Specter of voting booth racism not exorcised

Charles Long, Henderson

Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

Regarding the Wednesday column by Bob Herbert, “How race could derail Obama’s candidacy”:

Finally someone has written a column about the real hidden issue of this year’s election. Bush’s performance in the past eight years has been so bad that the Democrats should be leading by at least 20 points in the polls, yet the contest is now counted as a dead heat.

I was born and raised in Detroit, and I think I know how many of the blue-collar white workers, whom Mr. Herbert was writing about, secretly think. Hillary got 18 million votes in the primaries — some because she is a Clinton, some because she is a woman, and a whole lot more because she is white. I am a white male retiree.

When given the choice between an old, rich white man who will continue the Bush policies and a young, extremely smart, articulate black man, many of those Democrats, even though they know it is not in their best interest, will not vote for the black man.

I think the most interesting thing in Mr. Herbert’s column was the way he adjusts his poll numbers. He takes at least 2 or 3 points off the Obama numbers because, as he states, “the polls, when it comes to Obama, cannot be trusted. It is frequently the case that a statistically significant percentage of white voters will lie to pollsters — or decline to state their preferences — in races in which one candidate is black and the other white.”

Obama earned the right to be the Democratic candidate and to represent our party. I support him 100 percent. I hope the rest of the party, and a whole lot of independent voters (because we will need them), can see past the color of his skin.