Respectfulness at Appomattox

Grim calls me “Obama’s biggest fan.” Heh. I guess John Cole would call me an official “fanboi,” except that now he is one too.

Grim writes:

I’ve just been given something I didn’t expect to get — an actual reason to vote for Obama, a vision of finally breaking old prejudices about my home and her people. I’m tired of hearing about how, when people vote this way or that way, it’s because of prejudice –

He quotes his grandmother, “you get a lot more flies with honey than vinegar.” It’s a matter of respect. People want to be respected. They don’t like being talked down to and dissed and ridiculed. And white Southerners are people too. :)

So here’s my random though for the day. If Obama wins the nomination, he goes down South, visits a Confederate cemetery, lays a wreath on Robert E. Lee’s grave, speaks in front of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, etc..

Hell, maybe he poses for a picture saluting the Confederate battle flag. Update: The commenters think NOT.

The implied message would be “You all have said that you are not racists, but merely want respect for your history, traditions, and culture. And that you are tired of being dissed by smart-ass, holier-than-thou Yankees. I get it. I do respect your history, traditions, and culture, and now want you to live up to your end of the deal and vote for me.”

He couldn’t say exactly that out loud, but the point would be clear.

This is very premature and wholly hypothetical. But if Obama could pull off a move like this, and even threaten to put a few states like South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia in play, that sure would wreak havoc with the Republican electoral strategy.

I ran some numbers on South Carolina, which Bush won 57% - 43% in 2004. Suppose:

- The Dems increased their registered voters by 10% (i.e. 10% more than any GOP increase).
- Obama carried just 10% of the registered Republicans (even Kerry carried 3%).
- And the SC independents reversed, from 57-43% for the GOP, to 57-43% for Obama.

Those kind of numbers would give Obama a victory in South Carolina. Again, this scenario doesn’t actually have to happen; it just has to be feasible, and the McCain campaign would be totally bogged down defending the base.

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Trackbacks & Pings

  1. Techography on 07 Feb 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Putting out Fires with Gasoline…

    So Obama and McCain won Missouri with Obama being the over-all winner.
    As Imentioned before Missouri has picked the Presidential Winner for the last 100 years.
    So what does that mean for us?
    It means a choice. A Choice that can be akined to playing …

Comments

  1. canuckistani wrote:

    Visiting the grave of Robert E. Lee, maybe. Visiting a cemetary, maybe. Saluting the Confederate battle flag, viewed by millions as a symbol of racism and intolerance? It’ll never happen. He’d lose 10 liberal and black votes for every white vote he picked up. If you’ll pardon the Godwinning, it’s the difference between an Israeli orchestra playing Wagner as a gesture of reconciliation with Germany and the president of Israel saluting a swastika.

    Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 11:49 am

  2. Mithras wrote:

    If Obama wins the nomination, he goes down South, visits a Confederate cemetery, lays a wreath on Robert E. Lee’s grave, speaks in front of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, etc.. Hell, maybe he poses for a picture saluting the Confederate battle flag.

    With the result that millions of African-Americans stay home on election day, and not one person who wasn’t already predisposed to do so votes for Obama. McCain wins.

    Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 12:07 pm

  3. Stephen wrote:

    Okay, okay … No saluting the Confederate flag!

    I surrender. :)

    Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 12:12 pm

  4. Jen wrote:

    I am an Obama fangyrl and I think his support from unexpected quarters is going to grow.

    Didn’t he get like 40% of the white vote in the Georgia primary? That says something to me.

    Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 1:15 pm

  5. Grim wrote:

    Tell you what: if he goes down to Lexington, VA, lays a wreath on Robert E. Lee’s grave, and gives a speech like that speech I wrote up in the post likening Robert E. Lee to Martin Luther King, Jr. — I’ll vote for him.

    Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 1:16 am

  6. canuckistani wrote:

    I’m curious to know how one likens Robert E Lee and Martin Luther King. They both had facial hair? Same number of syllables in the first and last name? Disapproval of slavery and a willingness to arm slaves in the last desperate hours of the Confederacy does not a civil rights hero make, if that’s the point you were getting at.

    Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 12:19 pm

  7. Grim wrote:

    I’m not surprised that a Canadian would not have heard anything about General Lee except that he was a General. What I wrote was:

    There was an article over the weekend noting that Arkansas apparently celebrates MLK Day and Robert E. Lee’s Birthday as the same official holiday. In a sense, that’s very fitting. Each of them was an exemplar of the finest parts of our national character; each of them was likewise engaged in a great national struggle over the issues of race and slavery.

    In Robert E. Lee’s case, we see how an otherwise magnificent man — as with an otherwise magnificient nation — could be marred by its inheritance of slavery, yet still be noble, generous, courageous, and forgiving. In MLK’s case, we see how a man might suffer from the other side of that same heritage, and yet be noble, generous, courageous, and forgiving.

    Arkansas may have hit upon exactly the right formula for resolving the old problem; a considered juxtaposition of these two men might shed considerable light on the question of how to bring the last old wounds to a close.

    You probably don’t know the story of Robert E. Lee at church after the war, and how he was the first white man to go forward to the altar to pray with a freed black man. In that, he set an example that the rest of the South would have done better to follow; some did.

    You probably also don’t know the story about the woman who, in his later years, pointed to a tree where he family had been lynched by Union forces. Lee had been advocating what we now call reconciliation. She told him she could never forgive, because every time she saw the tree she was reminded of what had happened to her family. What should she do about that, she asked?

    “Cut down the tree, ma’am,” he said.

    You probably also don’t know how he used his education from West Point to save St. Louis from flooding, through the cutting of irrigation ditches… well, there are quite a few stories Southerners know.

    The point is that, like America itself, he was a noble character deeply poisoned by an inheritance of slavery; if you cannot forgive him you cannot forgive America. But you ought to forgive both: Lee, because he forgave and worked to urge others to do so; and America, which has also struggled with itself mightily to recover from the poison that was born into its core.

    Posted 09 Feb 2008 at 2:47 am

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