How Could Hillary Lose?

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I don't know how many times I have heard that question in recent days, but I know it has been a lot. I can understand some people's bewilderment. The polls showed Hillary Clinton leading from wire to wire. How could she possibly have lost?

If anyone is interested, I have a few thoughts on that.

The best place to start is with the declaration of a simple fact: History has always fascinated me. Whenever I have written about this election this year, my writing has almost always been grounded in the lessons that history can teach us.

In the last couple of years, many people have told me I was wrong, that just because Americans did something in the past did not mean they would do the same thing again (which was contradictory to the belief that states that had voted for Democrats for several elections would continue to do so).

For example ...

I frequently pointed out that Americans have only voted for the same party in three consecutive national elections once since the end of World War II. That was in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was elected twice and George H.W. Bush was elected to succeed Reagan when he was term–limited out of office in 1988.

Post–WWII Americans have changed the party in the White House every eight years since 1945 like clockwork. Well, one time they changed parties after four years. That was in 1980, when Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter.

But aside from those two exceptions — both of which came during the post–Vietnam/post–Watergate period — post–World War II Americans have given a party two four–year terms in the White House, then they have been in the mood for change.

Historically, 2016 was destined to be a "change" election from the night in 2012 when Barack Obama was re–elected.

Is it really that simple? No, there is more to it than that, but it is an appropriate starting point.

Americans were predisposed this year to turn to the party that was out of power. Sometimes they have been reluctant to do so, and it has resulted in close elections, but that inclination for change runs strong in the American electorate. True, many (perhaps most) Americans found Donald Trump objectionable, but they still voted for him. Narrowly, yes, but still they voted for him, and it didn't surprise or shock me.

For a long time, I have known of an incredible sense of anxiety among Americans. I have seen election years when Americans were anxious but never to this extent before. They were frightened by terrorism and an immigration policy that seemed to encourage terrorists to come here. They were stressed economically by continually rising health care premiums that they were required by law to carry and incomes that didn't cover the necessities, let alone a luxury or two.

My main thought on election night was that a less flawed Republican would have crushed Clinton.

After all, Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate, too. The polls in which her supporters placed so much faith consistently showed that both she and Trump were unpopular. I started calling it an unpopularity contest when it became clear who the nominees would be, and I regarded their unpopularity as offsetting penalties (to use a football metaphor), canceling each other out.

Again, I believe a less flawed Republican candidate would have cruised to victory — even Ted Cruz.

I have also written in the last year of the Bradley effect, named for Tom Bradley, a black man who ran for California governor in 1982. Polls consistently showed him leading his Republican opponent — but on Election Day Bradley lost. Political scientists determined that, in pre–election polls, many respondents said they would vote for Bradley because they feared being labeled racist — even though it was extremely unlikely that the pollsters and the people being polled knew each other or that a pollster would give a second thought to anyone's responses five minutes after the conversation ended.

On Election Day, though, the voters were alone in the privacy of the voting booth, and Bradley's opponent won the election.

I wrote nearly a year ago that I thought we could be seeing the same thing in this campaign, and I never changed my mind about that. I don't have any evidence to back up my conclusion that the Bradley effect played a role in this year's election, and I suppose it will require some research before a verdict can be rendered, but I sincerely believe there may have been Trump supporters who told pollsters they would vote for Clinton because they didn't want to be labeled racist or sexist or homophobic.

I could be wrong about that, but I have read articles that point to that as a possibility, and I have heard people speak of something like that taking place. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there was an element of that in Trump's silent victory.

But I continue to believe that historical voting patterns offered significantly more clues to people that something like this was going to happen.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on this blog about states that I saw as up for grabs based on whether they gave Barack Obama or Mitt Romney 53% or less of the popular vote. Those states, I wrote, were candidates for flipping party allegiance in the general election — even if they had voted for one party for several election cycles.

For example, I wrote that Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes were at risk for Democrats, who hadn't lost the state since 1988. I didn't have to hear stories about how blue–collar workers there were suffering under adverse trade agreements. I looked at recent election returns. In 2008, Obama carried the state with more than 54% of the vote, a popular vote margin of more than 600,000. Four years later, he carried Pennsylvania again in his successful re–election campaign, but the margin was cut in half and his share of the vote was just over 51%.

Even with an incumbent on the ballot Democrats were losing altitude in 2012, and the results of the midterm elections of 2014 indicated that they were still losing altitude in spite of Obama's personal popularity. On election night, Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by more than 65,000 votes.

The Democrats' strategy in 2016 was predicated on the belief that all the states that had voted for Obama in either or both of the last two elections — and many that had been voting for Democrats for decades — would continue to do so. It was called the "Blue Wall," and it was largely taken for granted.

That wall crumbled on election night.

Many people probably thought I was crazy when I wrote in September that Illinois appeared to be about the only sure thing for the Democrats in the Industrial Midwest.

It was well known that Ohio would be a swing state so when it swung to Trump, that may not have surprised too many people. Nor, I suppose, did Indiana's support for Trump surprise many people. Indiana did support Obama when he ran in 2008, but it voted against him in 2012, returning to its Republican roots, and this time Indiana's governor was on the Republican ticket.

But the defection of Michigan, which also had not voted for a Republican since 1988, did surprise a lot of people. At the time I acknowledged that Michigan's vote for Obama in 2012 (54%) exceeded the limit I imposed, but that was a drop of more than three percentage points compared to 2008. Surveys that indicated how much people there were suffering economically convinced me this fall that Michigan might very well flip.

I pointed out that Obama's support declined in Wisconsin between 2008 and 2012, making it a prime candidate to flip as well. Wisconsin had not supported a Republican since voting for the re–election of Ronald Reagan in 1984. It voted for Trump by about 25,000 votes.

I also observed that Iowa was a prime candidate for flipping. The only Republicans Iowa had supported since 1968 were Republicans who were already president and were seeking re–election (Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1984, George W. Bush in 2004), but the returns from 2008 and 2012 clearly showed that Democrats were losing altitude in Iowa, too. It only offered half a dozen electoral votes, but it was one of the bricks in that Blue Wall.

Was the collapse of the Clinton campaign inevitable? I suppose opinions on that will vary. There are indications that the Clinton campaign, by virtue of its own hubris, contributed to its demise in the Industrial Midwest. It assumed that, because those states had been voting for Democrats for so long, they would continue to do so.

I went online early on election night and looked in at Facebook. A friend of mine from my graduate school days, a dyed–in–the–wool Democrat, was encouraging his friends to forecast Clinton's total in the Electoral College. He predicted she would receive 332 votes, overshooting the actual total by, oh, about 100 votes. All through the campaign, he kept saying he wasn't worried about Trump. The polls showed him safely behind.

He's been keeping a low profile since the election. Hubris.

But Michigan Democrat Debbie Dingell, who succeeded her retiring husband in the House in January 2015, wrote in the Washington Post recently that she warned that the Clinton campaign was in trouble in Michigan back in the spring before the Democrats' presidential primary, which was won by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Clinton's campaign was too slow to recognize its problem with Sanders in Michigan, Dingell wrote. "They never stopped on a campus; never went to a union hall; never talked to the Arab American community. Sanders was in my district 10 times during the primary. How would any sane person not predict how this one would go? It was fixable for the general election."

But, clearly, it wasn't fixed. Repeatedly I read and heard that the Clinton campaign would reassemble Obama's winning coalition of blacks, Hispanics and young voters, and that would propel her to victory. But Clinton couldn't duplicate the enthusiasm that surrounded the Obama campaigns. Her share of the black vote was lower, as was her share of the young vote, a group that has never been known for showing up at the polls in great numbers. Hispanics voted for Trump at about the same rate they voted for Romney four years ago.

In the closing days of the campaign, Clinton repeatedly urged her supporters to vote early. But neither Michigan nor Pennsylvania allow early voting. There are procedures in place for old–fashioned absentee voting, but most voters in those states cast their ballots on Election Day.

Those voters went to the polls knowing about Trump's secretly recorded locker–room conversation, the reopening of the email investigation, the looming hike in health insurance premiums and the warning about possible terrorism activity the day before the election. People who cast their votes early knew little if anything about those events. Might they have changed those votes? We will never know.

The outcomes in those states that do not allow early voting can be said to be reflections of voter sentiment about events that hadn't happened when many voters went to the polls.

Ultimately, it may turn out that the voters made the wrong choice. Wouldn't be the first time.

The Return of the Bradley Effect

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I have written here before of the "Bradley effect," but that was in the context of the 2008 presidential election, a time when voters were deciding whether to elect the first black president. That wasn't as inconsequential a decision as you might think now, more than seven years after the fact. After all, Barack Obama has been elected president twice now. Voters face a different kind of decision in 2016.

Simply put, the Bradley effect refers to the 1982 California gubernatorial campaign of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Bradley was black, and polls prior to the election showed him leading the race. But he lost — narrowly — to Republican George Deukmejian (who won by less than 100,000 votes out of more than 7.5 million).

I suppose it goes without saying that the outcome of that election prompted a lot of soul searching, and the general conclusion that most people seemed to reach was that Bradley fared better in the polls because those who were polled did not wish to appear racist — so even if they were undecided or leaning toward the Republican, they told the pollsters that they would vote for Bradley, thus creating an artificial lead for him.

When they went into the voting booths, though, the voters did not have to concern themselves with what others would think of them, and they pulled the lever for the Republican — regardless of what they may have told the pollsters.

I bring this up because I think we could be seeing a new — and fascinating — twist on that theme in the campaign of Donald Trump. It isn't necessary to say much about Trump. So much has already been said about him, including the seemingly daily assertions that the Trump campaign has peaked, which always seem to be followed by a new poll showing Trump with even more support than he had before. Clearly, this guy is tapping into something, with his rhetoric about Muslims and immigration, but it's something a lot of people don't seem to want to acknowledge.

It's all about perceptions. Thirty–three years ago, a lot of Californians didn't want to appear to be racist. Today, perhaps a lot of people don't want to appear to be supporting a racist. Well, a perceived racist.

In case you haven't heard, a Quinnipiac University poll that was released today suggests that half of Americans would be embarrassed if Trump became the president. Could the same dynamic be at work here?

It reminds me in a way of a congressional campaign in my district in central Arkansas a couple of years after the Bradley election. There was a rather flamboyant sheriff in Pulaski County at the time named Tommy Robinson, who had apparently been angling for higher office with some publicity stunts.

Now, that district was represented for decades by Democrat Wilbur Mills, and he was succeeded by a Democrat when he stepped down, but that Democrat chose to run for the U.S. Senate after serving a single term, and a Republican was elected to the seat. The Republican held the seat for six years, then he, too, chose to run for the Senate, and Tommy Robinson announced he was running for the House seat as a Democrat. Historically, it was the right choice. Until the Republican incumbent was elected, the district hadn't been represented by a Republican since Reconstruction.

I don't remember much about the advertising in the Democratic primary (which Robinson won in a runoff) or the general election, but I do remember one of Robinson's ads. I think he used it in both the primary and the general election. It showed a series of vignettes in which friends were talking and one would say, "Who are you voting for for Congress?" and the other would say something like, "Well, you'll probably be surprised, but I'm voting for Tommy Robinson."

And that opened the door to confront all the negative stories that had been circulating about Robinson for years.

Now, as it turned out, Robinson was a crook who got caught up in the House banking scandal. But that was still several years in the future when Robinson first ran for the House.

And my memory of that campaign is that pollsters were quite certain that Robinson's Republican opponent, Judy Petty (who lost to Mills 10 years earlier), would win. Polls were showing her leading, which wasn't really hard to imagine. Petty was running as a Ronald Reagan Republican in a year when Reagan carried three–fifths of the vote in that district.

But the Gipper's popularity didn't trickle down enough for Petty to prevail. Or perhaps those people who told the pollsters they would vote for Petty actually voted for Robinson instead.

And perhaps Donald Trump, like George Deukmejian and Tommy Robinson, will have the last laugh.

The Bradley Effect or Left At the Altar?

Blair Levin, a veteran of the 1982 Tom Bradley gubernatorial campaign that has earned a place in political lore for Bradley's electoral meltdown, says in the New York Times that the "Bradley effect" is "widely misunderstood."

Levin contends that Bradley lost not because he was black but "because an unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated."

While he acknowledges that race was one of the issues of the campaign, Levin says "[i]t’s more complicated than you think."

And he argues that Bradley's name should be dropped from the theory because the concept is contrary to Bradley's approach to governing as mayor of Los Angeles.

Actually, while I've most often heard the theory referred to as the "Bradley effect," I've heard it given other names to reflect more recent examples of this phenomenon.

In the early 1990s, Doug Wilder nearly lost the governor's race in Virginia after leading substantially in the polls, and the phenomenon was referred to as the "Wilder effect" for awhile.

In the last couple of years, since Rep. Harold Ford was beaten in the Senate race in Tennessee, I've heard the theory referred to as the "Ford effect."

And there have been other variations over the years.

Clearly, it is referred to as the "Bradley effect" because it was first observed following Bradley's loss.

But Levin is probably correct when he suggests that it isn't fair to name this effect after Bradley.

If Levin has a better alternative, he should suggest it after this year's election — when the votes themselves will tell us if all this has been much ado about nothing.

Whatever those votes tell us, I think Levin makes a valid point when he says it's "more complicated" than just black and white.

Two months ago, I wrote in this blog about what has been called the "left at the altar" syndrome — in which voters, confronted with the moment of truth at the polls, decide at the last second not to make the final commitment to the agent of change — and, like an apprehensive bride making a mad dash from the church, leave the groom (in politics, that would be the candidate) at the altar.

I've heard political scientists refer to this syndrome in the past — most frequently, I suppose, in the waning days of the 1992 presidential campaign when polls suggested the race between then-Gov. Bill Clinton and then-President George H. W. Bush was tightening (although I heard the phrase used at times to describe the decision voters were making between President Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Eventually, of course, Clinton won the election. But the perception that the race was tightening was part of the "left at the altar" syndrome. Some voters were deciding that they couldn't, in good conscience, go through with it.

We're starting to witness some of that right now, which would be understandable, even without the racial element.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are widely acknowledged to be two of the more liberal members of the U.S. Senate. They seek offices that have been held by two conservative Republicans for the last eight years (and were held by three other conservative Republicans in 12 of the 20 years prior to that).

John McCain and Sarah Palin may well be "mavericks," but they are the philosophical heirs of those who have been in charge for most of the last three decades.

Deciding to put the executive branch of the government in the hands of Obama and Biden represents a radical national shift. With the election only two weeks away, we can expect to see fluctuations in the polls as the nervous bride tries to decide whether to become a runaway bride.

We'll have to wait until after the election/wedding date to see if the bride runs back to the groom's arms.

Race and Polls

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"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."

Theodore Roosevelt

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We live in a culture that is obsessed with sports.

When we watch teams or individuals competing, we constantly want to know which team or individual is leading, and whether the other(s) can come from behind and win.

In a competition in which points are scored and running tallies are kept, it's easy to tell who is in front and by how much. Within the framework of the competition, it's also easy to tell when a winner can be declared.

In a political campaign, much attention is paid to gaffes on the campaign trail and the mud that inevitably is "slung" by both sides.

But there is no accurate way of keeping score, of being able to tell which candidate is really leading — or how secure that lead really is.

I mention this because we are entering the phase of the presidential campaign in which poll results are coming at us quickly. And, because that is the case, it is appropriate for Kate Zernike to wonder, in the New York Times, if there is a "Charlie Brown and Lucy" phenomenon at work here, in which Lucy (the electorate) yanks away the football before Charlie Brown (Barack Obama and the Democrats) can kick the game-winning field goal.

The sports analogy aside, Zernike wonders if there is something to the "Bradley effect," of which I have written in this blog before.

"In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey — widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed — that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome," Zernike writes.

Coincidentally, recent polls show Obama leading John McCain nationally by — on average — about six percentage points.

So it's a dead heat, right?

Actually, there's no way that I know of to tell — until the voters go to the polls on Nov. 4. But that doesn't stop political operatives from treating polls like actual vote results — and allowing them to influence their actions:

• The Miami Herald reports a lot of finger-pointing by Florida Republicans based on poll numbers — even though a McCain fundraiser says it's happening "a little bit too soon."


• McCain trails in Iowa polls by more than 10 percentage points, but the Los Angeles Times says he believes he has a chance to win that state.

National poll results can vary wildly.

• A Newsweek national poll, conducted Oct. 8-9, showed Obama with a 52-41 lead, but a Fox News poll conducted on the same days showed Obama's lead at 47-39.


• An NBC national poll, conducted Oct. 4-5, reported that Obama was in front, 49-43. CBS News conducted a poll from Oct. 3-5 that showed a narrower 47-43 lead, and CNN's poll from the same period revealed a 53-45 advantage.

The polls are reaching the same conclusion, but some are showing margins that fall within that six-point spread.

The only historical evidence we have that is relevant is in the form of previous election results. But those results really only reflect preferences by political party.

This is the first national election in which a black man is the nominee for president. And that makes the 2008 election a national lab experiment.

To use another sports analogy, Obama is trying to be the Jackie Robinson of American politics.

In 1947, no one knew if Robinson could break baseball's color barrier — until he had withstood the avalanche of racism that came his way every day of that season.

In 2008, we won't know until the votes are counted if Obama has broken the nation's political color barrier.

We know that barrier has been broken in some states — but being elected governor of Massachusetts or senator from Illinois is not the same thing as winning a national, 50-state election.

Would the nation have been spared this kind of discussion if Hillary Clinton had been the presidential nominee? I don't think so.

That certainly would have re-focused the discussion, but, as the first female presidential nominee, Clinton's general election candidacy would have provoked questions about misogyny, not racism.

We might have been spared the sports analogies, though.

There are so many variables when it comes to polling:

• Are the respondent's answers different if he/she shares the same race as the pollster?


• If Clinton had been nominated, would the responses have been affected by whether the pollster and the respondent shared the same gender?


• How are the questions phrased?


• Are the questions designed to promote specific responses (including those considered "politically correct")?

Zernike asserts that "the Bradley gap seems to be disappearing" and tries to provide some clarification by discussing polling results from the Democratic primaries.

That information can be useful, but it's not entirely practical in the current political context. Clinton and Obama are almost mirror images of each other in terms of political philosophy so the polls from their campaign for the nomination were not designed to assess support based on specific issues.

Democratic voters knew both candidates wanted to take the country in basically the same direction. Other factors (including race and gender) played key roles in the decisions those voters made.

The general election campaign matches two candidates with different political philosophies. The electorate in the general election campaign is more diverse than the electorate to which Clinton and Obama appealed in the primaries.

I'm always glad when I hear that more people are getting registered to vote. That means that, legally, they have the opportunity to participate in making important decisions.

But in the end, to win on Nov. 4, it comes down to that old bugaboo, turnout. I'm not talking about voter registration. I'm talking about actual turnout — getting as many of those new voters to the polls as possible.

Remember the old saying about how you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink? Well, the same thing applies to voting. Making sure that people are registered to vote is only the first step in the process.

What many political activists seem to forget (or overlook) is that, while the election may be at the center of their universe, it isn't necessarily that way for new voters. Those new voters are not in the habit of voting, and many of them need reminders — or even transportation to the polls.

That's not a very glamorous task. It can be a painstaking, incremental job — sometimes having to pick up elderly or handicapped people, perhaps one at a time, and take them to the polls.

It's fine to hear political parties talk about meeting or exceeding their registration goals, but if the new voters don't go to the polls in November, what have the parties gained?

Four years ago, both parties aggressively sought to sign up new voters and, for the most part, they met or exceeded their goals in many places. But the Republicans were more efficient in their efforts to get new voters to the polls, resulting in George W. Bush's 3 million-vote national margin.

One of the best lines Aaron Sorkin ever wrote for "The West Wing" is worth remembering:

"Decisions are made by those who show up."

Hunting for Clues to Voter Behavior

It's an occupational hazard for political operatives — trying to anticipate voter behavior.

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.

As I say, it has been suggested that black Americans, energized by having one of their own nominated for president, will come to the polls in record numbers.

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.

Fears About the Future

Kurt Anderson has written an interesting article about the Barack Obama campaign's chances against John McCain in New York Magazine.

Anderson is an Obama supporter, but he has a list of 10 factors that, far from making Obama seem invincible, clearly make the presumptive Democratic nominee appear vulnerable in November.

I don't intend to recite all of his concerns here. I will merely discuss a few of them. But I encourage you to read the article in its entirety.

I don't think Anderson's intention is to discourage Obama's supporters. I believe he wants Obama to win the election.

But, with a pedigree that goes back to his work for the George McGovern campaign in 1972, Anderson has some insights to share. To ignore them is to ignore the lessons of history -- and human nature.

One of Anderson's concerns is stated this way: "Presidential elections are Civil War re-enactments -- in which the North can lose."

I grew up at the same time as Obama did, in the 1960s, when blacks -- and white civil rights activists -- were murdered in the South and in bordering states.

The mentalities of the people who committed those acts had their roots in the Reconstruction period a century earlier, and that thinking still lives in many of their descendants. It isn't overt, but it's there.

Today's South isn't the South of 40 years ago, when segregation continued to exist in spite of federal law and disciples of Jim Crow perpetrated acts of homegrown terrorism (for which most were later acquitted by all-white juries). Today's South has assumed a different shape, one that may appear reasonable, even pleasing, to the naked eye.

The proof is in the pudding, the saying goes. If Obama is able to carry even one or two Southern states in the fall, I will begin to believe the region is truly being transformed. But history tells me that calling the struggle to win Southern states an "uphill battle" is being kind.

Moreover ...

Lyndon Johnson believed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were essential pieces of legislation. But the Democrats' support of those bills, he also believed, would deliver the Southern states to the Republican Party for decades to come. He confided as much to his closest advisers.

Johnson died about four years after leaving office. He didn't live to see how prophetic his words were. But, in the more than 30 years that have passed since Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, Southern states have repeatedly voted for the Republican tickets, many of them continuing to do so when a Southerner named Bill Clinton was at the top of the Democratic ticket and the economic conditions were far from favorable for the Republicans.

There have been times when that tendency has truly contradicted logic -- as in 2000, when Vice President Al Gore failed to carry his home state of Tennessee, making Gore the only major party presidential nominee since McGovern to lose his home state.

(I expect Obama to carry Illinois and McCain to carry Arizona, so I believe Gore will continue to hold that distinction after this election is over.)

Of the five Southern states that voted for George Wallace's independent candidacy against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey in 1968 (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi), all five supported Carter in 1976 but only one (his home state of Georgia) supported Carter's bid for re-election in 1980. Since that time, Arkansas and Louisiana backed Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and Georgia supported Clinton in 1992.

Clinton also carried Tennessee twice in the 1990s, and he carried Florida in his bid for re-election in 1996.

The Southern states unanimously endorsed George W. Bush in 2000 and in 2004, in spite of the fact that Gore was the Democrats' presidential nominee in 2000 and John Edwards (from North Carolina) was the party's vice presidential nominee in 2004.

The Southern states also unanimously endorsed Bush's father in 1988, even though a Texan was on the Democratic ticket -- and the revival of that "Boston-Austin" connection was widely believed by Democrats to be the prescription they needed to recapture the White House.

Individual congressional districts have occasionally elected black Democrats (typically in districts with large black populations), but blacks have consistently lost statewide races in the South.

In Gore's home state, for example, a black Democrat with 10 years' experience in the House of Representatives was nominated for the Senate two years ago. The voters in that state elected a white Republican (whose only previous electoral success was his election as mayor of Chattanooga) in what was clearly a Democratic year.

The Republicans in Tennessee turned the race in their favor in the final days mostly by characterizing the Democrat's background -- prep school, Ivy League college -- as one of elitism and privilege.

The only black Democrat I know of who has won a statewide race in the South (excluding party primaries) was Doug Wilder, who was elected governor of Virginia in 1989.

Interestingly, Wilder's campaign suffered from what has been dubbed the "Bradley effect," which was named for a black politician named Tom Bradley, the former Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, who ran for governor of California in 1982 -- a year that tended to favor Democrats -- and lost despite leading in the polls in the closing days of the race.

The Bradley effect has been seen in other elections involving blacks and other minority candidates. It refers to white voters being more likely to tell pollsters that they will support minority candidates than they are to actually vote for them.

In 1989, Wilder's comfortable lead in the late polls evaporated by Election Day and the results were close enough to prompt a recount. Unlike Bradley, Wilder managed to win his race -- perhaps because he took positions that haven't been associated with most Democratic politicians, like his support for the death penalty.

And, as governor, Wilder backed up his support for the death penalty by overseeing more than a dozen executions. He also supported cuts in higher education to help bring the state budget into balance.

(As a postscript, Wilder launched an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1992 and considered running for the Senate in 1994 because state law prohibits a governor from serving in successive terms. He became an independent and was elected mayor of Richmond in 2004 but announced this year that he would not seek re-election.)

Since I've mentioned the use of "elitism" as an argument that helped the Republicans in the Senate race in Tennessee two years ago, I guess that brings me to another of Anderson's concerns -- "Is [Obama] 'elitist,' too condescending and glib and remote and full of himself?"

Anderson writes, "I don’t find him so -- but then again, I myself am an elitist who can seem condescending and glib and remote and full of himself, so who am I to judge?"

Americans of all races made TV's Frasier Crane perhaps the country's most beloved elitist, first in his supporting role on the series "Cheers" and then in his popular spinoff series, "Frasier."

That didn't necessarily mean they would like to have someone like Frasier Crane in the Oval Office. Americans seem to prefer to have someone like themselves in the White House.

Elitists aren't in the majority. I guess that's part of what makes them elitist.

A president doesn't have to "feel your pain," although that apparently worked for Clinton. But a president who seems to understand what ordinary Americans are facing is preferable to one who appears remote.

It remains to be seen if middle-class, white Americans -- most of whom did not attend Ivy League schools -- prefer Obama (a Harvard graduate) over McCain. Perhaps in his own way, McCain can be viewed as every bit as elitist, with his Naval Academy education, although he may be able to mitigate that impression with his experience as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict.

Anderson also worries about what he calls "the evil in men’s hearts." Given the country's history, he has good reason.

"Every time I watch him work the crowds, I cringe a little, dreading the lurching nut and pop-pop," Anderson writes. "Any assassination is horrific; the murder of Obama could be a national trauma beyond reckoning. ... It would amount to a national statement concerning our racial divide: Nah, we can’t."

Of course, there are many precautions that can be taken to try to prevent an assassination. But it is clear that, at a time when suicide bombers have become distressingly commonplace, if someone is intent on doing harm, such precautions can be overcome.

There are many arguments, pro and con, to be made about the Obama candidacy. Some of those fears are legitimate, some are baseless. They're largely the result of the eternal tension between the known and the unknown.

A great president will help his people deal with that tension.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Franklin D. Roosevelt told the country in 1933.

A fearful America still had to endure the pain of the Great Depression. It trampled some, but most got through it because they recognized fear for the enemy it was -- and their president helped them have the faith that better days were ahead.

To become president, Obama's challenge is to help a majority of his countrymen have that faith in him.