Skin Deep
- From: jose <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:50:05 -0800 (PST)
Skin Deep
Just how strong is black affection for the Clintons?
Michael Crowley, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, February 13,
2008
When Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign first began, there was
reason to think she would be hard to beat in a primary. Despite her
Iraq vulnerability and assorted baggage, she seemed to have an
impenetrable bulwark in the black vote. "Bill Clinton's popularity
with blacks has been presumed to carry over to her and help her win
the important South Carolina primary ... and other similar Southern
primaries," explained Newsweek in November 2006. Newsweek wisely noted
that the candidacy of Barack Obama could change that presumption. But,
even after Obama joined the race, some Clinton advisers didn't fret.
Last January, one party strategist told Politico that "this is all
about loyalty and the strength of relationships that the Clintons have
engendered over the years. It's going to be hard to look them in the
face and say, 'I can't support you.'"
At first, that seemed true. A CNN poll in October showed Hillary
leading Obama among blacks nationally by a comfortable 57-31 margin.
But, by mid- January, those same numbers had swung a stunning 52
points, leaving Obama with a 59-31 advantage.
For the Clintonites, this turnabout has been a nasty surprise. One
black Democratic operative told me the Hillary campaign did not
distribute talking points on her civil rights record until this month.
"They didn't think it was going to be an issue," according to the
operative.
What happened? In part, Iowa dispelled the assumption that racism made
Obama unelectable. The Clinton campaign also alienated some blacks by
striking allegedly racially charged chords like Obama's cocaine use.
But a look back at the Clinton years, and at Hillary's own public
persona, suggests that the black firewall may have been overstated
from the start.
Back in 1992, the Clintons were decidedly not heroes to black America.
Bill ran on a platform of welfare reform. He was tough on crime, and
some felt he gratuitously supported the execution of the brain-damaged
African American killer Ricky Ray Rector on the eve of the New
Hampshire primary. When Clinton scolded the obscure rapper Sister
Souljah at a meeting of Jesse Jackson Sr.'s Rainbow Coalition, Jackson
called it a "Machiavellian" gambit for white votes. That fall, Clinton
carried 82 percent of the black vote--a low sum compared to other
Democratic nominees. (In 1988, for instance, Mike Dukakis carried 89
percent of the black electorate.)
Once in the White House, the Clintons continued to irritate African
Americans. In 1993, they dumped their friend and Justice Department
nominee Lani Guinier because of her ideas about racial
reapportionment. By 1995, Jackson was complaining that Clinton had
ignored civil rights issues and hinted at a primary challenge or
independent presidential run. A major test came in 1995, when a
Supreme Court ruling imperiled federal affirmative action programs.
Under pressure from ascendant Republicans and his pollster Dick
Morris, Clinton wavered, but ultimately he settled on his famous "mend
it, don't end it" formulation.
But soon, the Clintons were clashing with black leaders again. In July
1996, Bill signed a tough welfare-reform bill crafted by the Gingrich
Congress. Behind the scenes, Hillary supported his decision--a stance
that ruptured her friendship with her one-time mentor, Children's
Defense Fund chairwoman Marion Wright Edelman, who called signing the
bill "a great moral and practical wrong. " That fall, Clinton was
reelected with another deflated 84 percent of the black vote.
It wasn't until the Lewinsky scandal that Clinton won over skeptics.
Black voters appeared to sympathize with him as the target of a rigged
right-wing prosecution and, moreover, feared a conservative power play
that might threaten their political interests. On the House floor,
Clinton's African American lawyer, Cheryl Mills, even described
impeachment as a threat to "civil rights."
At the height of impeachment, in a now-infamous New Yorker essay, Toni
Morrison declared Bill "the first black president," saying that he
"displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household,
born poor, working- class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-
loving boy from Arkansas." He evinced his egalitarianism streak every
time he rode around in a golf cart with Vernon Jordan or BET founder
Bob Johnson. He even sought spiritual counseling from his old nemesis,
Jesse Jackson. It mattered little that, on policy, Clinton still left
many black elected leaders cold. As Al Sharpton put it, "We must show
mercy on him that he didn't show on us in the welfare bill and calling
for the death penalty."
The outpouring for Bill seamlessly transferred to Hillary. In a 2005
focus group conducted by pollster Mark Mellman, eight of ten African
American women named Hillary as their all-time political hero. But, in
fact, black voters may have had little real sense of Hillary.
"Nationally, most of what's known about Hillary Clinton [among blacks]
is that she was Bill Clinton's first lady," says David Bositis of the
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "But it's not like
African Americans had any first-hand experience with her."
And the sudden, mass defection to Obama suggests that Hillary's black
support may not have been so intense after all. Hillary, of course,
doesn't posses any of the cultural signifiers that Morrison touted.
When Hillary spoke from the pulpit at an Alabama black church last
spring, for instance, she drew ridicule for affecting a clumsy
Southern accent. "She has no black characteristics whatsoever. She's
an uptight white wonk" raised in a lily-white Chicago suburb, says one
neutral pollster tracking the race question. To connect with black
voters, she reaches back three decades to recount her internship under
Marion Wright Edelman.
Without Bill Clinton's cultural ties, her identity rests more on Bill
Clinton's record. And that's where she begins to run into trouble.
Even Clinton administration veterans like Christopher Edley, who
advised the president on race, aren't so sure that his old boss's
record can be counted as an overwhelming success. "There should be" a
"reconsideration" of Clinton's race legacy, Edley says. While praising
Clinton as "stunningly effective" on affirmative action and federal
appointments, he adds that, "on several fronts, the marks should be
low," including crime legislation, education reform, Rwanda, and AIDS
in Africa. Similarly, Harvard Law School professor (and occasional TNR
contributor--see "The TNR Primary") Randall Kennedy calls the
impeachment outpouring "puzzling." Kennedy, who is African American,
has also written that Clinton favored the white middle class while
offering blacks "chastising lectures that legitimated the essentially
conservative notion that the predicament of the poor results primarily
from their own conduct."
It wouldn't be too hard for Hillary Clinton to argue past these
criticisms. Rising black incomes and Bill's pivotal defense of
affirmative action would be strong hands to play. Yet she rarely does
so, even in outlets like BET, apparently for fear of leaning too hard
on Bill's record. "Senator Clinton is running on her own record," says
campaign spokeswoman Traci Blunt.
With black voters turning away from her, Clinton has found a new
firewall: Latino voters, whose reputed tensions with African Americans
will lead them, some Clintonites believe, to reflexively oppose Obama.
Indeed, the black embrace of Obama poses a threat if it makes him
appear to be the "black candidate," perhaps driving away some white
voters, too. If that happens, Hillary, in a twist few could have
predicted, might win the nomination much as her husband first won the
presidency--using the black electorate as a foil.
Michael Crowley is a senior editor of The New Republic.
.
- Prev by Date: Is the right right on the Clintons?
- Next by Date: First, they came for Piglet
- Previous by thread: Is the right right on the Clintons?
- Next by thread: First, they came for Piglet
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
