Of course, the term "racist" should be used here. Obama has racist
obstacles in his path. He took a tact of "transcending" race as
the only way he could remotely get masses of white votes.
Charles
Racial problems transcend Wright
By JIM VANDEHEI & JOHN F. HARRIS | 3/18/08 8:16 PM EST Text Size:
Recent controversy and response show that Barack Obama knows how
much peril his candidacy faces.
Photo: AP
Barack Obama’s plunge into the race issue in Philadelphia on
Tuesday at times sounded more like a sermon than a speech.
But beneath the personal anecdotes and historical allusions, it was
a delicately crafted political statement — one that makes clear
that Obama understands exactly how much peril he is facing.
Even before the Jeremiah Wright controversy erupted in recent days,
voting patterns in several states made clear — for all the glow of
Obama’s reputation as a bridge-builder — how uneven his record
really is when it comes to transcending deep racial divides.
The Philadelphia speech offered lines calculated to reassure all
the groups with which he is most vulnerable.
For working-class whites — whose coolness toward Obama helped tilt
Ohio to Hillary Rodham Clinton — Obama spoke with understanding
about why they dislike busing and affirmative action. “Like the
anger in the black community, these resentments aren’t always
shared in polite company,” he said.
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For Hispanics, who have sided with Clinton in the vast majority of
states this election, he lashed pundits scouring polls for signs of
tension between “black and brown” and said the two communities face
a common heritage of discrimination and inadequate public services.
Finally, Obama sought to connect with white Jewish voters —
potentially one of the rawest nerves of all amid the Wright
controversy — denouncing those blacks who see “the conflicts in the
Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies
like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful
ideologies of radical Islam.”
It will take weeks, at least until the April 22 Pennsylvania
primary, to know whether all of Obama’s political and cultural base-
touching succeeded.
Even before that verdict arrives, the speech counts as a remarkable
event — most of all for the specificity with which Obama discussed
racial attitudes and animosities that politicians usually prefer to
leave unmentioned.
Of his own candidacy, Obama said, “I have never been so naive as to
believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single
election cycle, or with a single candidacy — particularly a
candidacy as imperfect as my own.”
Truth be told, Obama and his most fervent supporters often have
acted as if he could end some of the most persistent divisions in
American life by proclamation.
When pressed on racial questions, Obama usually invoked his own
biography and achievements and appealed to America’s hunger for
unity. When pressed on a voting record that the National Journal
called the most liberal in the Senate, Obama dismissed ideological
labels as “old politics.”
The Wright uproar showed that there is no way to sneak race and
ideology through customs, blinding skeptics with his life story and
phrase-making. The candidate will need to address these volatile
topics directly.
But this was becoming clear even before the Wright story caught fire.
Recent controversy and response show that Barack Obama knows how
much peril his candidacy faces.
Photo: AP
Page 2
It is true that Obama won a majority of white voters — a precedent-
shattering achievement for a black presidential candidate — in an
array of states like Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, Wisconsin and
Virginia.
But many of his recent victories came when he got the better end of
highly polarized voting patterns. He lost the white vote, sometimes
by gaping margins in states like Alabama (whites went 72 percent
for Clinton to Obama’s 25 percent), Maryland (52 percent to 42
percent) and Louisiana (58 percent to 30 percent). He compensated
only with overwhelming support by black voters.
In Ohio, it was Clinton who benefited from the racial pattern in
the voting. She took 64 percent of the white vote, according to
exit polls. That was easily enough to offset his 87 percent of the
black vote. Overall, she won the state by 8 percentage points.
This result could haunt Obama. The past two general elections were
tipped by narrow GOP victories in Ohio and these rural whites are a
prototypical swing bloc in elections stretching back decades. Obama
failed to win more than 35 percent of the vote in 11 of the 12
rural counties that border Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Obama’s cross-racial and even cross-partisan support has been
driven by a belief that he is a new-era politician, not defined by
the grievances and ideological habits of an earlier generation.
Then came Wright, who Obama has described as an important mentor,
suggesting that in important ways he is a product of familiar
animosities. “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living
in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich, white
people. Hillary ain't never been called a n——-,” he thundered in a
sermon played relentlessly on television and on the Web this past
week.
Merle Black, an expert on Southern voters at Emory University, said
Wright is a “huge, huge problem.”
“The new information, especially about his minister and his twenty-
year association with this church, really undermines the message
he’s been delivering for the last year, it completely undercuts
it,” said Black.
Latinos have been an even tougher obstacle for Obama than whites.
The only states where he has carried this group, Connecticut,
Virginia, Illinois and Iowa, have relatively small Hispanic
populations. Obama has worked hard to break down this bloc’s
preference for Clinton, a task that likely is set back by Wright.
“There is an older generation, U.S. born, of the Latino population
who can identify more with the black community on these civil
rights issues and can identify with where the reverend is coming
from,” said Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for
Latino Policy. “There are also people who have not been here as
long who are going to find the whole mix of the reverend's words
totally alien.”
Obama’s problems with some Jewish voters also predated the Wright
coverage. The Illinois senator lost the Jewish vote by double-
digits in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. He has been
the victim of both an unwanted endorsement (Louis Farrakhan) and a
dirty e-mail campaign claiming falsely that he is a Muslim.
In some quarters, his support of Israel has been suspect, despite
his outspoken support for the U.S. ally. Wright didn’t do him any
favors when he accused Israel of “state terrorism against
Palestinians.”
“Wright’s comments make the job of supporting Obama in the Jewish
community more difficult,” said a Jewish Democratic leader who
asked that he not be identified by name in order to share his views
more candidly. “On a rational level, Obama should be an easy sell
in the Jewish community. This stuff is based on pure fear-
mongering. There has been a concerted smear campaign against Obama
that has targeted the Jewish community, in emails and conservative
blogs.
“Obama’s speech is a powerful tool to be used in support of Obama,”
he continued, “but on balance, this is an issue that could have a
negative impact on the Jewish vote.”
David Paul Kuhn contributed to this report.