The Salad Bowl

Today in the parking lot of Trader Joe's I saw an "Italian-Americans for Obama" sticker.  I was really surprised to see it. In North Beach or NYC's Little Italy?  Sure.  But in Southern California, most European-American ethnicities have no particular nexus of power.  They're too spread out.  In fact, I'm having trouble finding a travel agent who specializes in Ireland whereas I'd have no problem finding one on Geary Blvd. in SF.

So I just Googled to see what the deal is and it turns out there are different parts of My.BarackObama.com that are customized. So there's an Irish-Americans for Obama page, too. Actually, there are two Irish interest groups. But there's a whole Irish-Americans for Obama website that isn't even part of the official campaign site (and its inferior content and web design illustrate that, sadly).  I tried to see if I could buy one of the Italian-American stickers so I went to the Obama Store.  There are quite a few SIG group breakdowns: GLBT, Jewish, African-American, Asian/Pacific Islander-American, Latino, Women, Veterans, etc.  THere were even bumper stickers in Hebrew.

I decided to see whether the party with the "big tent" also had such groups.  You *do* get something when you Google Irish-Americans for McCain and Italian-Americans for McCain but they're just placeholders.  Their content is the same.  You also get an article about McCain being the first Republican candidate to appear at the Irish-American Presidential Forum since it was founded.  There are *tons* of Americans with Irish ancestry but it's not a super-cohesive voting block.  Particularly since more people have fallen away from the Catholic Church.  Back when WASP persecution of Catholics was mainstream, Irish-Americans hung together more if only in reaction to that. (I'm actually really struggling with how to phrase the concept I'm talking about here...)

Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see the various ethnic SIGs.