Weigh In on the Presidential Election

Pennsylvania voters may decide who will be the Democratic presidential nominee. Before the primary takes place on April 22, Dickinsonians have weighed in with their thoughts on some of the issues raised by the campaigns.

The following comments were posted on the issue. Please add your own comments.

Name:	Dan Cozort Faculty
Date:	Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:17 pm
Comments:	The easy part is deciding not to vote for John McCain: more war, more income inequality, more enormous deficits. It was harder to decide between Clinton and Obama--until I read Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, which he wrote about ten years ago, before he first ran for public office. I want a man with those kinds of life experiences--the racial mixture of Hawaii, the culture of Indonesia, family in Kenya, years of organizing the poorest people on the south side of Chicago to work for better education, employment opportunities, and a supportive culture--as my president. As I read, I kept thinking about the narrow, narrow worldview of George Bush and where it has led us. Obama's election would shift us at least a little in the right direction and it would blow the minds of a lot of people in the world, who might give us a chance to rehabilitate ourselves after the many insults of the Bush years.
Name:	Cotten Seiler
Date:	Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:26 pm
Comments:	One of the amazing incidents on the campaign trail occurred about a month ago in Cincinnati, when a resentment-radio host referred to "Barack Mohammed Obama" repeatedly on air, and then, at a live campaign event for McCain, emphasized Obama's actual middle name, Hussein. He also erroneously reported that Obama had been raised in Indonesian madrasas (doctrinaire Muslim schools). Obama is not Muslim. What strikes me as so interesting here is the way in which affiliation with Islam has supplanted blackness in some anti-Obama rhetoric, in terms of rendering him dangerous to the nation. Race--here understood as skin color--is no longer an acceptable mode of demonization, even for the radical right. The effective shaming of transparently racist expression in public must be counted as a gain of the civil rights movement. Now, however, we see a religious identity, "Muslim," being made to stand in for "black" as a way of describing a person's unassimilable difference. If Obama does indeed become the democratic nominee, look for more of this Muslim-baiting in the coming months. And call it out.
Name:	x
Date:	Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:23 pm
Comments:	test

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