Monday, October 27, 2008

Identity Politics Over?

Andrew Sullivan thinks so:

Yes, there do appear to be some older white voters in Appalachia and other
pockets of the country who simply will not vote for a black man.But unless we
are all drastically shocked on November 5, the broader truth is that vast
numbers of white Americans are prepared to vote for a black candidate.

Not so fast. It's not just the older generation of white voters who will not vote for a black man. From the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

...Johnson, a lanky 20-year-old white man who works as a meatcutter at a
grocery store, starts to talk about an issue that has persisted throughout the
campaign: race.It is not just that Obama is black, Johnson says. He has heard
that Obama is Muslim. (Obama is Christian.) He also has heard rumors that Obama
refuses to salute the American flag, and that Obama has promised that black men
will have more rights than white men. (Independent fact-checking groups say
these rumors are false.)

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