During the primaries and shortly after, I heard a number of people (liberals) say that Barack Obama would not be elected because when it comes down to it, the Americans are just racist. People will say that they like his ideas and will vote for him, but once they go to the voting booth and ask themselves whether they want the old, white guy or the black dude, they just aren't going to vote for the black man. Some said 'Obama must build a substantially large lead' to hope to avoid the Bradley Effect in November.
These are falsifiable predictions.
If Obama is elected, will they revise their beliefs to account for the evidence that disconfirms their prior beliefs?
I will happily admit to being wrong about Obama back in January of this year. I honestly didn't think he had a hope of beating the Republican nominee. However, a well run campaign, a tanking economy, and many, many Republican mis-steps put him over the top. In fact, I am not even sure about the Bradley Effect holding true in this election. RealClearPolitics gave Obama a 7.5% edge over McCain on November 4th, and the actual spread according to Fox--52.35% Obama vs. 46.35% McCain--came in a bit below that (5.99%). Can this be attributed to anything in particular? I don't know. Certainly, if there is was a Bradley Effect in play, it was a very small one.
3 comments:
I still maintain that the US is a profoundly racist society, but it's so firmly intertwined with the dynamics of class in that society that's it's not a useful concept. Hopefully, they'll start dealing with that...at least by acknowledging that the so-called "classless society" is probably the most class-stratified of all Western nations and has the worst record of class mobility there is.
One CNN exit poll last night found 30% said that race was a factor in their vote. Of that group a third said they voted for Obama. It's silly to suggest that race votes weren't a factor in McCain's surprisingly close performance. They were.
I light of the comments here, I should clarify what I meant by this, some of which I tried to clarify in the comments of my own thread:
If Obama is elected, will they revise their beliefs to account for the evidence that disconfirms their prior beliefs?
I am not asking anyone to proclaim "All Americans aren't racist after all!" The point is whether you are willing to modify your beliefs *at all* based on when you see something that turns out to be contrary to what you have publicly (or even internally) predicted.
The fact of the matter is that pretty much any political belief is resilient to criticism. You can always point to this exception or that alternate cause which is why you were wrong in this particular case. If your goal is to mount a good-sounding defense of your beliefs, you will *always* be able to do it regardless of what your beliefs actually are. And it should tell you something that the beliefs "A" and "not A" each have sterling resilience to evidence.
The question is whether you want to try to genuinely arrive at truths (which virtually no one interested in politics takes action to accomplish) or to reconfirm your beliefs to redouble your self-satisfaction with having known the truth (which is what most of us do regardless of our political bents).
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By the way, I'm not excusing myself from any of the above. It's a lot easier to find fault with others than yourself. I *try* to avoid these sorts of problems on my blog, but it is a constant struggle.
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