presidential election – Page 24

The race card

In the euphoria surrounding the Obama nomination — the first black presidential candidate to represent a major party — and the discussion of what Hillary Clinton and her supporters might do, we have allowed an issue that played out as subtext to much of the primary campaign to fall from sight: Race.

Andrew Greeley, writing in The Chicago Sun-Times, cuts to the chase, reminding us that what we saw during the primary — the veiled playing of the race card by former President Bill Clinton in South Carolina, the pandering to “hard-working whites” (implication being, of course, that non-whites might not be hard-working), etc. — will not go away.

(R)acism permeates American society and hides itself under many different disguises. The nomination of an African-American candidate was a near-miracle. Only the innocent and the naive think that the November election will not be about race.

The odds against the replication of the primary miracle in November, even against a disgraced and discredited Republic administration, are very high.

Race will silently trump the war, the economy, the cost of gasoline, the disgust with President Bush. One may wish that it will not be so, that if Obama loses it will not be because of the color of his skin but because the country genuinely wants another Republican administration.

Greeley is not wishing for a McCain win — on the contrary, he is just reminding us that the issue of race is the 800-pound gorilla in the room and that progressives interested in seeing Barack Obama, and the candidate and his campaign, will have to work that much more diligently to overcome the historical blight of racism.

Geography and timing

I’ve been saying this for a while now — that the apparent momentum shift in the primaries toward Hillary Clinton was more a function of timing and geography than anything to do with either campaign.

Interesting historical parallel

Lou Cannon in The Washington Post reminds us that a split party damaged the Ford candidacy in 1976. Ronald Reagan essentially sat out the 1976 race despite the likelihood that his involvement might have aided Gerald Ford in several states, possibly allowing the Republican vice president to best Jimmy Carter. Ford, on the other hand, worked hard for Reagan in 1980.

Cannon then places the current campaign in this context:

Barack Obama will soon become the presumptive Democratic nominee, and there is little doubt that Hillary Clinton will endorse him. The big question is whether she will campaign hard for Obama among constituencies where she can help him. Put another way: Will she choose to be Ronald Reagan in 1976 or Gerald Ford in 1980?

The outcome of the election could depend on the answer.

It ain’t over ’til it’s over

While there have been reports that Hillary Clinton will suspend her campaign today and that a large number of superdelegates will be endorsing Barack Obama, putting him over the top in the nomination fight, I have my doubts. Nothing concrete, of course — I’m just a lowly local journalist without the contacts that the TV folks have — but given the way this race has unfolded, it seems imprudent to assume anything until it happens.

Fractured party time

No surprises from the Democratic Party rules committee today — deciding to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, but only give them half their votes — but the question remains whether irreparable damage has been done.

If you read the quotations from Clinton supporters in the MSNBC.com report, the party seems like it is in trouble.

“How can you call yourselves Democrats if you don’t count the vote?” one of the many hecklers in the audience yelled loudly and repeatedly before being escorted out by security. “This is not the Democratic Party!”

MSNBC described a “sharply divided audience” that “shows Obama will have a long way to go to bring the party together after a long and divisive primary.”

‘We just blew the election!’”We just blew the election!” a woman in the audience
shouted. The crowd was divided between cheering Obama supporters and booing
Clinton supporters. “This isn’t unity! Count all the votes!” another audience
member yelled.

I still think that the people screaming loudest about this will come over to the Obama camp when the realization that a fractured party will ensure a McCain victory in November. But there are no guarantees (Democrats are famous from grasping defeat from the jaws of victory).

In the end, if the Democratic Party can’t find a way to bridge this gap, given the rather small differences that really separate the candidate, then perhaps the Democratic Party should not be viewed as the vehicle to achieve progressive goals.

I’d argue that the party offers little more than a brake on the dangerous actions of the Republicans, but is not a beacon of change. Change can only come — as I wrote in my Dispatches column this week — if we take responsibility for making it happen. Elections are only a small part of this process.