How many European countries have elected a black president in recent years?

May 31, 2012 -- 8:12PM, farragut wrote:

How many European countries have elected a black president in recent years?

Are you deliberately obtuse, farragut?

The little off-topic discussion we had here is about political rejuvenation and political minority opinion. Obama is not minority, he's a mainstream guy, always has been.

But obviously skin colour is what pops up first in your mind when somone mentions 'minority'... why is that?

To respond to your pissing contest challenge:
How many females have been elected president in the USA, ever?
They don't even constitute a minority, for being so non- / underrepresented...

May 31, 2012 -- 5:37PM, farragut wrote:

Indeed, minorities are guaranteed representation in the House and Senate. But they are not the minorities designated by race, creed, or color; they are the geographic minorities. Thus tiny states like Rhode Island, and states of tiny populations such as the Dakotas each get two Senators. Seems fair to me.

Fair (and necessary), maybe, but increasingly irrelevant.

Both parties, but Republicans especially, have become increasingly monolithic, to the point where subtleties of policy perspective are not tolerated anymore.  Nowadays, if you vote for a Republican in Rhode Island you may as well be voting for James Inhofe, the days of a Chaffee are long past.  Same thing for the dying breed of southern conservative Democrats;  while I quite obviously disagreed with the civil rights perspective of the oldtime southern Democrats, it is no denying that they represented a sizable section of the electorate.  And their disappearance is the perhaps single best answer to the question which is often asked here: why do poor people in these regions continue to vote against their own best economic interests?

This loss of this variety of opinion and influence in Congress has been a catastrophe, and shows no signs of abating.

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