Race and The Election

Will being a black hurt Obama? Will being a woman hurt Hilary?

They meant this question in two ways – in terms of winning and in terms of governing. I told them that the presidency was an institution and that whoever took the office would be treated as president and I doubted that race or gender would effect their ability to govern and, in fact, might be an advantage in some situations. It is clear that Obama would have a real opening to Indonesia – they love him there – and might also make some real progress in Africa.

As far as getting elected I answered as follows – feel free to disagree

No, not a lot. In fact, I think that thus far race has been a positive for Obama. Imagine a white, four year senator from Illinois, named Bob Smith. Would he be running for president? No.

Of course there are people in our country who would not vote for an African American or a woman just like there are people in your country who might not vote for a woman or a catholic or someone from a province they didn’t respect and, of course, there is still racism and gender discrimination in the US but those people, mostly, already vote Republican (I hated to say that but I think it is true) so, in a two party system, the loss of their votes didn’t make any difference.

They may lose some votes from independents or democrats who were nervous about an African-American or a woman, but, in the two party calculus, they would probably pick up marginally more votes from independents and republicans who felt it was about time we did something different.