When I say that I don't know that Hillary Clinton is electable, I mean that I don't know if America is ready to vote for a woman president. And I would go even further to say that I don't know if America will ever vote this woman to the presidency no matter how intelligent she is, no matter how on track her plans and policies are.
I lived in a small town in California while she was working on Universal Health Care. From the hate-filled reaction of that mostly republican town, you would think that she was attempting to have a teaspoon of arsenic added to all brands of baby food for some sort of a nationwide experiment. And while I don't expect dedicated republicans to vote for a democrat anyway, as I recall, most of the people who called themselves "independents" during Newt the Grinch's Contract On America could barely tolerate seeing her on television without snarling either.
So, I don't think Hillary's electable as a female or as how she is as an individual. I don't know why some of "those people" hate her so much, but I know that they do.
When I say that I don't know that Obama is electable, I mean the same thing. I don't know that America is ready for black president.
Why? Because I know my neighbor. And I know that how my neighbors and friends at church talk about Arabs now are how they talked about us (blacks) in the past. And I also know that which particular ethnic or racial group is hated enough to be slurred in public is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the mindset of "we are superior" is alive and kicking in at least fifty percent of the nation--which is why the reason those "articulate" comments made about college educated men (Obama and Colin Powell) still seem like misunderstood compliments to the dominant culture.
So when republicans started saying that "John McCain is electable," what I took that to mean is "John McCain" is a white man.
Now, I could be projecting, but I don't think so. The economy and the war are the two upper most things on people's minds. And he is for the war when most of the country is not* which should make him 50% unelectable--unless his electability is based on exactly what I thought it was based on to begin with--his skin color and his gender.
