Sister Toldjah has a post about the kerfuffle over the use of the middle name of Barack Hussein Obama, the liberal Democratic senator from Illinois, and supposed rising star in the Democratic Party.
After citing Greg Tinti , Blogs of War and Blue Crab Boulevard, she concluded with:
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I don’t mind looking at a candidate’s religious background as part of his overall record. As some commenters have pointed out and I agree with, it’s important to know about it along with knowing whether or not the candidate is sincere. What I objected to was some people making Obama out to be a closet jihadi because of his name when he’s done absolutely nothing that would lead me to believe he is.
Ron Chusid of Liberal Values also addresses the issue, and like a lot of people, he disagrees with Debbie Schlussel and her “once a Muslim, always a Muslim” contentions. She wrote:
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Many months ago, readers began asking me whether Barack Obama is Muslim. Since he identifies as a Christian, I said, “no,” and responded that he was not raised by his Kenyan father.
But, then, I decided to look further into Obama’s background. His full name–as by now you have probably heard–is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Hussein is a Muslim name, which comes from the name of Ali’s son–Hussein Ibn Ali. And Obama is named after his late Kenyan father, the late Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., apparently a Muslim.
And while Obama may not identify as a Muslim, that’s not how the Arab and Muslim Streets see it. In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he’s a Christian, but they do not.
The conservative bloggers I listed all said pretty much the same thing, that the argument against Senator Obama’s presumed 2008 presidential candidacy should be based on his stand on the issues and lack of experience. And yeah, that’s the high road position.
But please, let’s not kid ourselves: we all know that not every voter is informed, not every voter looks at the high-road position, not every voter listens closely to the (mostly useless) candidate debates to form an opinion. Voters select candidates for a myriad of reasons, and whether a second person thinks a particular voter’s reasons are good or valid is irrelevant: the vote still counts.
Of course, our Democratic friends know this. They have absolutely no problem with a black voter voting for a black candidate, simply because the candidate is black. Heck, they expect such — and the government supports them in that expectation, by supporting the creation of majority black districts where reasonably possible, to insure a significant number of black candidates will be elected.
It’s only the opposite, where a white voter chooses to vote for a candidate because the candidate is white and his opponent is not, that is frowned upon, that is called bigoted.
(The same will be true if the Democrats nominate supposed front-runner Hillary Clinton: they’ll think it perfectly good and reasonable for people to vote for her because they want to see us elect a woman president, but absolutely terrible if anyone voted against her because he didn’t like the idea of a female president.)
Which brings us to Barack Hussein Obama. The Democrats see him as a rising star, a skillful orator who wowwed the crowd at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. That rising star is why Senator Obama is considering a presidential run in 2008, when his experience will be less than one full term in the Senate. Conservative bloggers are noting his inexperience, and it’s a legitimate issue. But let’s not fool ourselves: in a race in which race will be important, where people will expect black voters to vote for Mr Obama, there will be white voters who will vote against him solely because he is black. Our Democratic friends want the first part to happen, and will be aghast at the second.
Now we add the middle name, the Hussein factor. Miss Schlussel is actually correct in her arguments, because the point is less about what Mr Obama is than about how he is perceived. Some people will hear or read that middle name, and simply assume that he is Muslim, regardless of the facts, and even regardless of Miss Schlussel’s point about how Islamic culture and theology regard the issue. And some people will cast their votes based on that single perception, that he is or might be or could be Muslim.
Well, such votes are valid. And while I’d certainly like every vote to be a well-thought-out decision, since the more logically considered a vote is, the more likely it will be for a Republican, I know that not every vote will be cast on such a basis, not every vote will have thought and logic behind it (as is evidenced by the fact that Democrats do win elections), and I am not in the least bit hesitant to say that if using Mr Obama’s full name increases the number of votes against him, from people who don’t trust Muslims, that’s fine, I’m honest enough to say that I’ll take them!
Debbie Schlussel was right. Oh, people could take exception to what she wrote on the finer points, and that’s fine, but it misses the point. When it comes to politics, perception is reality, and Mr Obama’s middle name will result in people having perceptions about him that may or may not be true. And people vote based on their perceptions, because their perceptions are true to them. We ought to be honest enough to admit that, especially to ourselves.
It would certainly be consistent, should Osama become the Democratic candidate in the next Presidential elections, for Republicans to vote against him because of his middle name. After all, we know that in the 2000 elections, there were Republicans voting for the Republican candidate solely and exclusively because of his name, since he had nothing else of value on his record.
Jesurgislac wrote, exactly:
Emphasis mine — hilariously!
Well, J, in 2000 the Republican nominee was the two-term governor of our third largest and third most populous state; the Democratic nominee was the sitting two-term vice president.
In our electoral history, sitting vice presidents do very poorly in presidential elections, for the simple reason that they do not build records of their own; they are running on the record of the presidents they served. Prior to that, Mr Gore had been a senator, and senators as well do very poorly in presidential elections, because they don’t build records of achievement.
Governors, on the other hand, do extremely well: they are executives, running for an executive position. They have records of actually running something, of balancing budgets. Four out of the last five presidents were governors.
During the 2000 election, there was a lot of effort on the part of our Democratic friends to run down Governor Bush’s record. It went, basically, along the lines of, oh, the governor of Texas doesn’t really do anything, the lieutenant governor does all of the heavy lifting, the governor of Texas doesn’t have as much power as governors in other states, he’s a mostly ceremonial figure. Well, that meme never really took; George Bush was the governor of Texas, the state was well run, he was so well liked that he had no serious opposition for reelection, and regardless of how much or how little Governor Bush contributed to the good state of government in Texas, he got the credit for it, as would be the case with any governor in the US. That’s simply the way politics works.
It would certainly be consistent, should Osama become the Democratic candidate in the next Presidential elections, for Republicans to vote against him because of his middle name.
I’m not certain anyone knows Osama’s middle name, but Republicans probably wouldn’t vote for him anyway. I guess we can infer from your comment that Democrats would vote for Osama.
?In our electoral history, sitting vice presidents do very poorly in presidential elections
Actually, the most reliable method of getting to be President is getting to be Vice President.
During the 2000 election, there was a lot of effort on the part of our Democratic friends to run down Governor Bush’s record
No, there wasn’t. It wasn’t worth the effort to run down George W. Bush’s record: it was dismal where it wasn’t trivial. There was considerable effort on the part of the Republicans to talk up Bush’s miserable life, since his record was that he’d deserted from the army, he was a drunkard and a drug addict, he had a trail of business failures behind him, he had apparently committing a serious fraud from which it appeared he was only spared prosecution by having a father who was at that time President, his sole “business success” was accomplished by corporate welfare, and finally he spent two terms as a do-nothing governor of a state in the union where the governor has little to do. During his presidential campaign he escaped having to appear as witness in a serious fraud case only because a Republican judge thought it might prejudice the voters against him if the presidential candidate was forced to testify about serious fraud committed under his governnance. And he couldn’t even win the 2000 election: he lost to Al Gore, and was appointed President with the support of five Republicans on the Supreme Court and his brother’s efforts to prevent the voters of Florida getting their votes counted.
With all that, I can see the Republicans had to spend a lot of effort talking up that record: but it wasn’t worth any effort at all to run it down, since simply listing the facts is effective enough.
I guess we can infer from your comment that Democrats would vote for Osama.
No idea: I’m not a Democrat, so it would be unwise to infer anything about what Democratic voters would do from my comments.
Jesurgliac, re #5:
Actually, the most reliable method of getting to be President is getting to be Vice President.
I’d like to see some statistics on this, as it doesn’t ring true to me. 1988 is the only election in the entire twentieth century in which the sitting vice president ran and won the election. Except for that election and for Nixon, who ran and lost and then ran again eight years later, every vice presidential promotion in the twentieth century has come about because the incumbent President died or resigned in the middle of the term.
Of twentieth-century Vice Presidents who did not inherit the office and who ran for election on their own, Wallace, Humphrey, Mondale, and Gore lost; Bush won. Nixon lost and then won again later.
Hardly a stellar record, that.
J wrote:
Yeah — if the president dies in office or, as in Richard Nixon’s case, resigns. But sitting vice presidents running for the presidency, although they do very well at winning their party’s nomination, do very poorly in the general election. Aphrael noted this, and noted that Richard Nixon, who lost as a sitting VP in 1960, won in 1968 — when he ran against a sitting vice president!
Sharon wrote:
I think that Jesurgislac meant Obama, not Osama; I thought it was an hilarious typo!
J, your own comment proved my point; you simply reiterated the 2000 Democratic talking points. Trouble is, the public just didn’t accept the argument.
And, like it or not, George Bush did win the 2000 election; the media recount, undertaken much more slowly and more deliberately than the frenzied effort to
fabricate votes for Vice President Gorerecount all the votes confirmed the result.After reading Jes’s stellar endorsement of George W. Bush’s life before being elected president, one really does have to wonder how big a loser Al Gore was to lose to him.
And if it hadn’t been for the DUI story which broke less than a week before the election, Bush’s victory would have been MUCH more impressive.
I guess it doesn’t matter how many times we tell you right wingers that Bush lost Florida, kept having his thugs intervene when the Gore votes were bypassing Bush, then “stop the vote,” declared James Baker (Republican friend and business associate of GHW Bush) ,call in the Republican judges, and get Bush appointed. No matter that we told of the massive evidence of voter fraud, gerry-mandering, and every imaginable tactic to “win”, also in 2004, we on the left are just “sore losers”. Hell with the facts if they don’t please you. Facts, what a nuisance!
Al Gore, by the way didn’t gripe about anything but wanting the process of counting the votes to happen. Gee, what a concept. Count the votes. That annoying Democracy thing getting in the way, huh? Gore expecting that Democracy thing to happen, gee.
They were counted. Then re-counted, as required by state law. Bush won the Florida vote both times. End of story.
[...] Now don’t get me wrong: I was perfectly upfront about saying that the inclusing of Mr Obama’s middle name was legitimate, and that I intended to do so. I have not changed my mind about that in the least. [...]
[...] Now don’t get me wrong: I was perfectly upfront about saying that the inclusion of Mr Obama’s middle name was legitimate, and that I intended to do so. I have not changed my mind about that in the least. [...]