President Obama: Would a WHITE wife have made a difference?

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Campin_Cat
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05 May 2017, 3:36 pm

^^ Well, gosh----can't you explain the routine, using "clean" language, please?

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0_equals_true
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05 May 2017, 3:44 pm

This is a silly loaded question, but fairly typical for American politicking.

Any choice you make may have an impact on you future outcome, but that this a hypothetical history in a parallel Universe. In which case he may not have been president at all.

Obama himself is mixed background. I doubt very much that he would have changed his political views at that stage purely base on the race of his wife. You might as well ask about the race of his mother.

As there as so many other factors, he may well have been more radical, even if they were an influential person to them.

I also think it doesn't particularly relate to much to to his policies as there are comparable politicians who are white. Even minority leader were some who expressed disappointment at his leadership.

kraftiekortie
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05 May 2017, 4:00 pm

It's POSSIBLE, if he had a white wife, that he wouldn't have progressed too much in South Side Chicago politics. If he didn't progress too far in South Side Chicago politics, he possibly wouldn't have even made it to the Senate, no less the Presidency.

In my opinion, Obama transcended race quite well--to the point where I almost forgot that he was bi-racial.

Campin_Cat
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05 May 2017, 4:26 pm

0_equals_true wrote:

Obama himself is mixed background. I doubt very much that he would have changed his political views at that stage purely base on the race of his wife.

He was 25 and UNmarried, when he proposed to the white woman. It's not about him changing his political views, in 2008; it's about him changing his view on whom he should marry, at 25----and, about him thinking that it would be better for his career, if he married a black woman.

0_equals_true
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05 May 2017, 4:33 pm

Campin_Cat wrote:

0_equals_true wrote:

Obama himself is mixed background. I doubt very much that he would have changed his political views at that stage purely base on the race of his wife.

He was 25 and UNmarried. It's not about him changing his political views, it's about him changing his view on whom he should marry----and, about him thinking that it would be better for his career, if he married a black woman.

Wow 25 and unmarried big whoop. Who gives a s**t honestly?

It couldn't have been becuase he liked Michelle as a person? Of course this discussion is a about as fruitful as discussion over which french premier/PM benefited from which mistress over the course of the 20th century.

Seriously is this what passes for entertainment? Piffle.

The bigger question is why is the even being asked?

Campin_Cat
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05 May 2017, 5:17 pm

0_equals_true wrote:

Campin_Cat wrote:

0_equals_true wrote:

Obama himself is mixed background. I doubt very much that he would have changed his political views at that stage purely base on the race of his wife.

Wow 25 and unmarried big whoop.

You said: "based on the race of his wife", and I was just telling you he wasn't married, so it didn't have anything to do with a wife.

Also, if you thought the question was silly, not fruitful, and a waste of time, why would you bother, responding?

Kraichgauer
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05 May 2017, 10:29 pm

friedmacguffins wrote:

Conservatively speaking, the wife is a help meet, not intended to make a political difference. Race mixing is frowned-upon, as a matter of status, and the biological gender of Michelle Obama is under question.

We are told that it is unethical to accept orders, as a matter of racism, yet that orders can never be refused, when given by a reverse racist. Radical Reconstruction was a war crime, intended as a form of psychological torture.

Michelle Obama's biological gender is under question?!?! You do know that she had gotten pregnant, and had given birth to two girls, don't you?
And seriously, Radical Reconstruction was about securing the rights of black freedmen and women, not about making those "poor white southerners" suffer. By the way, there would have been no Radical Reconstruction if Ex-Confederates hadn't have started using terror and murder to keep blacks cowed, and re-enslaving blacks under the bullsh*t name of "apprenticeship."

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Mikah
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06 May 2017, 12:04 am

Quote:

Michelle Obama's biological gender is under question?!?!

That was one of the more amusing conspiracy theories that year.

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0_equals_true
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06 May 2017, 9:01 am

Campin_Cat wrote:

To point out just how lame and fruitless this sort of discussion is, like beating a dead horse. Do you think it is fruitful? Eh? Don't think so. It is pure pap. It it is embarrassingly funny.

You don't like what Obama a did, fair enough talk about that. Who he decided to take for a wife and for what reason, is irrelevant. Obama also didn't marry a Native American or Hispanic or Chinese or Jewish person...Who did you marry and did you marry for career purposes? It is none of my business but might as well press you on it then dispute your response:lol:

This sort of activity is due to an unhealthy obsession with private life which has overtaken American politics. Everything other than policy detail.

In the 80s onward there was an obsession with fidelity and so forth that is becuase politician liked to take the moral high ground and then got exposed, however this is selective morality at best. Even in the Christian sense folk only focused on certain Commandments and turned a blind eye on others.

You expect your politician to have exemplary private life, when people are hypocrites. Unless the politician claims to be squeaky clean in his private life, then there is no reason why it should it have any baring on anything, some of the most brilliant political actor in history had less than perfect private lives.

naturalplastic
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06 May 2017, 1:31 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:

friedmacguffins wrote:

Michelle Obama's biological gender is under question?!?! "

Kellyanne Conway is really a man too...according to a new video on U Tube:roll:

:roll:

Last edited by naturalplastic on 06 May 2017, 3:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Kraichgauer
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06 May 2017, 2:38 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

Kraichgauer wrote:

friedmacguffins wrote:

Michelle Obama's biological gender is under question?!?! "

Kellyanne Conway is really a man too...according to a new video on U Tube:roll:

As much as I dislike her, the fact that she also has biological children makes that impossible. Unless, of course, she was a Hermaphrodite like Erik Cartman's mother on South Park,when Cartman learns his mother is his father. :lol:

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GoonSquad
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06 May 2017, 3:02 pm

In my last poli Sci class I read way too many research articles on the 2008 election. Most of them come to the same conclosion.

Race was a huge factor in and out of the south, costing Obama about 3-5% of the overall vote. However, nonwhite turnout was big enough to give him the win and flip southern states like VA & NC.

If he had a white wife... who knows?

Personally, I don't think it would have gained him any white votes, but I don't think it would have cost him many black votes either. This was the first time African American voters had the chance to vote for a nonwhite president. I doubt many would have passed that up because he had a white wife.

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BaalChatzaf
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06 May 2017, 3:20 pm

Campin_Cat wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2017/05/02/before-michelle-barack-obama-asked-another-woman-to-marry-him-then-politics-got-in-the-way/

There's a new book about President Obama's life, entitled: "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama", by by David J. Garrow. In it, Garrow details how President Obama had FIRST proposed marriage to a white woman (white and Japanese). Then, he started getting the idea that he needed a black wife, if he was going to accomplish his goals, in politics (mayor of Chicago, possibly governor, senator, and definitely president, as he felt it was his destiny).

The Washington Post wrote:

He tells us how Obama lived, and explores the calculations he made in the decades leading up to his winning the presidency. Garrow portrays Obama as a man who ruthlessly compartmentalized his existence; who believed early on that he was fated for greatness; and who made emotional sacrifices in the pursuit of a goal that must have seemed unlikely to everyone but him. Every step — whether his foray into community organizing, Harvard Law School, even his choice of whom to love — was not just about living a life but about fulfilling a destiny.

It is in the personal realm that Garrow’s account is particularly revealing. He shares for the first time the story of a woman Obama lived with and loved in Chicago, in the years before he met Michelle, and whom he asked to marry him.

...and her pained, drawn-out relationship with Obama informs both his will to rise in politics and the trade-offs he deems necessary to do so.

...

She describes their time together as an isolating experience, “an island unto ourselves” in which Obama would “compartmentalize his work and home life.” She did not meet Jeremiah Wright, the pastor with a growing influence on Obama, and they rarely saw his professional colleagues socially. The friends they saw were often graduate students at the University of Chicago, where Jager was pursuing her doctorate. They traveled together to meet her family as well as his. Soon they began speaking of marriage.

...

In early 1987, when Obama was 25, she sensed a change. “He became. . . so very ambitious” very suddenly, she told Garrow. “I remember very clearly when this transformation happened, and I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president.”

...

Obama believed that he had a “calling,” Garrow writes, and in his case it was “coupled with a heightened awareness that to pursue it he had to fully identify as African American.”

Maraniss’s 2012 biography deftly describes Obama’s conscious evolution from a multicultural, internationalist self-perception toward a distinctly African American one, and Garrow puts this transition into an explicitly political context. For black politicians in Chicago, he writes, a non-African-American spouse could be a liability.

...

This publishing has brought-about alot of conversation----not only because it surprises some people that President Obama had proposed to someone BEFORE Mrs. Obama----but, also, as I'm sure you can imagine, it surprises some people (and angers, some), because the woman was white.

I'm thinking that most, here, will say it would NOT have mattered----which, quite frankly, was my OWN first thought; BUT, then I thought a little more.....

When I first heard-of this book, I thought: "Nah----no, way" (meaning, that it wouldn't've mattered if his wife would have been white)----BUT, then I got to thinking about the Fundies, and I'm thinking it MIGHT have mattered, to THEM. Then, when I thought about it, some more, I recalled the theory that I've had, about that it's quite possible that the way President Obama got elected, was because enough people thought: "NO WAY, would anybody with a brain, vote for him", and didn't go-out to vote; so, now I'm not so adamant, either way.

Also, the article (which is VERY long) talks about two senators who had a bit of a rough time, because of their inter-racial marriages (both, white/black).

My question to YOU, is: Do you think it could have, POSSIBLY, changed the outcome of the 2008 election, if then-Senator Barack Obama would have been married to a white woman?

If Obama had a Caucasian wife, he would not have been elected as dog catcher.

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naturalplastic
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06 May 2017, 4:37 pm

GoonSquad wrote:

GAINED????

Who said it would have gained him any White votes?

The question to ask is whether or not having a White wife would have COST him even more White votes (since Americans dont like miscegenation).

Last edited by naturalplastic on 06 May 2017, 8:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Campin_Cat
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06 May 2017, 6:57 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:

As much as I dislike her, the fact that she also has biological children makes that impossible.

Surely, you know that's not true----what with all your gay rights advocacy.....

If she were a man, and wanted children, she would simply find a woman willing to be a surrogate.

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06 May 2017, 6:59 pm

@naturalplastic

Yeah, I saw your post, but I igored it because it does not hold water. If you know anything about the history/psychology of American racism, you would know that race mixing is a justification for racism, not a cause.

Frankly anyone borthered by a mixed marrige would already be NOT VOTING for Obama because of his race. So, a white wife would neither gain or lose him any votes from whites.

It could possibly hurt him with African women, but very few. As I said before, the opportunity to vote for the first nonwhite president would override a lot of other factors--especially for a population used to compromising and settling everyday.

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