The BN Village - View Single Post - Obama

Gmahogany. · (#4 (**permalink**))

I think it's funny that Black Brits fancy themselves experts on everything having to do with AA's they know how we're gonna vote, they know that we hate Obama cause he speaks standard English,lol, they know more about us than us. Who knew?

Anyway, I think Oprah's support of Obama is going to help him immensely, both from a fundraising standpoint and from a general support standpoint, PARTICULARLY among Black women. If she had supported Hillary(whom she most likely would have supported if Obama wasn't running cause she loves Hillary from what I can tell) that would have been major. Oprah says read a particular book, mofos go read that book,lol. Her opinion is respected by a large swath of folks, and that's a fact.

Beyond that, he's needs any advantage he can get, because though I agree that IF he wins the Democratic nomination, MOST AA's would vote for him, if only because the other options would be totally putrid, plus most AA's are Democrats, BUT, he has to win the Dem nomination FIRST, and that's not even close to a forgone conclusion.

National polls don't mean much because we don't have national primaries here. Mofos have to win primary by primary, state by state, or else they won't get the chance to be an option on a National/Presidential ballot. In other words, sure, if Obama gets the nomination and he is running against: Rudy Guliani, Fred Thompson or some other Republican, Obama would get the overwhelming majority of the AA vote. That's a no brainer. In these Democratic primaries, though, he's not running against people that BLack folks can't stand or would never consider voting for(like Guilinani), quite the opposite,actually.

In these primaries, Obama is running against at least 2 candidates that many AA's find attractive,Hillary and John Edwards. It's not like it is on the National/presidential level where he would be running against people that no AA's would find palatable or acceptable, so there would basically be no competiton for the Black vote, or even some past Democratic primaries, where the other Dem candidates were people that AA's could take or leave, didn't particularly know, like, etc.

In overwhelmingly white states, like Iowa, right now at least, Clinton and Edwards are leading, so his chances there aren't so hot. In the large Black population state, of South Carolina, Clinton still leads him by about 16 points,among Black voters which isn't catastrophic, but Edwards ALSO has some BLack support, in SC, so that means that Clinton and Obama could split the Black vote, and Edwards could sneak in. Beyond that, as high as Hillary's negatives are(questions about her electability), polls say that most AA's in that state see Obama as being less electable than Hillary. That' can affect who people vote for, even if they may like a particular candidate.

So dude has a lot to overcome,(not that it's not doable), and Oprah's support is something that anyone of his white competitors would LOVE to have, and that's real.