2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If you're voting for Hillary because you think she can win the GE, you're part of the problem. [View all]thesquanderer
(11,982 posts)If you followed the link I provided, what you should have seen is this article...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-poll-ready-for-a-black-president/
from June 2008 which said "Sixty-eight percent of Americans say the country is ready - up 6 points from March and 14 points from January." That means that as of January 2008 (still closer to the 2008 election than we now are to the 2016 election), 46% of Americans were still not sure the country was ready for a black president!
I'd also like to add that, as badly as socialism polls, I don't think those negative feelings are as deeply ingrained in people as are their feelings about race, because it is much less a part of their day to day lives. In that sense, I think it might have beem tougher for Obama to change people's minds about color than it would be for someone to change people's minds about socialism... especially considering that the kind of socialism BS is talking about is not the communits/marxist Soviet Union style socialism that most people are probably thinking of, but the Democratic socialism of the Scandanavian countries that people are less familar with. IOW, given a chance, BS can explain that he isn't the kind of socialist most people are thinking about when they say they would not vote for a socialist. OTOH, Obama actually was black.
Please also see post #1 at http://www.democraticunderground.com/118729095