Again, I didn't post this to try to piss anyone off, or to get me banned... I just want to make a simple point in which it seems that how people looked at this election, this one question (along with many others) could be a deciding factor...

*awaits to be flamed*

*shakes head and walks away*

Err... Obama isn't the first black man to try and run for the Presidency, he was the most successful.

The rest of your ill formed triad is simply plainly wrong, that narrative was at no time on peoples minds other then those the media trying to stir a fire.

You're asking a "liberal" question. True conservatives strive for a society without labels, esp. based on skin color and gender. If Obama was a conservative and the candidate I most closely agreed with I'd vote for him. Same for Hillary. However in "our" universe, both of those candidates are proponents of Big Government, higher taxes, continuing open borders, etc. These may be desirable traits in a Democratic president, but when these same results arrive on the watch of a conservative president, he has failed to be a conservative.

The choice of Palin was fresh and unexpected, but the novelty wore off fast and now she is being raked over the coals, par for the course for polly-tix. The feminazis only defend liberal women, so the idea that there is some sort of female "unity" is just a myth.

My long-winded answer made short: ignore the race and gender-obsessed left wingers and stand up for your beliefs. There are many, many challenges ahead that have almost nothing to do with race, class, gender, etc. and everything to do with freedom and responsibility. Mocking or ignoring race-baiters who profit from crises they themselves manufacture would be a good start.

It's ok to be racist and sexist just so long as you're not white.

Be neither.

Be both and vote for Bob Barr..

To have sex with a racist.

The conservatives are already blanketly saying that ANYONE who has anything negative to say about Sarah Palin is being sexist. It's a great tool for ignoring more real issues.

Of course no-one thinks that questions like yours should really matter but we all do label people in our heads regardless of what we say. I was dying to see an Obama/Clinton ticket for the simple fact that some peoples brains would explode: not only a black man in charge but a white woman in the "subservient" position. HA! That would really piss some people off! That being said, I'm glad they didn't run together.

It's not "better" to be either one anyway so why worry about it. I think QM brings up a very good point but at the same time, we have to remember that labels affect peoples lives. Try telling a black person in Alabama in the 60's that labels don't matter. Right.

>> ^blankfist:
To have sex with a racist.


Or race a sexist?

Not such a good Signal to Noise Ratio here, let's see what we can do about that.

McCain is BAD at being a candidate, so before Palin was named I would have said that a McCain win would either be cheating (not so outlandish given '00 and '04), or that it displayed a massive systematic race bias in the US, either of which would have, quite appropriately, resulted in people making a stink.

Palin is GOOD at being a candidate, and she rekindles the culture war, which works to their favor. I don't see sexism having much to do with Palin, except as a GOP get-out-of-jail-free-card, as she appeals so strongly to "social conservatives", liberals will hate her for what she stands for way before her genitals enter the picture.

Most red staters don't have a pragmatic reason to dislike Obama, he plans to lower their taxes, bring their sons home from Iraq, and spend away America's collective fortune slower then McCain is likely to do it. He does not favor gay marrage, is not a "Secret Muslim", but he is undeniably black.

Most blue staters have half a dozen reasons to lothe Palin, Reproductive rights, Abstinence only sex ed, creationism, anti-environmentalism, animal cruelty, oil-industry friendly. For them her sex is far outweighed by all this, but her sex does confuse some people who are still in the "but she's female and that's good" camp, but these people will still end up opposing her on pragmatic grounds.

I see racism as more of a detriment in this election, even during the primaries, then sexism, so in that sense it's worse to be a racist, because it's more common, and therefor more of a problem.

In a more general sense I think racism is worse because it is a bias based on a distinction without a difference, whereas sexism is a bias based on a distinction with an, arguably irrelevant, difference. Sex is real and identifiable, race is simply a meaningless abstraction. Being a racist requires believing in race, which does not exist, so since it isolates people further from what is demonstrably true, it is worse.

I am not suggesting that sexism is not bad, and I think Hillary addressed the sexism there was in a way that fed it, and made it a real problem for her, where she could have faced it down more effectively by being a bit more subtle. Palin is positively rolling in sexism, by using the "she can't be attacked she's a woman" defense, feeding the sexism in a way that helps her side, and getting a lot of press attention out of it at the same time to steal Obama's thunder, and trying to steal the free publicity that comes with being the "ground breaking" candidate.

I'd rather be a sexist because I'm a man and it's already my world. And if anyone accuses me of being racist against black women, asian women, indian women, etc. then I'd quickly correct them: no, no, no, it's because they're weepy, weak women with wandering wispy wide-eyed wonderment. Why? What would women wish when will withers? Wow.

Neither is better than the other.

Each is an expression of bigotry with a different objective in mind.

Personally, I think sexism and racism are still big factors in this race. I think Obama would have Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia solidly in his pocket if he were white. However, I think North Carolina and Georgia would've never looked like Democratic pickups if he were white. I doubt he'll win either of those two anyways, but they're polling tantalizingly close.

As for sexism, I think with regard to Clinton, she got typecast pretty early on as a cutthroat bitch -- an epithet for which there is no male equivalent -- and all her issues in politics stemmed from having that frame around her. Had she won the primary, I doubt Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, North Dakota or Indiana would've been in play, and I think the Midwest states would be about how they are now with Obama, maybe worse.

I think with regard to Palin, the way people have quickly gone from being inspired by her, to mostly seeing her as an airhead (another term that isn't easily applicable to males) was only possible because she looked like a young pretty woman -- and you know you can't take them seriously, or so the stereotype goes.

All that said, while I see race having an effect, I think things like good or bad media cycles, positions on the issues, and real world events (like the economy collapsing), will have a much larger effect.

There will absolutely be people who blame racism/sexism for a loss after the election is over, no matter what happens. I don't think many will take that theory seriously, though, unless there's some shocking disconnect between the polling and the vote tallies, though I think people would be saying "election fraud" not "racism" in that situation.