The second of two parts:
Pt 1 How McCain Can Win the White House
Pt 2 How Obama Can Win the White House
How Obama Can Win the White House
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A Pew Research Poll Center Poll in early May found that "inspiring," " fresh," "change," and "visionary" was not the word that voters said best described Obama. The word was "inexperienced." Republican presidential contender John McCain has made this and the boast that he’s the best on national security, the terrorist fight and defense preparedness his attack mantra against Obama.
Obama can parry the attack by turning the table and proclaiming that his lack of national and especially international experience is a positive. That he'll bring fresh ideas and approaches to statecraft that replace the old, tired, and failed polices of recent times. But that’s not enough. He must choose and choose carefully a vice presidential running mate who is every bit the tough guy on national security, the war on terrorism and defense preparedness that McCain claims to be. Then he must convince voters that he will back up his pledge to bring an honorable and workable end to the Iraq war.
But it’s still Bush and the GOP’s domestic fumbles that are potentially his biggest selling point. He must repeatedly remind voters that they should be mad at Bush and the GOP for the bungle of the economy, his draconian tax giveaway to the wealthy and corporate interests, his gut of environmental and civil liberties protections, and his Medicare prescription drug benefit bill that lined the pockets of pharmaceutical companies and eroded Medicare coverage and protections. He must adeptly remind women's groups that the GOP will continue to wage a relentless war against abortion rights. He must remind gay groups that top GOP politicians are staunch opponents of gay marriage, and are likely to continue to fight hard against stronger civil rights protections for gays.
He must make the ringing call by the Democrats for party unity more than a feel-good, politically correct self-assuring call. This means repairing the deep polarization among Democratic voters, or more particularly, the hardliners who backed Clinton and are wary if not hostile to him. He must make an all out effort to convince white blue collar and rural whites that an Obama White House will aggressively battle against soaring gas prices, home foreclosures, job losses, plant closures, the erosion of farm supports and to implement affordable health care and a McCain White House won’t. He must make an equally all out effort to convince Latinos that an Obama White House will just as aggressively fight for immigration reform and affordable health care, and a McCain White House won’t.
Obama must turn the campaign for the White House into a holy crusade among black and Latino voters. The enthusiasm of black voters for Obama and Latino voters for Clinton was sky high in the primaries and the numbers that turned out were near record setting. The bellwether for that was Obama’s smash victory in the South Carolina primary in January. More than a half million Democrats voted. That was nearly twice the Democratic turnout of 2004 and almost 20 percent higher than the Republican vote the week before. Blacks make up more than half of the Democratic vote in the state. In California, Latinos make up nearly 30 percent of the voters and had a higher than average turnout in the Super Tuesday primary in February.
He must make sure that those near record numbers that flooded the polls in the primaries flood the polls in near record or better yet record numbers in the fall election. He must turn part of his campaign into a bully pulpit to speak out on the need for vigilance on voting rights and civil rights protections, the need for tougher and expanded hate crimes laws, and the repeal of the racially skewed mandatory drug laws. He must boldly call for increased funding for underserved inner city schools, and for combating the HIV/AIDS plague, greater funding for minority business, and the appointment of Supreme Court and federal judges committed to protect civil rights and civil liberties.
He risks little in aggressively championing civil rights and going all out to ramp up the black and Latino vote turnout especially in the South. There's little chance that he can break the strong grip Republicans have on white male votes in those states. Polls show they likely will still be McCain’s biggest and most enthusiastic backers in the South.
Finally, Obama must convince a significant number of swing state independent voters that he is the real change alternative to McCain in handling the war, the economy, health care, immigration and energy issues, and is centrist enough to convince them that he is as tough on terrorism and as big an advocate of a strong military as McCain.
That's a tall, but very doable, order but he can win the White House by filling it.

New America Media National Political Writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

The first of a two parts:
Pt 1 How McCain Can Win the White House
Pt 2 How Obama Can Win the White House

How McCain Can Win the White House
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
In a talk with reporters in Louisiana, Republican presidential contender John McCain implored disgruntled Hillary Democrats to back him. His pitch was I’m the toughest, most knowledgeable and most experienced on national security. The unmistakable inference is that rival Obama is too green, fresh, and untested to gamble with on national security. McCain’s aim was to lop off disgruntled Hillary Democrats. But it also staked out what he must do to win the White House.
The terrorism issue is still a McCain election trump card. Many Americans think there could be a terrorist attack on American soil at some point in the future. Those who think that are susceptible to McCain's pitch that he can best defend the nation's security and with America under mortal danger from a terror attack, that it's risky to change to the Democrats.
This isn’t enough. McCain must duck the economic mess Bush made by pushing his economic plan that calls for lowering the corporate income tax rate, more tax breaks for business, and making Bush’s tax cuts permanent. Though it looks a lot like Bush’s plan, McCain can spin it his way with the standard GOP line that his plan is pro-growth, in contrast to the shop worn tax and spend Democrat’s approach to growth. This still has tremendous reverb with wide segments of American voters.
He can claim that his plan will save homes from foreclosure, spark business growth, and create more jobs. He can remind voters that Reagan economic policies sparked the economic boom of the 1980s and his updated version of supply side economic policies is a mirror reflection of Reagan’s. This gives him the hook he needs to boast that Americans will reap rewards with his economic policies
McCain must openly and subtly stoke middle and working class workers’ disdain for liberal solutions to problems. Only a minority of American voters call themselves liberal. The Republican's repeated smear of the Democrats as tax and spend, liberal big government proponents still strikes a chord with millions of voters.
McCain must contest the Latino vote. His name has been mentioned countless times in the Spanish-language press and most of the time the mention was favorable. Many Latinos look benignly on him because he broke with the GOP’s hardliner stance and backed immigration reform along with Senate Democrats.
McCain doesn’t have to top or even match Bush’s total with Latinos to push the Democrats. All he needs to do is get a quarter of the Latino vote in the key Western swing states of Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, and that might be more than enough to move the states to the GOP camp—again. Even before Bush’s massive court of Latino voters in 2004, they gave Republicans a quarter of their vote and in some places such as Florida did far better
McCain must stress that the Iraq war is not a totally losing proposition for Americans. A significant percentage still think a change in strategy, tactics, and direction in the war can if not bring victory at least bring a satisfactory peace. McCain will have a parade of generals, defense experts, and the defense industry to help him sell that position to millions of voters.

McCain needs a fractured Democratic Party. Exit polls in the bruising Clinton and Obama Democratic primary battles showed that the bruises are firmly tattooed on some fervent Clinton backers. Nearly a quarter, mostly blue collar, rural, and non-college educated whites, said they would vote for McCain or stay home if the nominee were Obama. And since he is the nominee, if many mean what they say, McCain is the big winner with them.
The historic nomination of an African-American as the Democratic presidential standard bearer is applauded by many publicly but privately it raises doubts even dread among many others. McCain can’t and won’t stoke those racial fears. He doesn’t have to they’re already there and that’s a campaign plus for him.
Then there’s the issue of how many voters turnout for the Democrats and the GOP. Much is made that the Democrats scored near record turnouts in the number of voters and registration in their primaries in the winter of 2008 and that Republicans lagged way behind. Yet, in fairly recent presidential election history there was lower turnout and seemingly less enthusiasm in the Republican primaries in the election battles of Bush Sr. and Reagan. Both were still elected.
The variables that work for McCain against Obama are the war on terror, a victory spin on Iraq, the experience factor, the voter’s inherent fear of an untested candidate, the strong tradition in millions of households of voting for GOP candidates especially among male voters, a bickering, divided Democratic Party, and the X factor of race.
McCain can and will exploit these variables on the campaign trail. He can win the White House with them.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Doing the Right Thing: California's Same Sex Marriage Ruling

Doing the Right Thing: California’s Same Sex Marriage Ruling
By Sikivu Hutchinson

The California Supreme Court’s May 16th ruling legalizing same sex marriages elicited the usual howl of righteous outrage from conservatives, religious mafiosos
and other self-proclaimed traditional family values types. They believe same sex marriages are the devil’s spawn because they circumvent the sacred union of male and female and the Biblical covenant to propagate the human race. Indeed, if the Christian god had wanted gays to reproduce he would have created Adam and Steve instead of Adam and Eve, and presumably made donor insemination and In vitro fertilization less expensive. Of course one of the primary objections to same sex unions is the argument that gays and lesbians cannot raise children with the same level of care and competency as straight couples. According to this view, same sex unions produce children who are hopelessly dysfunctional and more prone to becoming gay themselves. Same sex unions flout traditional family values by violating the most basic rules of God and patriarchy, namely that women and children are property and should honor and obey.

Yet if we were to take inventory of straight offenses in the dominant culture it would seem that “traditional” is domestic abuse, incest, pedophilia, abandonment,
and socializing young straight males to define their masculinity by violent domination of women and other men. Traditional marriage has provided straight masculinity
with a cover from social scrutiny of violent behavior. How many times has the perpetrator of heinous acts of sexual assault been a married man, devoted father and model citizen? In these instances heterosexual men are not deemed universally unfit to raise female children yet for opponents of same sex marriage the immorality of homosexuality automatically invalidates gay and lesbian families.

In Minneapolis public elementary schools an anti-bullying curriculum designed to increase respect and sensitivity for gay, lesbian and transgendered children and their families has recently come under fire from some local parents and community members who’ve criticized it as a form of gay indoctrination. Most of these objections rest on the naïve notion that broaching sexual orientation to elementary kids recklessly introduces sexuality into a context where it didn’t exist before. Yet as our 24/7 tabloid media culture corrupts the last vestiges of childhood innocence, kids are increasingly sexualized, taking their cues on how to be male and female at earlier ages. In the hierarchical world of the elementary playground dress, social group choice and attraction to the opposite sex all mark kids as acceptably male or female. Those who don’t conform to the norms of mainstream gender behavior are labeled tomboys, fags, sissies or worse. And any boy who bucks gender orthodoxy at school by wearing so-called effeminate clothes or showing affection for a male friend may suffer tragic consequences, as did Larry King, the 15 year old openly gay Oxnard middle school student who was murdered by one of his classmates in February.

While the legalization of same sex marriages is certain to be challenged by conservatives with a ballot initiative this November, legal protection may open up new vistas for families no longer forced to hide or justify their loving parental relationships in the face of moral hypocrisy from the traditional family values regime. Let’s hope voters endorse the California Supreme Court’s decision and reject the gender minefield that “non-traditional” families must navigate for basic civil rights.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org, a journal of feminist criticism and literature a commentator on KPFK 90.7FM.

Obama’s Latino Dilemma
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A day before the Puerto Rican primary election, I talked with several Mexican workers and business professionals during a visit to Mexico City. The subject was American presidential politics and the upcoming election. They had only the haziest notion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was the frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination. They knew virtually nothing about his positions on the major issues, especially the hot button issue of immigration reform. They all readily recognized Clinton’s name and thought that if elected she’d do a better job on the immigration question.
Their haziness in knowing that Obama was the odds on favorite to bag the Democratic presidential nomination and even their wariness toward him was not a surprise. Three of the top newspapers on the newsstands in Mexico City, Excelsior, El Universal, and Reforma made only bare mention of the Puerto Rican primary, and only passing mention of the aftermath.
The combination of the familiarity with and like of Clinton by the majority of Latino voters and their still blurred notion of what Obama stands for remains a tormenting dilemma for him and the Democrats. Polls show that he will do well against Republican rival John McCain, but that’s mostly because a majority of Latino voters in Texas, California, New Jersey, and New York are Democrats. These are the states in which Latino voters helped propel Clinton to a decisive win over Obama. In the contest against McCain, Obama’s numbers pale in comparison to what Clinton would do against him.

But even before Clinton’s crushing win over Obama in Puerto Rico there were warning signs that Obama’s Latino dilemma wouldn’t go away. In Nevada in January, Obama got the endorsement of the leaders of the heavily Hispanic Culinary Workers Union. But getting the vote of the rank and file union workers was a far different matter, as the subsequent vote showed. Latino voters, many of them almost certainly members of the culinary union, defied their leaders and their votes made a big difference in Clinton’s victory in the state.
Obama spent months on the campaign trail, gotten non-stop media exposure, the nod of big name Democrats, done a victory romp through a dozen states, and piled up a seeming commanding number of delegates. Yet, exit polls still showed that his numbers didn’t budge much with Latino voters. The later endorsement of one time Democratic presidential contender Bill Richardson and a legion of leading Hispanic union leaders, elected officials, as well as top Latino entertainers still didn’t push Obama’s vote totals up.
A May poll in California showed that Obama would beat John McCain handily. Yet forty percent of Latino voters still said they preferred McCain. This was not a small campaign footnote. Latino voters make up about one quarter of California voters. Their swelling numbers is almost certainly a major reason why McCain announced that he will not write California off even though a GOP presidential contender hasn’t won the state since George Bush Sr. in 1988. The poll was no fluke.
In fact, Obama has marched in the exact opposite direction since the Super Tuesday primaries. Exit polls in state primaries between February and May show that Clinton has appreciably widened her lead among Latino voters over him by nearly six percent.
This poses an even bigger problem for Obama and the Democrats. Political tradition, logic, and numbers dictate that a candidate marching confidently to their party’s nomination should and must have momentum going into the general election battle. The surest way to measure that momentum is by counting the numbers and by gauging the voter demographics. Put simply, the presumed party nominee must increase the gap over their vanquished party rivals for the nomination among the key voter groups they need behind them to win the White House. For the Democrats, those voters are blue collar whites, rural voters, middle class, college educated professionals, middle aged and middle income white women, Jews, and African-Americans.
Increasingly, the most crucial group of all is Latino voters. They now make up one in five Democratic voters, and could put the GOP strongholds, Texas, Nevada, Colorado and swing state Florida, in play for the Democrats. But that’s only if the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee stokes the enthusiasm, passion and allegiance of Latino voters. The standard explanation for Obama’s failure to light the match under them in the early campaign days was that Hispanic voters didn’t know who he was. That explanation won’t fly now.
Obama’s heightened name identification, media boost, energizing change pitch and personal charisma has done absolutely nothing to dispel the mix of wariness, indifference, and outright opposition to him that I heard from Mexican workers and professional in Mexico City. That and the rejection of Obama across all groups of Puerto Rican voters in and outside Puerto Rico, once more points to Obama’s Latino dilemma. That spells big trouble for the Democrats.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

White Women are Punishing Obama, Not Oprah
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

What started as a trickle of puzzled queries on Oprah’s message board when she touted Obama in October eventually turned into angry complaints from many white women when she barnstormed for him in January. They raged that America’s long standing reigning queen of daytime talk TV had strayed way over the line. Oprah took note for a good reason. The loudest complaints came from middle-aged and middle class white women. They are the ones who have done as much as any other of Oprah’s longtime regulars to make her fortune and keep her at the top of daytime talk show ratings. They are also the part of the voter segment that has done much to make Hillary Clinton’s political fortunes and keep her competitive with Obama in the slog to the Democratic presidential nomination.

A legion of Oprah’s handlers, show producers, magazine editors, TV moguls, syndicate heads, and media talking heads hotly deny that she’s lost any of her luster because of Obama. Many of her women fans even jump to her defense and lambaste the women critics. Her ratings, cash spigot and superstar image still top that of most of her competitors in the TV business. It’s also true that celebrities who get too political can tick off a lot of their fans. It’s also an undeniable fact that Oprah has slipped in the ratings and the slip can be directly traced to her Obama support.
Within days after she touted Obama, a Gallup poll found that her favorable rating plunged by nearly ten percent and her unfavorable rating climbed by almost the same percent. As criticism mounted after her Obama foray to South Carolina, Oprah read the tea leaves. She hasn’t made a public utterance about Obama since then.
But the issue is not really whether Clinton’s staunch white female supporters are smacking down Oprah. The issue is Obama. He’s opened wide the racial and gender sore between black and white women. In the days just before the South Carolina primary in January, nearly three times more black women said they'd back Clinton over him. The support for Clinton was greatest among lower income, working class black women. They admired Clinton as a woman, mother, and most importantly, many black women saw her as a strong advocate for health care and women's interests. White women, and that’s middle class white women, backed her for pretty much the same reasons at the time.
Immediately after the Obama-Oprah roadshow, complete with shouting, and fawning fans, banks of TV cameras, and non-stop chatter and praise from the pundits, black women made a sharp volte face. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of black women now exuberantly back Obama. Many of the black women before Obama’s surge to the top who praised Hillary for fighting for women’s issues now complain bitterly that she is standing in the way of a black man getting to the White House.
It is more than just Oprah’s halo that stirs the change. For them, it is a matter of pride, accomplishment, and the sense that he fulfills their date with racial history making. Race simply trumps gender. But for older, middle class white women this is not the case. The issue is still gender and women’s interests. Clinton was, and is, still seen as the most informed, effective and passionate advocate for women’s issues. Having the first woman in the top spot in the White House is a matter of pride, accomplishment and the sense that she fulfills their date with gender history making.

The mini-Oprah backlash also tossed an ugly glare on another side of race. While Oprah has never given the faintest hint that her tout and early bankroll of Obama has anything to do with race, and is careful to make it clear that she backs him solely because of his competence and qualifications and that makes him the right presidential stuff. Yet the lurking suspicion is that there is more to it than that and that she is just as thrilled as many other blacks at the thought that an African-American can actually bag the presidency. This is not exactly a play of the race card. But for many skeptical voters, and obviously from the complaints of many of Oprah’s one time devoted white female loyalists, it comes uncomfortably close to a veiled racial motive.
Oprah acknowledged the risk that she ran in cheerleading Obama. In a statement sent to ABCnews.com shortly after the mini-furor broke last year, she walked the thin tightrope between explanation and mollification. She admitted that she might offend some by “stepping out of my pew.” She got it almost right. It’s not that she stepped out of her pew that offends the women that tune her out. It’s stepping into Obama’s.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

R. Kelly’s Conviction Will Jingle Cash Registers Even Louder
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Here’s a bet. Accused child pornographer and sexual panderer, R. Kelly has three albums in the can ready for release. If Kelly is convicted of the multiple counts slapped against him in his Chicago trial, the albums will fly out the can fast and even faster off the store racks. Kelly’s well documented penchant for underage teens, and his boasts and taunts in his songs, topped by the very real possibility that he had sex on the homemade, smutty videotape with a very underage teen, mean little to his legions of devoted fans.

Kelly and a handful of other influential R&B singers and rappers who are rich and famous beyond their wildest fantasies and who brand themselves with a criminal, thuggish image are still very much in commercial vogue. They exult the bad actor life style, thumb their nose at the establishment, and reinforce the sexually rapacious cardboard image of young blacks.

Kelly, and the others, know that the record industry can and will deftly parlay their sexual outlandishness and defiance into millions in record sales. Kelly brashly seized on the commercially prurient relationship he has with the record companies in his last album, “The Champ,” “Point fingers, throw stones, hate me I’m clever enough to know that the industry needs me.”

It does. He owns a mansion and property in Chicago and Florida, was once spoken of in the same breath as Oprah and Michael Jordan among Chicago’s wealthiest black elite.

But in the process, young black artists such as Kelly rekindle the vilest of racial and sexual stereotypes about young black males. Their artistic degradation has had especially dangerous consequences for black women. In Kelly’s case the victims of his sexual vandalism, as witnessed by settlements of other lawsuits against him for having sex with underage teens, were black women. And his sexually odious singles, Feelin on Yo Booty, Bump and Grind, and Your Body’s Callin' were virtual invitations to sexually trash black women.

Black women, especially young black women, have been the victims of that and much more. Homicide now ranks as one of the leading causes of deaths of young black females. A black woman is far more likely to be raped than a white woman, and slightly more likely to be the victim of domestic violence. Their assailants are not white racist cops or Klan nightriders but black males, and if they are a poor black woman, and their alleged assailant happens to be a fawned over rap star, justice will be slow forthcoming, if at all.

The Kelly case is a glaring example of the oft times laxity in how authorities treat crimes against black women. The lewd alleged Kelly sex video was made years ago, yet it took police and prosecutors years to charge him, and six more years for him to get to trial. No charges have been filed against him in the other cases that he subsequently settled, even though sex with a minor is a felony.

Some blacks make things even worse by dredging up a litany of excuses, such as poverty, broken homes, and abuse, to excuse the sexual abuse and the violence by top black male artists. These explanations for the misdeeds of rappers and singers are phony and self-serving. The ones who have landed hard in a court docket are anything but hard-core, dysfunctional, poverty types.

P. Diddy, who predated Kelly as the poster boy for music malevolence, is college educated and hails from a middle-class home; he typifies the fraud that these artists are up-from-the-ghetto, self-made men.

When men such as Kelly commit, or are charged with sexual assaults, they leave a long trail of victims, cast shame and disgrace on themselves and, worst of all, reinforce the notion that young black males are indeed menaces to society.
Kelly seemed to grasp that disastrous fact. In a concert appearance with gospel singer Kirk Franklin he did a tear jerk, kind of sort of self-confessional and declared that he had given up his promiscuous, self-indulgent ways and had embraced Jesus. His Saul on the Road to Damascus epiphany was welcome, but unfortunately it was made a decade ago. And apparently from the sex tape, lawsuits, and the sex laced braggadocio lyrics on some of his songs since then it was a very short lived epiphany.

Kelly has yet to be convicted of any crime. But his possible fall from grace almost certainly won’t mean that his hitherto adoring fans that slavishly elevate him to a demigod perch and put king’s ransom wealth in his bank account will desert him in droves. Informal polls show that many listeners will continue to buy his records, and some blacks have even trotted out the tired claim that he’s another prominent black man victimized by whites. In fact, one fan was unceremoniously hauled out of the courthouse for haranguing the Kelly jurors. This is yet one more sign that Kelly’s ill-gained notoriety is a sure fire guarantee to jingle cash registers no matter what happens in court, or maybe because of what happens in court.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Are the Black Voters Who Wildly Cheer Obama Racist?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A question that’s been whispered, grumbled about, and on occasion even angrily shouted out on blogs and chat sites is why is it that the whites who back Hillary Clinton are lambasted as racist, yet the black voters that back Obama in near record numbers aren’t? The question has angrily rolled off more than a few lips in the wake of the steadily firming up racial brick wall that Obama crashed against with legions of white voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. The charge of a racial double standard started with a few random comments from some white voters who said they wouldn’t vote for Obama because they were turned off by the sight of so many blacks deliriously backing him. This convinced them that blacks backed him solely because he’s black and their only interest was to get one of their own in the White House.
A number of whites in Kentucky and West Virginia almost certainly voted for Clinton not because they believed she’ll be the most able commander -in-chief but simply because the only other choice was Obama. In exit interviews, some flatly said so. Clinton indirectly fed that visceral racism with her disastrous, an ill framed quip that hard working, white Americans back her and not Obama.
There’s little doubt that a top heavy black vote powered Obama’s crushing wins over Clinton in the South, and helped keep him competitive in Ohio and Indiana, the states that he lost. It’s also true that blacks have a special enthusiasm for his campaign that’s fueled by a mix of pride, admiration, accomplishment, and the sense that he can win and make history. He’s also the presidential candidate who they desperately long for to wipe away the horrid taste of the Bush years. But the enthusiasm is also fueled by him being black. In exit polls in North Carolina nearly a quarter of black voters admitted that race was the big factor in motivating them to vote for Obama. This is the sore point for some whites.


But Obama’s color and the pride blacks take in his historic first tell only part of the story of why so many blacks cheer him. Obama is a Democrat, and so are the overwhelming majority of black voters. They have given every Democratic presidential candidate and incumbent since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 a consistent, and at times off the chart, percentage of their votes. They gave Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry nearly ninety percent of their vote, and they were white Democrats. If Obama hadn’t come along, many would have been just as exuberant about Hillary Clinton, and they would have given her as big if not a bigger percent of their vote than Gore or Kerry got. In fact, given the love fest many blacks had with Bill Clinton, at least before Bill’s perceived early campaign racial mud sling at Obama, Clinton still might have gotten a respectable percentage of black votes.
There has never been a reverse Bradley Effect among black voters. That’s
the penchant for some whites to lie to pollsters and interviewers and say that a candidate’s color doesn’t matter only competence and ability. Then in the privacy of the voting booth they vote for a white candidate over a black one. Black voters in contrast have voted party allegiance, and now that they have a candidate who represents their party who happens to be black it’s an easy call to make to support him.
While race, though, is a compelling issue for some blacks, it’s also problematic for Obama, especially if there’s the perception among large numbers of fence sitting independents, and Reagan Democrats that an Obama White House will have a racial tilt.

The hard reality is that black votes alone don’t put candidates in the White House. The votes of white males, especially blue collar white males, do.
Even before the controversy over Jeremiah Wright broke and Obama’s disastrous crack about blue collar whites and their penchant for guns and religion soured many of them toward him, he hadn’t made much headway in bumping up his numbers among them. They make up nearly forty percent of the American electorate. In every election dating back to Reagan’s big wins over the Democrats in the 1980s and since they have been the sure ticket of GOP presidents to the White House. In exit polls, one quarter of Clinton backers said that if Obama is the nominee they’ll vote for McCain or turn into Election Day no-shows.
Here’s the Catch 22. Obama could not have come as far and as fast as he did without the votes and cheers of African-American voters. But for some whites that translates out to reverse racism. It isn’t, but the perception that it is is a two edged sword that will continue to cut at Obama.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).