Disappointment at Resentment

I was severely depressed by the ten point gap in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary.

I was confused by the fact that little over half of the polled Hillary voters in Pennsylvania replied that they would vote for Obama if he won the primary. About a quarter said they would vote for McCain (Really?). I found that sad. Are these Democrats saying this? Or just people who flipped over for her? I doubt it very much if more than forty percent of those voting are not Democrats and would rather throw their vote away than vote for Senator Obama. Despite all the mudslinging and dirty, dirty politics (and, gawd, that tone of condescension), I would still vote for Clinton in a heartbeat because I don't think our nation could last another four years of this Republican disaster (possibly the biggest Republican disaster since Goldwater let the Old Guard start to take over).

And I was extremely dismayed by the fact that we are still duped by negative ads. We say we hate them, but, apparently, we vote by them. From the NYT (It's at the 7:30 pm spot):

Voters are telling exit pollsters that they didn’t much like that flurry of negative ads in the last few days. And yet a majority said those ads were very important or somewhat important in their decisions. This is evidence of what political operatives often say — that people say they don’t like it when candidates go negative and yet they do pay attention to it. In other words, it works.

I fear that we may not be ready for positivism, creativity and resolutions any time soon.

But this took the cake for me: "The race factor in PA Primary." An excerpt:

Exit polls from [Tuesday's] primary... asked voters if the race of the candidate was important: 19 percent said yes, while 80 percent said no.

Of those who said yes, 59 percent voted for Mrs. Clinton and 41 percent voted for Senator Barack Obama.

Of those who said no, 53 percent voted for Mrs. Clinton and 47 percent voted for Mr. Obama.

Broken down by race, 13 percent of whites said race was important to them, and 75 percent of those voters sided with Mrs. Clinton. Of the 66 percent of whites who said race was not important to them, 58 percent voted for her.

Huh??

You mean, around 10 percent of white voters voted against Obama because he's not white? Because he's black?

Wow.

I mean, Wow.

I know the flip-side of the argument. That black crowds are going out by the droves to vote for Obama. That that has to be racially-motivated. That that proves that racism goes both ways and, in fact, because a larger percentage of blacks are voting for Obama (cf, the Old South) than whites voting for Clinton means that blacks are in fact more racist than whites in this instance.

But African-Americans have been the disproportionately outside people for some odd 300 years in this country. They should have a right to vote for someone they know will represent them as a people group, and not just the establish status quo (i.e., White, Upper- and Upper Middle-Class Males). Females (who have been repressed for, say, before the history of civilization) also have a right to vote for someone who they know will represent them.

Why are white males so flippin' unwilling to see that we are already privileged, even when we're poor?