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Last Tuesday's debate featured an odd moment when McCain told a young African-American questioner that before all this, he'd probably never heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The young man was Oliver Clark. And he just posted this to his Facebook page:
How did I feel about Sen. McCain stating “You probably never heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac before this.”Well Senator, I actually did. I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent person. I have a bachelor degree in Political Science from Tennessee State, so I try to keep myself up to date with current affairs. I have a Master degree in Legal Studies from Southern Illinois University, a few years in law school, and I am currently pursuing a Master in Public Administration from the University of Memphis. In defense of the Senator from Arizona I would say he is an older guy, and may have made an underestimation of my age. Honest mistake. However, it could be because I am a young African-American male. Whatever the case may be it was somewhat condescending regardless of my age to make an assumption regarding whether I was knowledgeable about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.He also provides some interesting insight into the way Gallup discovered "undecided" voters. "I have a Nashville area code for my cell phone. So the Sunday before last, I received a call from the Gallop Poll. They asked a few questions regarding my choice in the Presidential election. They asked who I would vote for. I said most likely I would be voting for Barack Obama. They followed with, 'is there any chance that you would change your mind'? I said 'Of course anything is possible.' They then asked me as an uncommitted voter would I like to participate in the Town hall debate. I said 'Of course!'"I'll have more to say about undecideds in a few days, but suffice to say, on some level, we're all undecided voters, but Gallup's selection process was pretty clearly doing violence to the idea of the undecided voter, which is more akin to voters who haven't yet developed a preference.
