U.S. Presidential Election 2008

[Sean]

I've seen an interesting poll result a couple times now and just thought it was worth sharing:

"Twenty-three percent of white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama believe he is a Muslim"

It's interesting to me in a few ways. One, because it reveals how uninformed some people out there are. I mean you have to have been living under a rock to still believe Obama is Muslim. And that's giving the benefit of the doubt to these people, because I'm sure many of them have heard reports that Obama's not Muslim, but choose to remain willfully ignorant about the facts.

Two, it's no surprise, but it's interesting that this confirms what I would guess - uninformed, ignorant people seem to associate "Muslim" with "bad". The idea that people can go out there and proclaim that they don't like Obama because (at least in part) they think he's Muslim is about as blatantly bigoted as it gets.

And finally, what does this say about Hillary Clinton supporters? I assume that these folks back her since they're Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama. Anyway, it only adds to my suspicion that for the most part, in order to be a Hillary supporter at this point, you have to either be completely comfortable with machiavellian tactics, or flat out ignorant. I feel bad lumping so many people into these groups, but I really can't see any other logical conclusions. I'm open to hearing any Clinton supporter thoughts on it though. At this point, I just don't know of any I can talk to, so it's hard for me to get a real handle on what could draw someone to her.


Anyway, here's the article where I most recently saw this poll result referenced:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/04...s_obama_p.html