And that task is being put to the test in 2008, with the first black presidential nominee.
So political operatives would be well advised to read what Paul West has written in the Chicago Tribune, comparing two statewide political campaigns from 2006 that featured black candidates.
Actually, there were more than two such races in the last election — and, of course, each was subject to its own set of issues, the dynamics of the voter pool and the quirks of each candidates’ styles and personalities — but the races to which West refers were noteworthy and could prove instructive for political analysts.
Those campaigns were the gubernatorial race in Massachusetts and the Senate race in Tennessee.
In Massachusetts, the black candidate, Deval Patrick, was elected. In Tennessee, the black candidate, Harold Ford, lost.
Both candidates are Democrats. In the interest of fairness, it’s worth pointing out that there have been black Republicans (not many, but a few) who ran for statewide office in recent elections — for example, former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Lynn Swann lost the race for Pennsylvania governor (receiving only 40% of the vote) two years ago.
West suggests that ”racial attitudes are going to influence” the race between Barack Obama and John McCain. ”But there is growing evidence,” he writes, ”that race is losing its potency as a determining factor in U.S. politics.”
He acknowledges ”some uncomfortable moments” during the primaries that were brought on by observations of ”similarities between language that [Patrick and Obama] had used,” leading to charges of plagiarism.
Nevertheless, ”Patrick won in a landslide, after a general election campaign that resembled the one Obama is running against John McCain. He exploited the public's desire for change and tied his Republican opponent to an unpopular Republican administration in the state.”
But, as West points out, ”[b]ecoming governor is not the same thing as gaining the presidency … and culturally liberal Massachusetts is not America.”
From Obama’s perspective, there isn’t that much to be learned from the Massachusetts experience — except, perhaps, that it takes a special set of circumstances that are favorable to Republicans and either a unique nominee or a weak opponent for the GOP to win a statewide race there. And none of those conditions appear to apply in 2008.
The state has had a reputation for liberalism that goes back at least to the 1972 campaign, when it was the only state to support George McGovern against Richard Nixon.
It’s true that three Democratic nominees in the last five decades (John F. Kennedy in 1960, Michael Dukakis in 1988 and John Kerry in 2004) were favorite sons from Masssachusetts — and two others from the Bay State, Ted Kennedy and Paul Tsongas, sought the nomination.
It’s also true that Massachusetts voted for Ronald Reagan twice (both times by narrow margins), and it supported popular war hero Dwight Eisenhower twice in the 1950s.
But, realistically, other than the Reagan and Eisenhower elections, Massachusetts has been voting for Democrats for president since the stock market crashed in 1929, and most observers expect it to support Obama this fall.
I think there’s more to be learned from Tennessee, a Southern state that isn’t part of the ”Deep South” and was more receptive to the civil rights movement in the 1960s than some of its neighbors, like Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
I believe it is in the states located along the geographical edges of the Old South where the Democrats may have the best chance to pull off an upset. At the moment, I'm still inclined to believe the Republicans will sweep all of the Southern states, that attitudes haven't changed as much in the South as some people think.
And I also question the logic of an influential increase in the black voter turnout capable of reversing the outcomes in some Southern states.
Obama’s campaign has been talking about increasing black turnout in the South and, consequently, flipping normally ”red states” to ”blue.”
That may well happen, but I haven’t seen much evidence to support that scenario.
West sees in Tennessee an opportunity for Democrats to (pardon the use of the word) ”overcome” the South’s history of racism, even though Tennessee did not elect Ford to the Senate.
”Ford lost, but by less than three percentage points,” he writes. ”The close finish sent a clear message: race was becoming less of an impediment for black candidates, even in the South.”
Well, I’m not so sure about that. If the 2000 election taught you anything, isn't it that you only need to get a majority of the electoral votes to win the election? And George W. Bush only received one vote more than he needed.
And, in a Senate race, electoral votes are not a factor so all you need is one popular vote more than the other candidate. In Tennessee, Ford lost the popular vote by 50,000 votes.
Let's take a look at some of the numbers from the 2004 presidential election.
- In 2004, Bush won with 51.2% of the vote. Kerry received 48.3% of the vote. Bush's margin in the popular vote was 3 million.
- More than 120 million people voted in that election. The percentage of the voting age population that participated was higher than it's been for any presidential election since 1968 (which was before the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18).
- In 2004, the black vote accounted for 11% of the national vote. Kerry received 88% of the black vote nationally. The black population in America (which includes those who are old enough to vote and those who are not) accounts for about 12.8% of the total.
- As a minority group, black Americans have been the most active demographic group in the United States — perhaps owing to the high-profile sacrifices so many Americans, white and black, made to ensure that basic right.
What I want to know is, if the demographic group itself is already more engaged in the political process than any other minority group and the Democratic ticket received nearly nine out of every 10 black votes in 2004, how many more votes can that demographic provide? Isn't that like drilling in an oil field that is known to have run dry?
And, for an increase in black voter participation to influence the outcome, doesn't that depend — at least in part — on the participation level of the other demographic groups (especially white voters) dropping or remaining unchanged?
Along with the black vote, Kerry won the Hispanic vote (which provided 8% of the total) and the Asian vote (which provided 2% of the total).
But the Republicans won the white vote (which provided more than three-fourths of the ballots). Bush received 58% of the white vote.
If Obama can't raise his comfort level among white voters, he needs to work on bringing more Hispanic voters into the Democratic tent. Unlike the black community, there is plenty of ground for Democrats to gain in the Hispanic community — Kerry took 53% of Hispanic votes while Bush received 44%.
Hispanics could well hold the key to close races in a number of the so-called "swing states" — like Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.
It's possible that black participation will increase, but my point is that it's going to require some additional factors — like, for example, a pronounced increase in the non-participation of members of some reliably Republican demographic groups — to be at work at the same time before it's likely to have an effect.
That also is possible. And that's an area that McCain can do something about — by picking a running mate who energizes the traditional Republican supporters while demonstrating his commitment to selecting someone who would be qualified to take over if necessary. Whether McCain is able to do so will be a crucial test of his leadership qualities.
And, if you read further into West’s analysis, you will find indications that race — while not an overt issue — served as subtext to Ford’s defeat.
One of Ford’s pollsters (who is performing the same service for Obama’s campaign this year) told West, ”[Race] was not an issue [Ford] ran on. … He was very clear that the election was not about race.”
But Republicans used tactics that, while not mentioning race directly, injected it into the campaign.
”Late in October, the national Republican Party ran an ad that attacked Ford for attending a Super Bowl party sponsored by Playboy magazine. In the ad, an attractive blonde cooed, ‘Harold, call me,’” writes West.
”The ad was criticized as racially tinged and quickly became ‘a big distraction’ that interfered with the Democrat's effort to communicate his message through the news media, his pollster said.
“Paul Begala, a key strategist in Bill Clinton's rise to the presidency, said the attack on Ford contained ‘one of the most powerful messages that Republicans always try to pin on Democrats: (that) he's not one of us.’”
Political observers have asserted that the Tennessee race is an example of what has come to be known as the ”Bradley effect” — which was first observed in 1982, when Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black man, ran for governor of California.
In the days prior to the election, Bradley was ahead in the polls but he lost the election. The ”Bradley effect” refers to the phenomenon that was observed in that election — in which white voters tell pollsters before an election that they can support a black candidate but behave differently when they vote.
The campaign manager for Bradley’s opponent actually predicted this behavior a month before the election. He had to resign from his position because of the negative response to his remarks — but subsequent events proved he was right.
Over the years, political observers have noted additional examples of the ”Bradley effect.” It’s been given other names, too — for example, it’s been called ”the Wilder effect,” after Doug Wilder’s gubernatorial campaign in Virginia was almost derailed in 1989.
It’s also been dubbed ”the Dinkins effect,” after David Dinkins barely defeated Rudy Giuliani for mayor of New York in 1989 (Giuliani was elected mayor in 1993 and re-elected in 1997).
In recent years, the existence of this phenomenon was said to be responsible — in part — for Colin Powell’s decision not to run against President Clinton in 1996.
Powell’s decision was widely reported to be a concession to his wife, who was said to harbor serious misgivings about such a campaign. But a comment he made suggests that concern about racism — even as polls were showing a wide respect among both Republicans and Democrats for Powell’s abilities and even indicating a lead for Powell in a hypothetical match with the president — was a factor.
”Every time I see (black publisher) Earl Graves,” Powell said, ”he says, 'Look, man, don't let them hand you no crap. When [white voters] go in that booth, they ain't going to vote for you.’”
Did Ford lose the race in Tennessee because of such an effect? Was it neatly obscured by, as Begala put it, Republican attempts to portray the Democratic candidate as ”not one of us?”
As West points out, racism has come to be regarded as more ”socially unacceptable” than it was when I was a child in Arkansas in the 1960s. But it's not completely gone. It remains a factor.
As a Democratic pollster, who conducted surveys in Tennessee during and after Ford’s campaign, told West, ”Saying race is not a factor at all is naïve. It’s that race is one of many factors that have to be dealt with.”
We have witnessed — and we continue to witness — race’s changing role, as West puts it, as ”part of a gradual evolution, rather than a sea change, in voter attitudes.”
Such change doesn't happen all at once. West correctly points out that part of the complex dynamics of racial politics is generational.
The Tennessee pollster told him, ”Twenty years ago, most voters had grown up in a society that was still legally segregated. But now, to have a recollection of that you have to be over 55.”
That’s not completely true. I grew up in Arkansas, and, although I’m not yet in my 50s, I can remember elements of segregation in my hometown.
The public schools were integrated when I entered first grade in 1966 so my high school class — which, coincidentally, is holding its 30th reunion this weekend — was the first class in my hometown to be integrated from first grade through high school.
But I have vivid memories of blacks and whites sitting in segregated sections of the movie theater in my hometown.
Otherwise, I have no real memories of living in a segregated society. So I would concede that the Tennessee pollster was right — at least when you're talking about the South's border states — like Tennessee and Arkansas.
Integration was already occurring in those states while racially motivated murders were still being committed in the Deep South.
If you grew up in Mississippi or Alabama or Georgia, the segregationist policies remained in effect well into the 1960s — and, in some cases, persisted into the early 1970s.
Old habits die hard.
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