Senator Barack Obama finds himself in no-win situations much of the time
Categories: Featured, Politics and Elections
Written By: Shawn Williams
Senator Barack Obama talked about no win situations some last week. Most recently this came up in relation to the never ending assertion that Obama is Muslim. If he vehemently denies all the rumors that spread then it can be viewed as him dissing Muslim Americans. But as a Christian he has to clear up misinformation regarding a religion that he does not practice.
Obama’s trip overseas also put him in a similar damned if you do, damned if you don’t predicament. John McCain and the GOP folks slammed him for weeks because he had not visited Iraq. Now all of a sudden they have tried to spin the warm reception he received abroad into a negative.
Making matters worse, McCain has brought on some of George W’s cronies to further smear Obama’s trip. Now they are saying that Obama didn’t visit wounded soldiers in Germany because he couldn’t take the media with him. There’s not a shred of evidence to support this claim.
In some political circles he’s viewed as the most liberal Senator in Congress, while many (of us) say he’s moved too far right with his support of FISA legislation. His Kenyan heritage and Hawaiian upbringing leave whites with the impression that that he’s not American enough, while the fact that his father wasn’t part of the Civil Rights struggle leaves some African-Americans with the impression that he’s not black enough.
In many ways that’s politics. There’s nothing that you can do to find favor in the eyes of your opponent or your detractors/haters. But in the case of Senator Obama there’s always more to it, and its frustrating to watch it play out.
Anytime someone black says -or raps- something during the campaign, Obama has to answer questions about it. We hear conservative talk use code words referring to his race, but if he responds then he’s “playing the race card from the bottom of the deck.”
Throughout the year Obama has made a habit of turning no win situations into victory speeches. We’ll see if this holds true when McCain and his Low Road Express throw the kitchen sink at him.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Shawn,
This is one of the very reason I am such an avid supporter both with my time and financially Obama campaign. Obama epitomizes what us regular everyday Black people find ourselves myriad in everyday. Obama has consistently been able to circumvent the nastiness of people and politricks, Obama is fighting not only against negative stereotypes of black men but against the entitlement factor which so many who prosper from deny they receive. To me this is more telling and blatant than the outright Nigger racism this tells me that you are ok until you try to reach what belongs to me. There will be those that claim most fervently (i.e. Phelps) that his politics have nothing to do with his race but that he is untried, untested, a freshmen with no experience. But then so was Bush, right?
August 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am
The overseas trip was an unforced error in general. He’s been fighting a perception of arrogance (and the “arrogance is a code word for uppity” thing is the worst defense the campaign could come up with — it just adds to the arrogance perception) and he decides to take what can easily be seen as a “victory lap” around the world, campaigning to people who can’t vote in the election? If he was in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, he put himself there.
Please flip this around and look at it from the other side. To a white person, when you say that, the most likely reaction is going to be, “you can never criticize a black person without them making into some sort of racial thing. To them, it is always something to do with race.” If Obama is going to appear post-racial, then he is going to have to take his lumps without bringing race into it, fair or unfair. And there are enough proxies doing it also that he is going to have to have a Sister Soulja distancing at some point.
OK, this is ridiculous. Whenever anyone on the conservative or evangelical side says something during the campaign, McCain has to answer questions about it. He had to talk about Hagee, who’s services he’s never (to my knowledge) attended. He has to answer questions about Bush (even though people on the left used to like McCain for not getting along with Bush.)
And even Obama and Axelrod agree that the “doesn’t look like the guys on dollar bills” was a reference to race. Pushing the opposite just feeds into the perception of “can’t criticize” from above. I can’t think of too many white people who would like to be in the position of not being able to criticize the president without being called a racist for the next four years.
And Bush was somewhat tested, as a two-term governor of the second largest state in the Union. Gore and Kerry were both more qualified for office than Obama, and they failed to win the election. Race is becoming an issue in the election, because Obama is falling back on it when he starts to slip in the polls. Inexperience is a good argument, but please don’t misunderstand me — I would vote against him for the same reason I voted against Gore and Kerry — his politics are terrible. Lack of experience is just gravy.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Since you’re interested in writing about Barack Obama as well as Dallas issues, I wanted to let you know that “Babies for Obama” is based out of Dallas. More info here:
http://www.BabiesForObama.com
Thanks!
Maddie G., Big Baby
http://www.BabiesForObama.com