. Until we get a handle on the early education (which others here can speak to far better than I, but it includes family life, schools, etc.) inequality is going to be there along with bitterness and anger that is born of it.
EDIT: Oklahoma, by the way.
Tactically Obama has one unavoidable flaw in the general election; He's losing white people at a disastrous rate. His showing should have been better and better after he took a decisive lead in the primary race sometime in Feburary, (I would say the Wisconsin primary) because of the bandwagon effect. Instead his white support has become embarrassing because of the loss of white men and conservatives, who voted for him back in Feb. He's losing his white support even with tons of cash and loads of ad time. It's useless to look at the PA etc. primary votes as a whole. The only relevant primary data for the GE is the white percentages.
If by the mythical "something he has" you mean a two-months-long inability to broaden his appeal among white Democrats, then I'm not missing much.
I think the solution is to start young.
That's it in a nutshell. But the old folks are going to have to do the starting, and that's not going to happen as long as our only way of thinking seems to be every man for himself. It's one of the major items that I think that a President Obama will have to address, and he's certainly the candidate most likely to do just that.
They said the same thing about Clinton after the Jennifer Flowers story broke. But he recovered and ended up winning.
You're missing the fact that prior to that, his rise was meteoric amongst white voters. You can't go on forever like that and he has plenty of time to win them back. He's already won the nomination, even if Hillary hasn't figured that out yet.
God Damn America is much more toxic than any bimbo explosion.
Of course you wouldn't know that.
Running against McCain is going to be different than running against Clinton. That, among other things, is what your partisanship is causing you to "miss."
And in spite of the early rhetoric, few conservatives were going to support him anyway.
This is no doubt one of the tiers of HC's argument that they should pick her instead of him.
Did Obama say that? I'm not aware of that.
Will Obama definitely win a blowout? Of course I don't know that. Has the country moved decisively away from Bush and the Republicans? Yes.
Wright said what he said; people will read it how they want. I was asking if you listened to the sermon.
He's had his 15 minutes of fame, twice now.
Mind you, I'm not happy about him by any means, but nor have I ever seen anything that suggests Obama ever adopted those statements or that he owes Wright or his ilk anything politically. (Maybe the nutty preachers that McCain has been kissing up to lately haven't known him as long as Wright has known Obama, but who knows what he has promised them in exchange for their blessing.)
-CBS/NYTimes had Obama up 12 before Wright (2/20-24) and up 11 after Wright (5/1-3)
-AP/Ipsos had Obama up 10 before Wright (2/22-24) and up 4 after Wright (4/30 - 5/4)
-Gallup had Obama down 1 before Wright (2/21-24) and down 1 after Wright (5/1-3)
-CNN had Obama up 8 before Wright (2/1-3) and up 4 after Wright (4/28-30)
-Fox had Obama up 4 before Wright (2/19-20) and down 3 after Wright (4/28-29)
-NBC had Obama down 2 before Wright (1/20-22) and up 3 after Wright (4/25-28)
-Pew had Obama up 7 before Wright (2/20-24) and up 6 after Wright (4/23-27)
-Newsweek had Obama up 2 before Wright (2/28-3/1) and up 3 after Wright (4/24-25)
-Cook had Obama up 9 before Wright (2/28-3/2) and up 1 after Wright (4/17-4/20)
Overall, Obama has on average gone from 5 points up to 3 points up. The evidence of massive movement in general election voters is just not there.
EDIT: I wanted to cut off my average before the Cook poll, but since it showed the most extreme movement to McCain, I included it even though it's a little out of date, in order that I can't be accused of futzing with my endpoints.
Who says polling practices are biased?
Most of the voters that are turned off by Jeremiah Wright weren't going to be voting for Obama anyway.
The gap between self-identified Democrats and self-identified Republicans has widened enormously over the last four years.
Tactically Obama has one unavoidable flaw in the general election; He's losing white people at a disastrous rate.
He's not. His percentage of the white vote has been pretty constant.
Why is that? It's the one thing about which both parties are 100% correct.
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