Hmmm. Interesting viewpoint, Riginslinger. I understand what you're getting at. Now, I'm a person who is naturally attracted to the intellectual types like Obama, and I am not so much in a natural sympathy with working class psychology in America, because it's too conservative for my taste. I'm in tune with the kind of people you describe as most probably forming the caucuses in Idaho. ;-)   However, I realize that any candidate needs to court the American working class successfully in order to win an election!

Your point about the Black population voting so solidly for Obama is definitely a cogent one...because it's a way out-of-balance situation which is the end result of a long historical process where Blacks have been enslaved, marginalized, felt discriminated against and disadvantaged...so they vote for Obama because he's Black (not only because of that, but it is a huge factor). That's simply not a sensible reason (in itself) to vote for someone.

If 90% of all the women in the USA voted for Hillary because she's a female...that would be a comparable situation gone way out of balance. It would not make any sense.

You said, "the black vote went to Obama by more than 90% in some cases. That, to me, is the most stark example of racism I've ever seen in my life"

Well, yeah! But you can't call it that in the media, because Blacks are seen as the injured party in American history. So it's not considered politically correct at this time to say that gross ethnocentric race-based prejudice is "racism" when Blacks do it. Or when Native Americans do it. Or when Jews do it. Why? Because they are all seen as historical victims.

That's an unfair situation to all the other people, such as the White majority in North America. The moral deck has been stacked so that they must carry a measure of implied guilt which certain other groups (the "victims") are spared. It's a guilt trip. So if it makes working class Whites nervous when Black Americans vote so obviously as a bloc on the basis of race...and there is then a backlash against it on the part of the working classs Whites, I can understand why.

But I don't think that's Obama's fault. I think it's a fatal and terrible flaw in the thinking of an entire society, and Obama just happens to be struggling in the grip of it like a man wading through chest-deep mud. He didn't ask for that, but it was inevitable that he would get it.

It must be quite discouraging for him, I would think. I would certainly be discouraged if I had to deal with it.