By focusing on how to ignore race, we keep the focus on it, and Obama has avoided scrutiny. Oregon, learn about him before its too late? Ever wonder why Hillary beat him by 13% in Mass. despite that state's leadership lined up against her? Go to Noquarterusa.net and read Patrick - Obama. Also, Obamatruth is worth a look.

Great post. Ya know what? Every time Michelle Obama comes on my teevee I call my wife in to listen to her. She is the most genuine person I have ever seen in public life. Totally charming. She will remake what the "insiders" think is "their turf". They will be after her but she is just too damn powerful for them. Great Lady!

...soccer moms, NASCAR dads, lunch pail workers, security moms, latte drinkers, college educated and Volvo drivers. All of this is code for white people. The rest of us just get racial distinctions; black, Asian, Latino and occasionally, Native American.

Thank you thank you thank you. So accurate. White people like me are pigeonholed by educational level, or occupation, say, but non-whites get pigeonholed by skin color. I would like to think that the Obama campaign is not resorting to this sort of crude scheme; gawd knows this is how Hillary Clinton's campaign views people. And what they care about is assembling enough niche groups into that 50% + 1 majority, and screw the rest. And the punditocracy does the same damn thing. "Working class whites" versus "blacks". What--they think blacks can't also be working class? Or is it that they're just assuming that melanin level is destiny?

Good thoughtful post.

Why do blacks in some states vote 90% for Obama. 90%? Nobody or no-thing or no-ANYTHING gets 90% of any group. What is up with that? Especially against the wife of the first 'black president', where blacks went for Clinton massively back in the day.

<h2>"Some of us even vote (eek) republican. "</h2>

Bold statement, especially here. What about Bill Cosby? Does he speak truth to his people? What about Colin Powell, is he a traitor to 'his' people? Yes, Condi is not black because she believes what many white people believe, right? Don't all blacks believe (or should believe) what Jesse and Al Sharpton tell them to believe?

Maybe some blacks think for themselves, at their own peril.

I'm not sure what Harry is talking about, but you are right on, Karol.

Great post! It really fries me when I hear about all the women voting for Hillary JUST BECAUSE they are women and the blacks voting for Obama ONLY BECAUSE he is black... as if they haven't a brain in their head to make any kind of rational decision... We don't all fit into these little boxes!

Karol, thank you so very much for your post.

I think some of this labeling--the NASCAR dad or security mom kind of labeling--is a product of political and/or marketing consultants who want their clients to think they are hip to the latest trends. They dice up the market, or electorate, and then give each segment a clever name. Mark Penn built his whole career on this--and see what that did for Hillary?

I got caught up in this back in the 80s when Stanford Research Institute came out with VALS (for 'values and lifestyles") as a way to replace boring demographics for market segmentation (I was in the natural foods biz at the time, a decidedly niche market). Man, that psychographic stuff was way cool. Now, after analyzing it for several years, I think it's mostly nonsense.

The fact is, no one fits perfectly into any of these niches and most people fit into several. Yeah, some of these labels are thinly-disguised racial codes, but mostly, they are invented by people who want to impress their clients.

got caught up in this back in the 80s when Stanford Research Institute came out with VALS (for 'values and lifestyles") as a way to replace boring demographics for market segmentation

oh this brings back memories. Was it like 36 categories including "Leave it to Beaver", "Main Street USA" and of course, "Yuppies"?

Yeah, some of these labels are thinly-disguised racial codes

EXTREMELY thinly disguised.

Everyone's personal identity is sort of like an onion--lots of interesting layers are exposed as one looks deeper. The pigeonholing is bulllshit. Whether it's marketing bullshit or some other sort....I don't really care.

The GOP playbook is to appeal to people's resentments. THAT'S what gets them voting against their purely economic self-interest. Those resentments are what get framed in terms of latte drinkers, Prius drivers, yadda yadda yadda. Some of those resentments get framed in a racial sense (Jesse Helm's digusting advertisement about the white man "losing" a job to someone less qualified for...well, we know the "reason").

We are slowly approaching the day when political alignments will cut across race, ethnicity, religion. A key reason why I support Obama is that he is a 21st century human being. He embodies this new reality of transcending the old identities. He embodies in himself this transcendence, as a biracial person, with mixed ethnicity, African, Euro-American, and has connections across the globe. He is a son of Ireland, Kansas, and Africa.

He had a mother who was an internationalist, who brought the texts of the world's great religions and wisdom traditions into the home. She is a woman who did her work in adult life, a student of anthropology and international studies, and she workd in organizations dedicated to microfinancing of third world enterprise.

Obama has built his political career on cutting across boundaries. He has excited the imagination of the world beyond the U.S. and therefore has enormous potential to not only change the image of the U.S. but to be a voice of peace and reconciliation across the first and third world, across racial and religious boundaries. Those who are invested in the divisions of class, race,ideology, and religion find him a threat, and that's why there is this push-back to derail his candidacy. And it's also the reason why the young flock to his candidacy. They sense rightly someone who speaks to their experience of a world view beyond the former divisions. I might add, it's why someone like Andrew Sullivan, a political writer who is gay and a conservative supports Obama passionately.

Terrific post---thank you so much. You've said what I've been trying to articulate lately but much more clearly (hope you don't mind if I quote you in conversations). According to all demographics, I should be a Hillary supporter...I'm middle-aged, female, raised blue-collar. Just the female piece gets me tagged as an "obvious Hillary supporter". I've had so many women accuse me of "selling out the sisterhood" or "not being a true feminist" because I support Obama. Hello!? One of the points of the feminist revolution was so that women could speak their minds clearly and stand up for whatever and whomever they choose. Okay, I digress. But great post, really!

88% of blacks voted Kerry--aaaaiieeee, what does it mean??!

Without demographic pigeonholing what would predictive theory pundits have to talk and talk and talk about? Chaos? I heard a pundit on one of the big three cable news channels, following early returns in N.C., remark with great conviction how effective the Wright expose was to derailing the Obama N.C. campaign. This was based on exit polling prior to early returns and his eventual double digit victory. Oops.
The personalities of the candidates, their ideas, how they respond to pressure, and their countenance in the face of adversity have no gender, race, locale or party affiliation. Our media impose those divisions on public perception. Wouldn't it have been far more interesting to air true life voter response to the debates and speeches of the candidates on issues?
Then a male, white, middle aged, middle class, college educated voter from Oregon might have learned what concerns he has in common with a female, black, elderly, disabled voter from Georgia. Instead we see interview after interview with pundits pigeonholing and predicting. It's funny how reality programming is all the rage except when it comes to real life decision making.

Putting us into categories is the easiest (and long-time effective) way of fooling us into believing that we are all opposed to each other and that we don't have common interests

To be a little provocative. . . I think the Democratic party (yes, my party) bears a lot of the blame for the classification of groups by race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and the belief that each group has separate and distinct interests.

Not long ago, you were either part of the white, married, Protestant majority, or you were an "other". We fortunately moved away from that in the 1960s and 1970s, but the Democratic party took it to the opposite extreme by legitimizing the idea of "identity politics", that each group is separate and distinct and must have separate and distinct representation in order for that representation to be legitimate. That led us down this road where candidates are required to appeal to distinct groups of voters. And it's been expanded beyond the "traditional" categories of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation to include things like soccer moms and NASCAR dads.

The problem with identity politics is that it fractures our civic structure and keeps us focused on our differences instead of our commonalities. And it ignores the fact that what's important isn't the group that a politician belongs to, but the beliefs that politician has. It's quite possible for a straight, married politician to do more for gay rights than a gay politician will. It's quite possible for a male politician to be more of a feminist than a female politician. And it's quite possible that a wealthy bi-racial president will do more to help the "white, working-class" than a wealthy, white female president.

Our party would be better off if we moved away from the idea that every group is different and instead focused on how much we all have in common. That doesn't mean we should ignore racial discrimination, or gender inequality, or gay rights. It just means that we need to see the connection between all those things.

I agree with your characterization of the three things that Democratic identity politics have done. However, I would add to this:

Second, which is more ambiguous, is recognition that people speak best for their own interests.

While overall this is a good recognition, it has also resulted in some Democrats believing that the ONLY way someone's interests get taken into account is by having one of their own in power. When looking at the polity as a whole, some semblance of proportional representation is important. But looking at individual offices, it's not. To be in the right place on civil rights, for instance, a politician does not have to be a member of an oppressed class. Similarly, being a member of an oppressed class does not mean that a politician is in the right place on civil rights, either.

I also think the Democratic party's focus on race and gender, instead of policy positions, reinforces the stereotype that only those who look like us will adequately represent us. In all the discussion about Clinton's appeal to white, working class voters, how much discussion was there about why? What did she have in her platform that was different from Obama that appealed to those voters? The answer is, not much.