Elephant in the room?

Reader question:

What does this headline – Obama's race is the 'elephant' in the voter booth – mean? What "elephant" are we talking about?

My comments:

The phrase in question here is the "elephant in the voter booth", and it's a metaphorical elephant as well.

The headline means this: Barrack Obama (the Democratic frontrunner for the next Presidency in the United States) is black. And his race is going to be a thorny issue – an issue Americans will find hard to ignore. It's an issue that's kind of taboo. However, this time American voters can no longer sidestep this question.

The question essentially is this: Are Americans ready for a black President?

First, definitions. Elephants are big, huge, enormous, gigantic, gargantuan animals. An elephant in the voter booth is hardly the easiest thing to ignore, speaking the obvious. However, if they could, I think people probably would ignore the animal. Elephants and things of that size and nature are hard to wrestle with, that's why people want to ignore them if they could instead of confronting them face to face.

The original idiom is in fact "elephant in the room". Likewise, an elephant in the room is hard to ignore or sidestep, but at the same time it's hard to come to terms with. Hence, the elephant in the room becomes a metaphor for any subject matter that is taboo, thorny and contentious. It could be either people or issues – taboo and controversial people or issues that we want to but can't simply sweep under the carpet.

In the case of Obama, if he wins the Democratic nomination – he has all but clinched it over the weekend – American voters will have to ask themselves a question they've never asked before. That is, are we ready for a black President?

Well, the question itself says a lot about America, a country that claims to be a land of equality and freedom. But tha's an elephant in the room we may ignore for the moment. What we're talking about here and now is another elephant, the issue of race in the next election. The prospect of a black President is hitherto unheard of. It's unprecedented. Little wonder people will make an issue of it, especially Republicans whose presidential nominee is John McCain, who is white.

Pity that Obama and his nemesis Hilary Rodham Clinton are both Democrats. Hilary, being a woman, is also unprecedented running for President. Had they been in different parties, they might just as well be vying for the Presidency itself rather than party nominations.

Well, then of course there would be two elephants in the same voter booth, wouldn't there – blacks and women? At least that way one underprivileged group would win it all, you know.

Anyways, here are a few media examples of the elephant in the room.

1. The Black Elephant in the Room

At least Obama was trying, in his speech, to start a dialogue about the black elephant in the room. That's more than any white politician has done. White politicians want the blacks to just behave, vote for them, and then go away.

Rev. Wright, crazy though he may seem, said many things that some black people think. Some of them do indeed believe that AIDS was created by the government to keep black people down. Some do believe that 9/11 was an inside job. Centuries of racism have led them to this point. You can scream and holler all night about the ridiculousness of it, and you will, but there it is. Many blacks just think differently about racial issues than whites. And remember a little guy named O.J. Simpson, and how blacks cheered at his acquittal while whites looked on in horror?

2. The White Elephant in the Room

Meanwhile, most pundits, left and right, refuse to squarely face the white elephant in the room: race.

The Republican victory turned almost exclusively on increasing its share of the white vote. In 2000 Bush won the white vote by 12 points, 54-42; in 2004 he increased this to a 17-point margin, 58-41. That increase translates into about a 4 million vote gain for Bush, the same number by which Bush turned his 500,000 vote loss in 2000 into a 3.5 million vote victory this time around.

This increase came mainly from white women. Bush carried white men by 24 points in 2000 (60-36) and increased that margin by only one point in 2004 (62-37). But he increased his margin of victory among white women from only 1 point in 2000 (49-48) to 11 points in 2004 (55-44). This accounts for a 4 million plus vote swing for Bush. (Women of color favored Kerry by 75-24.)

3. Ignoring the elephant in the room

The soaring oil price and its underlying causes are the invisible elephant in the room in the presidential race. While many of the candidates' proposals can be chalked up to pandering in an election year, there is no evidence that I can find that any of the candidates gets this "peak oil" problem. For example, Robert Hirsch and Roger Bezdek briefed two low level Clinton staffers on the dangers of a dwindling oil supply. No evidence supports the idea that this briefing has had the slightest effect on thinking in the Clinton campaign.

We are all being sold down the river in this year's election. As the first DOE secretary James Schlesinger said, "We have only two modes—complacency and panic." Complacency rules, and panic awaits. I don't know who the next president will be, but I can foresee that anxious day when our leader-to-be (or Jason Grumet?) exclaims "Oh, no! Oil is $161/barrel! The economy is falling apart! What do we do now?" Don't say we didn't warn you.