He may repeat the phrase I'm a Christian but its doubtful that it is true.

"I assume you all have your copies of The Audacity of Hope in paperback breviary form. If you turn to the chapter entitled "Faith," beginning on Page 195, and read as far as Page 208, I think that even if you don't concur with my reading, you may suspect that I am onto something. In these pages, Sen. Obama is telling us that he doesn't really have any profound religious belief, but that in his early Chicago days he felt he needed to acquire some spiritual "street cred." http://www.slate.com/id/2187277/pagenum/all/

The ten percent who think that Obama is a Muslim aren't going to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Why people don't vote anymore:

With no real difference between the major parties, and a political system which denies real choice, they no longer have anything worth voting for:

So then having John McCain as president is no different than having Hillary Clinton as president. Is this the conclusion from those who don't vote? hmmm...

Yeah, and I suppose that having George Bush as president is no big deal because Al Gore or John Kerry would have been just like George W Bush? Really? Do people really believe this?

So then having John McCain as president is no different than having Hillary Clinton as president. Is this the conclusion from those who don't vote? hmmm...

YES JoAnn, but not as simply as you put it. You can throw Obama in there also. The only difference is how blatant they are about it.

Dar, of course i could "throw" Obama in there. I left out Obama because I was speaking to the pro-Hillary supporters. Was this not obvious? Guess not..

I could have said (and yet it would have the same significance:

So then having John McCain as president is no different than having Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as president. Is this the conclusion from those who don't vote? hmmm...

The only difference is how blatant they are about it.

Talk about being simple. Who are "they" and what is "it"?

I accidentally put "The only difference is how blatant that they are about it in quotes as though I said that, which I didn't.

Again, who are "they"?

What I was attempting to address (to no avail apparently) is that do people really believe that there is no difference between John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

Dar says that "The only difference is how blatant they are about it."...

So in the end, not much difference? Do you believe that John Kerry and Al Gore would have waged war on Iraq?

And if there's no difference between the Republians and Democrats, then why do we bother discussing the differences between Obama and Clinton?!

sigh!...

Re: Obama's religion.

Setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not Obama's an "authentic" Christian, I'm continually struck by the legs that these types of stories have.

Just yesterday in my college writing class, one of my students (who self-identifies as Jewish) asserted that she would never vote for Obama because he's an anti-Semite. Taken a bit by surprise by this reasoning (or lack thereof), I asked that all important question, "Well, how do you know?" Hedging and halting, she explained that she heard him say something anti-semitic, or that someone else heard him say it and then told her, or maybe she read it somewhere...but darn it, she knows that he is an anti-Semite and that's all that really mattered.

Now, I realize that she's probably conflating Obama with stories she's half heard about his former pastor, but this sort of willful ignorance is just stunning (especially given that mine is a class about research and writing).

More troubling to me is that this type of thinking is shared by so many people in this country. They only need to hear the slightest suggestion of something that confirms their own fears & biases ("Obama's a racist, Jew-hating Muslim! Eeek!") to make up their mind and get back to seeking out distraction.

sigh What do we do with people like this? How do we engage them? The best I could do with this young woman was to say, "Maybe you could find that article and bring it in for me." I'm not holding my breath, though.

So then having John McCain as president is no different than having Hillary Clinton as president. Is this the conclusion from those who don't vote? hmmm...

No, this is the conclusion of elitists that think its cooler to be cynical then be involved.

Regular people don't vote because they no longer see the direct impact of their government on their lives.

Students are starting to because of the war and the amount of loans they get stuck with.

But if you are poor in this country, the government doesn't really do anything for you and despite many a candidate talking about doing something for decades on issues like healthcare, nothing has gotten accomplished.

The largest shifts in voting were centered around the largest accomplishments in Government. Social Security, Medicare, civil rights, national highways, going to the moon.

The government hasn't done anything in decades. All our money goes to the worlds greatest money suck, the U.S. Military.

Regular people don't care if the candidates are different, they just ask "what has the government done for me lately?" and "what do I think it will do for me in the future?"

If the answer is nothing and nothing, they don't vote.

The government hasn't done anything in decades. All our money goes to the worlds greatest money suck, the U.S. Military.

Regular people don't care if the candidates are different, they just ask "what has the government done for me lately?" and "what do I think it will do for me in the future?"

If the answer is nothing and nothing, they don't vote.

That, of course is what the GOP is counting on. Consider John McCain's do-nothing Health care plan (or, when it isn't doing nothing, it doing bad - see Krugman's editorial). McCain spews horseshit bromides about socialized medicine and 'the freedom to choose your own physician" (yeah, right - as long as s/he's in your HMO and hasn't gotten dumped by them for providing too much care) and he'll continue to spew this shit for the next 7 months.

But the thing is, spending in other areas is vastly more valuable to the American public's interests. The NIH will be spending less than 5% as much on all cancer research next year as it we'll spend in Iraq, and we've seen steady improvements in cancer treatment for decades. For less than two weeks of Iraq war spending, the entire human genome project was completed over a span of about a decade - under the projected budget! The potential benefit of the project's results are basically incalculable. In less than three weeks in Iraq next year, we'll spend more than we'll spend to fund the entire National Science Foundation - one the principal sources of funding for educating our scientific community - and for producing world-class research results at the same time. All these areas have been had declining levels of support in real dollars during the Bush years.

They only need to hear the slightest suggestion of something that confirms their own fears & biases...

Jeremiah,

That is the key observation. I'm sure that for the 10% of Americans who believe that Obama is a Muslim, their belief is almost unrelated to what they've heard or read. I would bet that if they (and the student to whom you've referred) don't disqualify Obama on this basis, they will almost instantaneously find another pretext for voting their prejudice. In other words, it won't matter whether your student is convinced that Obama is a Christian, atheist, or Muslim; her willingness - even desire - to find "fault" with him will still win out.

Joann:

Yeah, and I suppose that having George Bush as president is no big deal because Al Gore or John Kerry would have been just like George W Bush? Really? Do people really believe this?

I think what people believe is that there are unelected political forces governing the electoral process and that these forces are served no matter who becomes president. The choice is never between one really, really excellent candidate and one really, really crappy candidtate; the choice is always between two sort of middle-of-the-road candidates hailing from more or less the same background offering more or less the same policies. Clinton 1 was only slightly better than Bush 1, and now Clinton 2 (or Obama 1) will be only slightly better than Bush 2. This pendulum between shitty and really shitty is what people who don't vote are fed up with.

I'm surprised it's as low as 10%. That's not that bad. You can ask people just about any question and about 5% will get it wrong. They didn't understand the question, or they're just that dumb. My guess is that between 1-5% haven't even heard of Obama, so asking if he's Muslim is for them about the same as suggesting that he might be.

"This pendulum between shitty and really shitty is what people who don't vote are fed up with."

I think it's more complicated than that. Look at the people who don't vote. The poor and less educated. Those who don't vote also report low rates of "efficacy"--the belief that they can have an effect on the system, that their vote matters, etc. Now it would be strange that people who know very little about the system would be the ones that most readily conclude that voting is pointless, while well-educated people really think it works. So I don't buy this claim that the poor have some really good reforms or specific candidates in mind, but don't promote them because they think it's pointless. I think that while they may be right that the system isn't working for them, they know so little about the system that they have no idea how it might work for them or what policies might really help them.

I've met some of these conspiratorial, alienated working poor people. They believe a lot of paranoid, bigoted, nutty things, they're not left-wing radicals who have given up hope.

"in his early Chicago days he felt he needed to acquire some spiritual "street cred.""

Whereas those of us who started off our religious lives being forced to go to church as kids are the authentic Christians. Maybe you think Obama is a closet secular, but a closet Muslim? That's just wrong in the most straightforward sense. He had a Muslim dad who he barely knew. He was raised by a non-religious mother, and has now been in the same Christian church for 20 years. No one doubts that a potty-mouthed former alcoholic president who's not a real church-goer is really a Christian. I have no idea why, but maybe "Christian" is just a code word for "white American". So "Muslim" might really mean "darkie foreigner".

Maybe you think Obama is a closet secular, but a closet Muslim?

Poor Obama. He's either a a closet Atheist or a Closet Muslim depending upon one's prejudices..

depending upon one's prejudices..

or too white or too black or too conservative or too liberal or too pro war or too anti-war or.....

Dende: You write, "I think it's more complicated than that," and then you oversimplify the situation. In Minnesota, where I live, voter turnout consistently surpasses national rates at around 60%. I have a hard time believing that the 40% is uniformly "poor and less educated." At least a few of them are like me and my college educated friends and coworkers: they are tired of the hold-your-nose-and-vote option offered at every election. I also don't think that well-educated people think the system works, as you suggest. They are simply less willing to relinquish their already limited participation.