Stereotypes
Submitted by James on Tue, 12/29/2009 - 11:27am
Any one of them would be an excellent Senator, light years ahead of Richard Burr. As the campaign moves onto the public radar screen over the next five months, it'll be interesting to see how they position themselves and how citizens respond. So many of us think about elections only when we have to, if that. Choices get made for the most fragile of reasons ... from color of yard signs to color of skin. At that primal level, the Senate primary is an election between a young white guy, an older white woman, and a black guy. For some, that will be as deep as it gets.
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Crowds
If elections represent the wisdom of crowds, we can be forgiven for having doubts. That wisdom twice delivered George W. Bush into the Oval Office.
The only option is to push for more and more clarity from candidates about how they operate and how they might vote.
For example, wouldn't it be worth knowing exactly what each candidate thinks about the use of armed contractors in war? Who would vote for a budget that continues to outsource a big chunk of our war-fighting machinery to mercenaries?
NOTE TO CAMPAIGNS: You're welcome to actually participate in conversations here, or at least dig up boilerplate answers from your candidates and slap them into a comment. All three of you need to get better at social media engagement.
I wonder when the first primary debate
will happen?
I hope there will be a lot of them, and very public ones.
On this very surface level you're talking about, I'm reminded of the top 3 democratic primary candidates from the last presidential election, which somewhat parallels your "election between a young white guy, an older white woman, and a black guy" with Edwards, Clinton, & Obama. Which makes me think at this point, anything can happen.
Fortunately
I think NC has an encouraging tradition of resisting that kind of identity politics. Harvey Gantt was able to avoid being "the black candidate" in his campaigns. Perdue's gender was never an issue last year. The Obama/Clinton primary contest never took on the racial (and gender) tone that it did in SC and PA. North Carolinians tend to be pragmatists, valuing experience, "common sense", and moderation.
Both
Sure we have a tradition of resisting identity politics, but that doesn't mean we should disregard reality. I prefer being straight about it.
I'm an old white guy.