by Demon of Undoing » Fri Oct 14, 2011 5:48 pm
Herman Cain has an advantage Obama did not. Herman is a Southern black, and no matter what you think of the South, for better or for worse, the people most likely to vote racist have a long history of accommodation and working with that . Cain has just enough of a Southern black in his voice to be familiar, and no, not just as an Uncle Tom. There is a history of even the worst of the white racists having respect for a clearly capable black man and offering deference, at the very least within their frame of expertise. This strikes Yankees as strange, but it's true.
Fact of the matter is that poor whites in the South work closer to black folks than any other group in America. Jesse Jackson and the race hustlers are hated mightily, but someone with an education and a track record that isn't trying to pull off too high-minded ( uppity? Arrogant? Il Duce-level imperiousness?) a schtick can bring it off.
Cain is an interesting cat. Anybody that grows a beard like that at any point in his life is not a standard personality. Who knows.
Don't know what it is, but I'm agin'it.