Barack 2.0
By Keith Boykin, in politics
Monday, December 3 2007, 10:54AM
With one month to go until the Iowa caucuses, the presidential race is finally heating up. The latest polls show a surprise in Iowa. For the first time ever, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are leading the polls in their respective parties. Huckabee may not have the money or organization to translate an Iowa victory into a nomination win, but Obama does.
That's why this is particularly good news for Barack Obama. Just over a month ago, the media were ready to declare Obama's campaign dead on arrival. But after Hillary Clinton stumbled in a debate in Philadelphia and Obama gave a stirring speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Iowa, the Illinois senator has been getting a second look. Now with the Iowa polls on his side and the wind at his back, he's getting a second chance to make a first impression. Call it Barack 2.0.
It was just over a year ago when New York Times columnist Frank Rich seemed to declare the prospect of an Obama presidential campaign to be a pipe dream. "To understand the hysteria about a Democratic senator who has not yet served two years and is mainly known for a single speech at the 2004 convention, you have to appreciate just how desperate the Democrats are for a panacea for all their ills," Rich wrote in October 2006. Later in the article, titled "Obama Is Not a Miracle Elixir," Rich went on to praise Obama for the Democrats as "one of their best hopes."
Yesterday Frank Rich's other shoe dropped when he all but endorsed Obama's presidential bid and dismissed the questions about Barack's electability. "Were Mr. Obama to best Mrs. Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he may prove harder for the Republicans to rally against and defeat than the all-powerful, battle-tested Clinton machine," he wrote.
Certainly, an Obama candidacy removes us from the possibility of a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton scenario and removes a lot of the baggage that Hillary Clinton brings to a general election campaign. But I think Rich is downright naive in his analysis about race.
"Part of the Republicans’ difficulty in countering Mr. Obama, should they have to, is their own cynical racial politics. For the most part, race has been the dog that hasn’t barked in this campaign despite the (largely) white press’s endless fretting about whether the Illinois senator is too white for black voters and too black for white voters," Rich writes.
Obama, a student of history, surely understands the historical implications of race in his campaign. But it is the "audacity of hope," as he calls it, that encouraged him to run in the first place. No one thought he was ever going to be elected senator when he announced his candidacy, and the naysayers were wrong. He's hoping now that the naysayers are wrong again. And maybe that's the reason why the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has endorsed Obama, has criticized the senator and the other Democrats recently for failing to tackle issues that concern black America.
Obama knows that if he runs a Jesse Jackson- or Al Sharpton-style campaign, the white voters won't support him. But he also needs to make a direct appeal to black voters, as he has been doing lately in South Carolina and Harlem, or African Americans may see him as too "whitewashed."
Frank Rich makes a good point in his critique of the media's obsession with race, but he wanders off the reservation with his next observation. "Most Americans aren’t racist, most Republicans included," says Rich.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Yes, most Americans are not dyed-in-the-wool KKK-member racists. That's no longer fashinonable in America, not even in the South. But surely a colunist as smart as Frank Rich understands that racism has not disappeared; it's just moved underground.
You gotta love white liberals, but I don't think they get it. Last time I checked the polls on this issue, I recall that white voters were more likely than black voters to think that America was ready to elect a black president. That's not because black people are cynical; we're realistic. We hear all the platitudes about equality from white people all the time, and those idealistic words rarely change the day-to-day existence for most African Americans. I love America, but this is still a racist country.
And, I'm sorry to disappoint Rich, but I believe all Americans are racist. Again, not the evil KKK-type of overt racists, but the softer, gentler racists who practice their prejudice with subtlety and unconsciousness. The dictionary defines a racist as "a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others." America is built on that very assumption, and has been since its inception. Those thoughts didn't magically disappear when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Republicans know this, and Democrats in the South surely must understand this too. If anyone seriously thinks that the Republican Party won't play the race card in the presidential election if Obama is the nominee, then I'd love to meet you in Vegas for a high-stakes round of poker.
The GOP message won't be overt. They won't have to do that. White voters can clearly see that Barack Obama is black. And although they may tell the pollsters that they would consider voting for a black president, history suggests that many of them will be lying. Just ask David Dinkins and Doug Wilder, who narrowly won their elections in New York and Virginia after polls showed them with strong leads.
That doesn't mean people -- including black people -- shouldn't vote for Barack Obama if they like him as a candidate. But it does mean that white America, especially white liberal America, needs to wake up and smell the coffee about race in America. If Obama should win the nomination, it's going to take more than wishful thinking on race for him to win the presidency.
Comments conceal
David
December 3 2007, 11:42AM
Thanks Keith--Finally some truth--it will be interesting to see how many of Barack's liberal Iowa voters actually follow thru and vote for him...as I am certain that the current numbers are inflated covering up certain hidden feelings.
Columbo
December 3 2007, 11:43AM
Excellent piece Keith. I read the Frank Rich article as well as the Maureen Dowd article in yesterday's NYTimes and I totally agree with you. I'm a black gay male living here in Atlanta and strongly support Hillary Clinton for President. However, after reading Dreams for my Father by Barack i'm very impressed with him as an individual and politician. It would be nice if America would consider him based on his record and not his race (same w/Hillary and gender politics)but that ain't gonna happen. This is truly shaping up to be one interesting race. I just pray the race doesn't turn really nasty and lose half the Democratic constituency once a winner is chosen. That would be a disaster.
Kenneth Winfrey
December 3 2007, 11:43AM
Frankly, I think that whites will believe him to be as empathetic to them as he is to his own mother... I think blacks can expect him to understand better the lessons of history and racism, particularly as the latter has inevitably had an impact on his own life as a black-looking man. How can he look like that and not ever know the fear in the eyes of those who didn't know him?
I also would suspect abbreviated perceptions of our own ethnic group as a reson why so many blacks didn't think America was ready to elect a Black president.
Mayra
December 3 2007, 1:23PM
Funny, it would be nice if he could win Iowa, he would show to me that these people are telling the truth to pollsters and not being politically correct. As for voting for him, I still just can't relate to him or anything he says, and, it has nothing to do with him being black, I can't relate to anything any of them are saying, although, clutch the pearls, I do kind of like Huckabee, other than the gay nonsense, but, he is calling out the GOP on race baiting, something not one of the others will do, and, it makes no sense that black people are only good as scapegoats to that party and never treated as true citizens of the US.
sos
December 3 2007, 1:43PM
Come on Mr. Boykin. How much of your skeptism is about Omaba's race vs. your personal affiliation with the Clintons?
MidwestGuy
December 3 2007, 1:56PM
I won't go so far as to suggest who white people will or will not vote for. I'm not white, have very few white friends and don't think I can speak for them. I do understand conventional wisdom theory.
But, if they say they're voting for Obama and the donations prove it, we'll just have to wait and see.
I do disagree on one thing. Yes, I believe that the GOP will play the race card. But just not in the same way that the democrats have over years.
It will be much harder for the GOP to attack Clinton as a Clinton than it will be for them to attack Obama because of his race. He's not so easy a target as Clinton is.
J
December 3 2007, 2:38PM
The more I see and hear from him, the less I like and trust him. That's being too nice. I can't stand the big eared tool. He's so fake and there's something so sick underneath it all. He's almost as bad as that thing Clinton.
Derrick from Philly
December 3 2007, 3:24PM
Actually, I prefer Hillary & John's fiesty attack on Republicans and the right wing, but that may not be as smart as Barack's "everybody come together" routine.
The other day on ABC News they did a piece on whether whites were really ready to elect a black man as president. They asked this young white...(well, let's just say he was one of J's examples of white folks). He responded, "I could never vote for a...a...a Colored guy."
Oh, well, if Barack stands a chance of winning it can't just be with a majority of blacks, Latinos, gays & Jews. He'll have to get a substantial majority of white women's votes 'cause white men aint gonna' vote for him. Come to think of it, that's the case for any Democrat to win...well, Barack'll need more white women than usual. Maybe he'll do it with sex appeal--he's got more of that than Hillary...much more. But what about pretty John?
Lewis Thomas, III
December 3 2007, 9:03PM
Great post Keith, I concur with your point with regard to the white liberal fantasy view of this country. Even the so-called white liberal progressives and their movement in most instances is devoid of color, thus proving your point that even those liberals have issues with making their own movement look like what they claim they have no problem with America looking like....A PLACE WITH LOTS OF COLORS!
Robert
December 4 2007, 3:00PM
i agree that there is a significant undercurrent of racism in the US that will cause a lot of white people (Republican/Democrat) to oppose Obama. But this is also about class/gender. One of my neighbors is a white Republican man who is racist and not in a subtle way. Yet he'd vote for Obama over any current candidate because he thinks Obama is smartest. Another neighbor is a white liberal who won't support him because he thinks Obama is a snake oil merchant. i think his candidacy has a serious chance because he's straight, well-educated and male, the kind of mainstream black man who (like Colin Powell) is not viewed as a threat. He could probably garner enough independent and moderate Republican votes to win in a national election, but ironically he'll have to distance himself from his own community. He represents something new but not radically or dangerously new. But we need to think about whether/how to support such a candidate who might be the closest we get to a familiar face in the White House.
Dr. T
December 4 2007, 4:36PM
It's tough not to respond to some of the previous comments. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. However, as a black man, it's disheartening to see other "supposed" progressive black men even uttering the words that "he [Obama] can't win." I wonder if it comes from the defeatist attitude that is still pervasive amongst some of us.
Again, I respect everyone's opinion, and I am not claiming to be a current supporter of any candidate at this time...it's just scary that some black folks still USE race as an excuse for some things. It's like an old black person saying "I don't want a black doctor..." I hope we begin to wake up and realize that sometimes, SOMETIMES, race is a bigger factor for us than it is for those we claim oppress or reject us.
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