Truth or Consequences

One of my favorite political websites is run by a gent who calls himself The Votemaster, an American computer science professor currently teaching in the Netherlands.

In his current posting the Votemaster conjectures on why Democratic women seemed to do so poorly when they ran in the last congressional elections. He opines that support from the women's political action group , Emily's List, is an anchor around a female candidate's neck, as the group demands that candidates they endorse pass certain litmus tests.

I think the reason that Democratic female candidates did not perform as well as might have been expected is rather simple. I think people do not give truthful answers to pollsters when they are asked about female, black, or other minority candidates. The individual voters do not want to be perceived by the interviewer, who in fact may be themselves be perceived as female or black, as racists, sexist or any other "ist" , so person being polled lies. Oh yes, they say, they would vote for a woman, or a black for president, but when they get to cast their really-real, yes-it-counts vote, their true feelings emerge.

The moral of this story is simple: Hillary and Barack better not believe they are shoo-ins if they are the Democratic nominees. A lot of folks will vote for a halfway decent white, male, (gasp!)Republican.

As Walter Cronkite used to say, " And that's the way it is."