Common Sense Political Thought

From Private Pigg of Liberty Pundit, I learned that the campaign of Barack Hussein Obama has complained that

their backers were receiving telephone calls that made repeated reference to “Barack Hussein Obama,”

but Mr Obama’s campaign doesn’t think that they come from evil right-wingers like me, but from the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

PFC Pigg said:

Somebody tell Dana that the Hillary camp has been following his push to always put Barack’s middle name when discussing the Senator! It’s pretty silly of Obama to make a case of this, since his middle name is Hussein. Is he admitting that it is a liability? Or is he saying that there is something wrong with stating truthful information, as Hillary has done when she (or her campaign) has mentioned his middle name?

I wrote, more than a year ago, in Identity Politics:

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. (Debbie) 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!

Which makes me more honest than the campaign of Senator Clinton — not that there was ever any doubt of that! While I’m certain that there is some form of “plausible deniability” that will be employed by the Clinton campaign, the Clintons (both of them) play hardball politics, and if they believe that the use of Mr Obama’s middle name will help Mrs Clinton and hurt the Illinois senator, they’ll damned well use it!

Our good friends at the Iowa Liberal are, of course, simply aghast that someone would use Mr Obama’s middle name, as seen in this comments thread. The Iowa Voter wrote:

My last sentence about issues and charisma was, of course, aimed at Dana, not you. And for the record I’m against Dana’s below-the-belt “hussein” references. Dana’s better than that, I think, but I’m disappointed every time I see it for some reason.

Of course, when asked, no one could tell me that there was anything wrong with Senator Obama’s middle name, but just that they thought is was being oh-so-wrong for using it.

It might be smarter, however, to back away from using Mr Obama’s middle name, because in my opinion the junior senator from Illinois would be both the easiest Democratic nominee to defeat in the general election, and the least objectionable Democrat running if he actually won the general election. It might well be a wiser move to drop the middle name usage, and hope that Mr Obama can defeat the junior senator from New York, who is, clearly, by far, the most objectionable Democratic nominee.