Empathize with the Black Woman Voting: Cognitive Dissonance?

Obama or Hillary? Which demographic is the stronger with the black woman voting, being black or being female? I wish I had a poll result that derived from a sample of Democrat white women and Democrat black women with controls of Democrat black men and white men and general population.

There was a program with three people singled out for their opinions, one pro-Hillary white male, one pro-Obama white female, and one undecided black female. The latter made me wonder about the psychological construct of “cognitive dissonance”, which is the state of being of two minds about something. She epitomized a walking definition of cognitive dissonance. She was both Obama and Clinton in outward manifestations.

I have had that personally, wanting the women to have their president and wanting to have a black president of the calibre of multicultural Obama. I was of two minds early in the campaign season between the two. Hillary’s early speeches were very good, I thought. I was impressed. Obama has had, from the start, brilliant analysis and eloquent style rising above our mundane expectancies.

Barack and Hillary went up the hill, to fetch a pail of voters; Hillary fell down and broke her crown and Barack came tumbling after.

Some black opinion has seen the blackness of Obama as a diluted black. I, being white, wouldn’t know where that is coming from, not having had the black experience except as an on-looker. Am I entitled to have an opinion, or dare I not express one? If not, then I relish the talk of Bill Cosby, among others, on that subject. In the same vein, I look for the talk of Muslims about the actions of radicalized Muslims. If I had opinions on those subjects, they would always be qualified by others’ “consider-the-source” criticism.

I liked Hillary before her tack turned her campaign vessel to the rickety-ticky tacky. Nothing high-minded there. She is a walking definition of mundanity. Listen to her and you will hear every cliche in the book of quotations. Barack is the antonym of mundanity. I like style, and you should, too; you’re going to have to listen to the President for at least four years. The fans of “American Idol”, millions of them, must appreciate the elements of style, for that is the main thing thatnts in separates the idol from the common. So do not ever knock style points in a pol.

Sportsmanship is not whether you win or lose, but how you played the game. Is that not supposed to be the mantra of fair play and Americanism, the American way? Nearly everybody now takes the view of cynics, win at all costs, the type of political game being played now.

If you are a black, female Democrat reading this, do you have such dissonance given the present situation?

Polls. Intellectuals. Be Wary

This pre-election time is all academic. All the talk is academic. These campaigns are all “academic”, and “academic” is the same as “intellectual”. (The proof is in the pudding and the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.) Academics are intellectuals and see the world as more complex than the less intellectual.

Note that we have one candidate recognized for his intellect and touted for his intellectual edge, with especial note taken of his language and a more elevated diction. In my opinion, the “intellectual” label has been the kiss of death for such candidates (Adlai Stevenson against Eisenhower), and the electorate has usually preferred the anti-intellectual (Bush against Gore and Kerry). I know, I know, one case does not prove the generalization. But there’s probably a book on the topic.

I would never sell academics short. I was one. Academic works must yield conclusions that have been tested and verified to a high degree of significance. This campaign has not had its ultimate verification (“tasting”) in the test of the election (the “pudding”), which will tell us much about the candidates (the President-elect) as well as about the electorate (his or her people). More academic studies and books will be written by academics.

Polls are academic exercises, like campaigns. All we ever know about the polls are the results. We may get a “margin of error”—what’s that!?. We do not ever get the operations that produced the results, the sampling technique and other controls. The deliberative mind would like to know those operations. They say the devil is in the details, but who has time for that, as they must think.

Too much of this campaign proccess is in the hands of the journalists who rely on the polls to make their stories about the election campaign. They do read the works of the intellectuals (historians, political scientists, sociologists); however, the difference is, the journalists are called to recycle the academic stuff as panelists on the television roundtables, and the original sources are much ignored, or overlayed with reporter bias.