Obama in a landslide?

In a weekend piece from the U.K.'s Telegraph comes a story that should be news to voters in the key states of Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado: Barack Obama thinks he's going to win the 2008 election in a "landslide".  "Barack Obama's senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House. 

Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.

Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party. "

Obama and his campaign are further convinced that he can win no fewer than nine of the states carried by George Bush in 2004 -- putting him on track to win as many as 340 electoral votes. 270 are needed to become president.

This confidence comes from an assumption that I find dubious: that current polls are underestimating the level of new voter registration that the Democrat's have achieved in their get out the vote drives:

"Public polling companies and the media have underestimated the scale of new Democratic voters registration in these states," the campaign official told a friend. "We're much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all."

"Their confidence that good organisation will more than compensate for latent racism will be reassuring to some Democrats, who were concerned by a poll last weekend that found Mr Obama would be six points higher in the polls if he were white. "

In my mind the Obama camp is suffering from having drunk too much of its own punch: voter registration drives are notoriously bad predictors of election outcomes. And this is particularly true if the registration drive is focused on young voters -- which Obama's certainly has been. Young voters are famous for saying they will vote and then not showing up on election day.

As far as the "latent racism" issue goes -- I also think it is overstated. In fact, I think that a reverse sort of racism -- of the politically correct variety -- may be upwardly skewing Obama's polling numbers. I have a sense that many voters tell pollsters that they will support Obama because they don't want to come off as racist or "uncool". It is a natural part of our psychology to be attracted to a black candidate as part of a greater social good, and it is part of a politically correct pressure for people to be seen as socially progressive.

But I don't believe this necessarily translates to the voting booth -- when in private, people cast a vote for president. My guess is that race will have less to do with that decision, and that policies and experience will be the determining factor. And on that score, I don't think that Obama has an advantage over John McCain. I believe that the polling doesn't accurately reflect the hesitation many people have about putting an unknown Obama into power, and that a greater percentage of those polled will choose McCain as a safer alternative.

This may not be enough to win McCain the election -- but it should provide some pause to the Obama campaign in thinking that they will win this in a landslide. I predict as close a race as Gore-Bush in 2000 -- unless something dramatic happens on either side to radically upset the balance.

It isn't surprising, however, that Obama is so confident. Afterall, he is the one we've been waiting for. Right?

Race & the Constitution: Remedial 101

While the mortgage mess gets sorted out, let's circle back to an important moment the other day when Whoopi Goldberg the celebrity and John McCain the presidential candidate both displayed abysmal ignorance of how durably the U.S. Constitution has fulfilled its declared purpose "to establish justice" for over 220 years now. Appearing on ABC's "The View," McCain said he'd appoint judges "who interpret the Constitution of the United States the way our Founding Fathers envisioned," to which panelist Goldberg flippantly retorted: “Should I be worried about being a slave, about being returned to slavery? Because certain things happened in the Constitution that you had to change.”

McCain then conceded, heaven help him: “I understand that point. That’s an excellent point.” The video is here; notice from the applause that many in the audience seemed to think it an excellent point as well.

Ross Kaminsky took Mac to the woodshed, but good, for his constitutional and historical illiteracy on PoliticsWest.com a couple of days later. Excellent post. What Ross didn't do, and what I haven't read anywhere, is suggest an actual answer, suitable for the moment on live TV, that the GOP candidate should have given. As a onetime speechwriter, let me give it a try.

Thanks for asking that. I know it's a question in many people's minds, as a result of confusion spread by historians, educators, and politicians who don't know better. But here are the facts.

It is only because of the Constitution and judges who were faithful to it that black Americans are free and equal citizens today

The Constitution enabled the northern states to battle the southern states, first politically and then militarily, at the cost of half a million white people's lives, until slavery was ended and blacks were emancipated. After that victory, the Constitution was strengthened from a document that disapproved slavery into one that forever disallows slavery.

The Constitution is also what Dr. King, Justice Marshall, and Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson used to finally end segregation and guarantee civil rights for all.

Going forward, the Constitution and courts faithful to it are the best protection our country has for securing majority rule and minority rights in a free society. You and I should be grateful for that, and vigilant about it.

The last thing we want in America today is public officials who ignore the Constitution like the judges who denied black citizenship with the Dred Scott decision, the slave state governments who seceded and went to war, or the southern governors who resisted school desegregation.

That's what I want to prevent by appointing judges who will keep their oath to the Constitution without fail.

And by the way, Whoopi, those Dred Scott judges and secessionist states and Jim Crow governors were all Democrats, all of them. The Democratic Party has had a really shameful record on racial equality until very recently.

It was my party, the Republicans, who freed the slaves, led the way on school desegregation, and passed the first civil rights bill of modern times. Our country's historic ideal of liberty and justice for all, the envy of the world for over 200 years, is safest in Republican hands for this new century.

The above argument is less developed and documented than Ross's fine piece on Sept. 15, but it's plausible, I think, as something a real politician with his civic compass in working order could have said under those real circumstances in which McCain found himself on Sept. 12. Too bad he didn't; this now becomes one more reinforcement of the Big Lie that our country was founded on hypocrisy, amorality, and racism.

The best refutation for that lie that I know of is a pair of books in which massive, conclusive evidence is presented for the case which I've made here and which Ross made in his earlier post. Those books, both by colleagues of mine at the Claremont Institute, are Vindicating the Founders by Thomas G. West and Vindicating Lincoln by Thomas Krannawitter. Buy them, read them. Maybe buy extras to send Mr. McCain. They'd be wasted, I'm afraid, if sent to Ms. Goldberg.

The myth of white racism

Editor: Is Obama in the position of Jackie Robinson, needing only tolerance from bigoted whites in order for his genius to prevail? Such was the implication, intended or not, of a Dan Haley column in the Denver Post 8/26, with which I sharply disagreed. Below, my colleague Ken Davenport deflates a far more blatant version of the same fallacy, this one from Jacob Weisberg. Of related interest is John Dendahl's post earlier this week (scroll down on our home page) flagging an important National Review piece about the darkly race-colored glasses with which the "real" Barack Obama views America and the world, according to his own autobiography.

Ken Davenport writes:

The Wall Street Journal highlights in its editorial today a quote I've read often over the past few days. It's from a piece by Jacob Weisberg that appears in the current Newsweek -- that supposed "mainstream" newsmagazine. Weisberg says this about the possibility that Obama might lose the election against John McCain:

Only some "crazy irrationality over race" could prevent Mr. Obama from winning the White House. If he does win, America will have reached post-prejudice Nirvana. "If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth," Mr. Weisberg continued. "To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn't just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation's historical decline." Wow. Vote for Barack, or America is as irredeemable as many foreigners believe.

Wow is right. According to this narrative, a common one among Obama supporters, the sole reason that Obama might lose is because he's black -- and the fact that he's black should be a primary reason to vote for him in the first place. It makes little logical sense, of course -- to say on the one hand that he's the victim of prejudice and then to say that prejudice is a perfectly good -- even necessary -- justification to elect him. But so goes the emotion-powered politics of the left.

We know, of course, that racism is being practiced in this campaign -- but it isn't white racism. Its black racism, aided and abetted by a core of guilt-ridden whites like Jacob Weisberg. Blacks voted for Barack Obama 90:10 over Hillary Clinton in the primaries not because they had analyzed the Obama platform and policies and preferred them over those of Hillary Clinton, but because of the color of his skin. Period.

Obama is, in fact, largely where he is today because he is black, not in spite of it -- though as Geraldine Ferraro found out, you can't say that out loud even in today's America. So sensitive are we to even the suggestion of race that we simply can't be honest about it. And neither can Jacob Weisberg -- who suggests that America is so backward still that if Obama loses, it will be a sign of our nation's "historical decline". Oh, please.

I believe that white racism in this country is largely a myth. Yes, I admit that it still exists in the deep south to some extent, but not to the degree that the left says it does. As the Journal points out:

Virginia elected a black Governor two decades ago, and Illinois has had two black Senators. America has had two black Secretaries of State, and major corporations are run by black CEOs. No other Western democracy has done as well at opening up political, business and other arenas to minorities.

The truth is that white racism is part of an Obama narrative that is designed both to mobilize whites into casting "guilt votes" to prove our "progressiveness" as a culture, and to inculcate Obama from criticisms of all kinds and on all issues. Part of the lasting bitterness of the Hillary Clinton supporters is that every time Clinton tried to hammer Obama on policy, his supporters subtly trotted out the race card to blunt her attacks. Now that McCain is attacking Obama on taxes, energy policy and national security, you can bet that they will again be trotting out the "racism" charge against McCain in an effort to intimidate him.

It won't work, because McCain -- like an increasing number of Americans -- understands that the stakes are simply too high in this election to avoid a serious evaluation of Barack Obama on the merits. McCain knows he hasn't a racist bone in his body, and he will not be falsely bullied into changing his campaign to one of softballs and cream puffs, though the left will try and force him into just such a move. He will persist in hammering Obama on the issues and on his (lack of) experience, and will be justly rewarded for it -- because Americans instinctively know that this country is not "racist to the core". A racist nation would hardly nominate a black man for the nomination of the Democrat Party, would it?

Perhaps Jacob Weisberg should take off his own shroud of guilt and consider this: Is it not possible that if Obama loses in November it will be because he is simply not qualified to be President of the United States?

Change we can shudder at

In watching a biography of Obama on Fox News, I was struck by the mindset the man has. He has no economic training, no desire to be part of the “establishment”. More likely, he wants to be the Hugo Chavez of America. Though he pays lip service to “bringing people together”, what I can read between the lines is hatred of “the rich” and of “white people”, the two groups somehow melded, in the same way many see all black people as poor. His having an epiphany at a Jeremiah Wright church service is the case in point. Rev. Wright’s views are well known.

The logic (perhaps subconscious) of Obama's call for a “Civilian National Security Force” becomes clear: it will become an officially sanctioned armed mob of the have-nots to prey on the haves. The same thing happened in South Africa when the blacks took over there. They called it “affirmative shopping”.

To Obama, with little economic understanding, the economy is a fixed pie, and it’s time for black people to seize a bigger slice. In Obama’s eyes, this is “justice”, defined as “equality”: equality NOT equal opportunity! All one has to do is look at Venezuela to see where Obama might take the United States.

The tragedy of course is that it will push the country toward chaos and poverty. The economy is NOT a fixed pie but an elastic one. The capital flight and contraction in the economy will bring massive unemployment and an unprecedented economic downturn, shortages and lines for basic necessities.

True to the Venezuelan model, Obama could then blame “greedy businessmen” for the situation, holding kangaroo courts, making examples, etc., blaming everything and everyone except himself and his policies.

Barack's great deception

In 1995, Barack Obama published an autobiography that has sold like hotcakes and helped make him and his wife quite wealthy people. Titled Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama's book got rave reviews, just like the national address he delivered in defense of his 20 years following the spiritual leadership of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I wrote at FamilySecurityMatters.com about the Wright speech when it was delivered back in March. Now a writer with the pseudonym Michael Gledhill has written a devastating comparison of the Barack Hussein Obama appearing in Dreams and the one now appearing regularly on your TV screen and about to be officially the Democratic Party's candidate for president. It is titled "Who Is Barack Obama?" and can be found in the September 1 print issue of National Review and at this link.

Numerous analysts of Obama's writing and speechifying have noted the same strength and weakness: well-formed rhetoric pleasing to the eye or ear but lacking substance. Dreams is full of substance -- but little or none that a patriot would recognize as suitable background for a U.S. senator, let alone for someone aspiring to lead our country as its president.

Just like his wife Michelle, the Barack Obama of Dreams was a bitterly race-conscious person with a high dislike for the United States. Or in the concluding words of Michael Gledhill, "Dreams from My Father reveals Barack Obama as a self-constructed, racially obsessed man who regards most whites as oppressors. It is the work of a clever but shallow thinker who confuses ideological cliché for insight – a man who sees U.S. history as a narrow, bitter tale of race and class victimization."

I am reminded of the supreme irony of the demeaning remarks Obama recently leveled at Justice Clarence Thomas. In contrast to Thomas's, Obama's youth (as well, by the way, as that of his America-hating pastor Wright) was Easy Street. As an intellectual and patriot, neither Obama nor Wright could carry Thomas's briefcase.