Thursday, June 19, 2008

Bradley's back?

I'm always interested in the Bradley Effect--i.e. when White voters tell pollsters they're going to vote for a Black candidate but pull the lever for a White one in the booth. I tend to agree with Noam Scheiber that it is unlikely to come up in this election because Obama isn't the "Black" candidate, like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, but rather a sui generis figure that confounds notions of race and ethnicity. But isn't the Bradley effect kinda dead? I mean, last cycle in Tennessee a Black man came very, very close to winning a Senate seat, and the polls accurately told the story of what would happen. He didn't win, but he came close, and if one makes the assumption that there's more racial baggage in the South than elsewhere in the country (which is perhaps a sloppy assumption, but still...) I doubt it will be a big deal.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.