Wait a second, you're NOT voting for Obama?!!

Okay, this is the stuff I hate.  The Washington Post has a story (by Kevin Merida) about some of the racism Obama staffers and supporters have had to endure. It's disgraceful, I completely agree. But the second half of the story is what really irks me. It's about Dondra Ewing canvassing voters who have a 'funny feeling' about Obama, implying that, although not explicit, there were obviously racist undertones to their discomfort.  The article describes Ewing as:

a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history -- an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.

Okay, so because her mother was the first African American elected to the school board, she can persuade anybody to vote for Obama? Not sure I follow that logic, but okay.

Secondly, when she encountered retiree Robert Cox, the article says:

Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. "There are more than two families that can run the United States of America," she said, "and their names aren't Bush and Clinton."

"Yeah, I know, I know," Cox said, remaining noncommittal.

"It's not his race, because I got real good friends and all that," Cox continued. "If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people."

Like him?

"No, older than me," said Cox, 66.

Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, "Probably Obama," when asked directly how he would vote.

As she walked away, Ewing said: "I think we got him."

But truthfully, she wasn't feeling so sure.

First of all, if that's the hard sell, she needs to work on her pitch. But more importantly, this really captures my problem with Obamafest 2008: you need a reason not to vote for him. There's an expectation that people must vote for Obama, even in the absence of any just reason, and when that inordinate expectation is unfulfilled, it is met with incredulity and whisperings of racism. The fact that he's not Bush or Clinton is not a platform, it's not a reason to either vote for him or against him. The interesting story missing here is what Dondra Ewing thinks. I'd like to know why she is campaigning for Obama--there are thousands of stories about why white, middle-America won't vote for him, but I want to read the other side of the story, I want to know why >30% of white people and 90% of black people are voting for him. I think it's only fair, given that voters seem required to give a refined and definitive reason why they are not voting for him, surely there is an equally nuanced reason for why they are.

P.S. Quick point about the 'funny feeling' thing. For some reason I had similar inexplicable reservations about Fred Thompson's candidacy. Although I liked his positions, his personality, his presence, etc., there was something about him that didn't quite sit right. Weird, I know, but it does happen.