The Republican party did not earn this kind of good luck.
Somehow, just as they’ve managed to come through a primary with a nominee who happens to be the candidate with the best appeal to independents and matches up best against the Democrats, the opposing party is still fighting tooth and nail, and looks set to do it for a long while, perhaps all the way to the convention.
Even more strikingly, the Democratic clash of the titans is showcasing an obvious and deepening fault line between one of the party’s most important and loyal demographics — blacks — and the key emerging demographic for both parties, Latinos. And with each racially tinged exchange or mini-controversy — an accusation of “insensitivity” here, a poor word choice there — a lingering resentment that impacts general-election turnout becomes a bit more likely.
Before Super Tuesday, Obama had said he wasn’t worried about the Latino vote, as Illinois Latinos had voted for him in 2004. That general election was against Alan Keyes, providing as tough a competition as the Washington Generals provide the Harlem Globetrotters; but the Democratic primary in that race included a prominent Latino candidate, Gery Chico, and Obama carried 70 percent of Illinois Latinos in the primary.
Four years later, though, his home state told a different story. Hillary Clinton’s worst performance among Latinos came in Illinois, and even there she almost beat him, 49 percent to 50 percent. Meanwhile, he carried 93 percent of the black vote to 5 percent for Hillary.
In every state with a significant minority population, we’ve seen the same dynamic. Looking at heavily Latino Super Tuesday states, the next closest was Arizona, where she won, 55 percent to 41 percent. Most other states were blowouts — 62 to 36 percent in New Mexico, 67 to 32 percent in California, 68 to 30 percent in New Jersey, and 73 to 26 percent in New York.
Looking at heavily black states, Obama wins by equally lopsided margins. In Hillary’s home state of New York, he carried the black vote, 61 percent to 37 percent. The next closest was Tennessee, a 77 to 21 percent blowout. The rest of the states: 82 to 14 percent in New Jersey, 84 to 15 percent in Alabama, 87 to 12 percent in Georgia.
To get a sense of how limited Obama’s Latino appeal is, note that John McCain took 68 percent of the Latinos who voted in the Arizona Republican primary, who made up about 7 percent of the electorate in that race. (Blacks made up 1 percent, a sample too small to break down.)
Conservatives have chuckled at the Democrats’ being torn by race after years of accusing their Republican opponents of racism. But this divide may have longer-term ramifications. While politicians are usually wise enough to avoid statements that sound like “my group is stronger than your group,” the freewheeling conversations and comments on liberal blogs are bluntly declaring a shift in minority political power.
On Salon.com:
African-Americans are not the only minorities anymore. While they feel entitled to all kinds of privileges, brown minorities like Hispanics, Asians, etc., are very aware of the fact that we continue to be discriminated against, not only by the majority, but also by the African-Americans, and other favored-fringe groups. We now have one chance to level the playing field, and Hillary Clinton is the vehicle. We will not allow our shot to be taken away from us. Thus, if someone we found venerable, like Edward Kennedy, decides to betray us, we won’t give in to sentiments, and make the powers that be, hear us loud and clear. — Sans Prejudice
On MyDD.com:
What might also be taking place is an historic realignment of brown minorities replacing black minorities in the Democratic party as a key voting block. If it does happen, it will be a significant blow to the power of African-American voters in the Democratic party. Hillary Clinton’s primary allegiance will likely be to this new coalition of brown voters who put her over the top to win the nomination.
Michael Barone and Stuart Rothenberg have raised the possibility of low turnout among blacks in the general election this year. As Rothenberg noted, “you can pretty much bet that some high-profile black leader will comment that the Democratic party is happy to get black votes but isn’t willing to nominate a black candidate.”
From all indications, blacks are going “all in” on Obama’s bid; a deep emotional attachment is forming.
There has been much speculation that if Hillary beats Obama for the nomination relying on superdelegates, or on reinstating the delegates from Michigan or Florida, or after a protracted floor fight, heartbroken young voters and blacks may not show up to vote for Hillary in November. But the long-term ramifications could go beyond the particular candidates of 2008; if blacks feel Obama was cheated out of his chance to make history, their resentment may be aimed not just at Hillary, but at the demographic that ensured that result.
The real toxicity — the kind that will linger past November 4, 2008 — is in the cavalier accusations of bad faith, which seem to come as naturally to each side as breathing.
In Nevada, a pro-Obama union ran radio ads that declared, “Hillary Clinton does not respect our people. Hillary Clinton supporters went to court to prevent working people to vote this Saturday — that is an embarrassment. Hillary Clinton supporters want to prevent people from voting in their workplace on Saturday. This is unforgivable. Hillary Clinton is shameless. Hillary Clinton should not allow her friends to attack our people’s right to vote this Saturday. This is unforgivable; there’s no respect.”
Referring to a comment in a pro-Obama mailer that referred to Hillary Clinton as “the senator form Punjab” (a term Hillary jokingly used to describe herself once), Bill Clinton accused Obama’s campaign of being the one that’s throwing around racist comments.
While comments from the Clinton camp that seem racist to blacks have gotten a great deal of attention (like the “shucking and jiving” comment from Andrew Cuomo), some Latino community leaders suggest that Obama hasn’t even bothered to court their vote.
“Barack had a pathetic campaign in the Latino community,” Juan Andrade Jr., president of the Chicago-based U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute, told the Chicago Tribune. “He deserved to get his butt kicked.” In the same article, one of Obama’s top surrogates, Chicago Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, offered a mild criticism of the Obama campaign for insufficient outreach: “Can you blame a community of people that have not been actively courted for not responding to his campaign?”
“I think the Obama campaign very consciously didn’t put a priority on the Latino vote,” says Maria de los Angeles Torres, a professor and director of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “They put effort into introducing him to African-Americans, and they put in efforts to make sure he had white support. But the Latino community outreach came only as an afterthought. [Obama campaign manager] David Axelrod is not known for his great affinity for reaching out to the Latino community. . . . There is a certain comfort level with black and white politics in the Midwest.”
It may be that each demographic is hard-wired to seek out reasons for outrage, even if it is coming from the candidate on “their” side. For example, one might think that having the first Hispanic campaign manager might earn Hillary some goodwill, but even that is conditional. Steven Ybarra, a California superdelegate who heads the voting-rights committee of the DNC Hispanic Caucus, sent an e-mail to fellow caucus members in the hours after word broke that Patti Solis Doyle was being replaced. (She insists the move was voluntary.)
“Apparently, loyalty is not a two-way street,” Ybarra wrote. “Latino superdelegates like myself . . . will have cause to pause.”
So Hillary was the best choice to be president, but only as long as she had a Hispanic campaign manager? A black replacement prompts reconsideration? Was the performance of the Hillary Clinton campaign so sterling that a move to bring in new blood could only be prompted by a lack of respect? Or were Doyle’s race and its implicit appeal to Latinos so strong that it justified keeping her on, no matter how much Hillary underperformed?
A lingering rift is far from certain; Professor Torres believes Obama has time to improve his relations with Latinos. “I think it depends on how he campaigns from here until November. . . . Just as right now it’s a buyer’s market in housing, it’s a buyer’s market for a Hispanic voter.”
But if relationships between blacks and Latinos have always had an underlying tension, this Democratic primary is offering a slew of new irritants; perhaps it could only be worse if Hillary herself were a Latina. If the Democratic race remains close all the way to the end, it seems guaranteed that at least some members of one of these two groups will walk away from the Democratic convention in Denver bitterly declaring, “My candidate would have won if those guys hadn’t played the race card.”
— Jim Geraghty blogs at the “Campaign Spot” on National Review Online.
