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Barack Obama: the great non-white hope?
Geof Brown
Friday, January 11, 2008
Has the Obama political "behemoth" been blunted in what seemed but a few days ago to be its unstoppable roll?
Behemoth is not my coinage. The American pundits, who have followed the meteoric rise in political popularity of the young black senator from Illinois, were falling over themselves to find words to fit the incredible phenomenon of a relatively unknown black candidate who emerged the winner of the Iowa state democratic presidential caucuses, a state with only four per cent black population. And in that win, Obama managed to banish two competing white senators from the race, plus putting veterans Senator Hillary Clinton and former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards in second and third place respectively.
Then came New Hampshire. The odds in favour of Senator Obama winning the primaries in that state over the immensely popular and household name Senator Hillary Clinton from New York, averaged a seven per cent lead from the findings of eight separate opinion polls. The pundits could be forgiven for the excess of effusion in their language in the circumstances. Not to mention that Senator Clinton is the wife of the surpassingly popular and still vibrant past US president Bill Clinton. Yet not one of the many opinion polls gave her even an outside chance of beating the political behemoth from Illinois. But win she did by a clear and comfortable three-point margin. After her win, Senator Clinton would say she was the only one who believed she could beat Obama. Even her own camp had conceded victory, pre-voting, to her main opponent.
So what went wrong? It is too easy to dismiss the opinion polls as having been all inaccurate and missing the mark. That would betray poor intelligence and perception. The fact is, the polls were right in the case of the win of Senator John McCain over Governor Romney in the same state of New Hampshire in the Republican presidential primaries. Further, a fact that has generally been overlooked in the early post-election analyses, is that the opinion poll prediction that Obama would take 37 per cent of the vote, was spot on. I am indebted to the CNN super analyst Bill Schneider for that significant bit of information. So it wasn't that Obama did less well than expected, but that Hillary Clinton did far better than projected. And it seems credible that the largest factor in Hillary Clinton's comeback was her recapture of the women's vote, aided by a large turnout in favourable weather.
What might all this mean for the prospects of Obama continuing on a roll in the succeeding presidential primaries? If he holds his popularity at the present level, Hillary as his nearest rival would need to continue repeating her last-minute reprieve by dominating the women's vote. And Obama would have to show up as the weaker candidate in the matter of the economy, another area of concern among the Democrats, at least in New Hampshire. So the real test for Obama will come in the succeeding primaries, especially in the big-vote states like New York, California and Florida.
His freshness and new message of change through unity in diversity will put Senator Clinton's New Hampshire reprieve to the test. She has lots of enemies and detractors among both Democrats and Republicans where he has a relatively clean slate.
What is very clear is that the Obama presence has re-energised the American political scene. Notice how all the candidates in both parties are rushing to be identified in "me-too" fashion as agents of change. They are trying to distance themselves from the old-style Washington way of politicking and governance. The engaging orator that he is, Obama is giving life and vibrancy to the campaigns of both parties. Their focus is Obama. Second-place Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in staking his claim for his party's nomination, boasted that only he could successfully challenge Senator Obama. And that was before the voting in New Hampshire. The rather ungracious jumping into the fray by former President Bill Clinton was in the form of a direct broadside against Obama, the man who has idolised him. That was because the Clinton camp feared Obama.
It is Obama who has coined the term "the new majority", referring to his wide following across party lines. It is Obama who has his supporters whipped into near frenzy chanting "Yes, we can", at the very moment when he and they should have been despondent over his defeat in New Hampshire. It is Obama who looks like he can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. If ever there was a great non-white hope for political success from the American minority, Obama is it. Look for other non-white minorities to take their cue from the Obama movement and start pitching for higher political offices. Not Jesse Jackson, not Al Sharpton was ever able to mount an appeal across racial lines and rouse a white majority to stump for them as Obama has done.
The political behemoth is not finished; he is not done. He is obviously just beginning.
- browngeof@hotmail.com or geofbrown07@gmail.com
Geof Brown
Friday, January 11, 2008
Has the Obama political "behemoth" been blunted in what seemed but a few days ago to be its unstoppable roll?
Behemoth is not my coinage. The American pundits, who have followed the meteoric rise in political popularity of the young black senator from Illinois, were falling over themselves to find words to fit the incredible phenomenon of a relatively unknown black candidate who emerged the winner of the Iowa state democratic presidential caucuses, a state with only four per cent black population. And in that win, Obama managed to banish two competing white senators from the race, plus putting veterans Senator Hillary Clinton and former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards in second and third place respectively.
Then came New Hampshire. The odds in favour of Senator Obama winning the primaries in that state over the immensely popular and household name Senator Hillary Clinton from New York, averaged a seven per cent lead from the findings of eight separate opinion polls. The pundits could be forgiven for the excess of effusion in their language in the circumstances. Not to mention that Senator Clinton is the wife of the surpassingly popular and still vibrant past US president Bill Clinton. Yet not one of the many opinion polls gave her even an outside chance of beating the political behemoth from Illinois. But win she did by a clear and comfortable three-point margin. After her win, Senator Clinton would say she was the only one who believed she could beat Obama. Even her own camp had conceded victory, pre-voting, to her main opponent.
So what went wrong? It is too easy to dismiss the opinion polls as having been all inaccurate and missing the mark. That would betray poor intelligence and perception. The fact is, the polls were right in the case of the win of Senator John McCain over Governor Romney in the same state of New Hampshire in the Republican presidential primaries. Further, a fact that has generally been overlooked in the early post-election analyses, is that the opinion poll prediction that Obama would take 37 per cent of the vote, was spot on. I am indebted to the CNN super analyst Bill Schneider for that significant bit of information. So it wasn't that Obama did less well than expected, but that Hillary Clinton did far better than projected. And it seems credible that the largest factor in Hillary Clinton's comeback was her recapture of the women's vote, aided by a large turnout in favourable weather.
What might all this mean for the prospects of Obama continuing on a roll in the succeeding presidential primaries? If he holds his popularity at the present level, Hillary as his nearest rival would need to continue repeating her last-minute reprieve by dominating the women's vote. And Obama would have to show up as the weaker candidate in the matter of the economy, another area of concern among the Democrats, at least in New Hampshire. So the real test for Obama will come in the succeeding primaries, especially in the big-vote states like New York, California and Florida.
His freshness and new message of change through unity in diversity will put Senator Clinton's New Hampshire reprieve to the test. She has lots of enemies and detractors among both Democrats and Republicans where he has a relatively clean slate.
What is very clear is that the Obama presence has re-energised the American political scene. Notice how all the candidates in both parties are rushing to be identified in "me-too" fashion as agents of change. They are trying to distance themselves from the old-style Washington way of politicking and governance. The engaging orator that he is, Obama is giving life and vibrancy to the campaigns of both parties. Their focus is Obama. Second-place Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in staking his claim for his party's nomination, boasted that only he could successfully challenge Senator Obama. And that was before the voting in New Hampshire. The rather ungracious jumping into the fray by former President Bill Clinton was in the form of a direct broadside against Obama, the man who has idolised him. That was because the Clinton camp feared Obama.
It is Obama who has coined the term "the new majority", referring to his wide following across party lines. It is Obama who has his supporters whipped into near frenzy chanting "Yes, we can", at the very moment when he and they should have been despondent over his defeat in New Hampshire. It is Obama who looks like he can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. If ever there was a great non-white hope for political success from the American minority, Obama is it. Look for other non-white minorities to take their cue from the Obama movement and start pitching for higher political offices. Not Jesse Jackson, not Al Sharpton was ever able to mount an appeal across racial lines and rouse a white majority to stump for them as Obama has done.
The political behemoth is not finished; he is not done. He is obviously just beginning.
- browngeof@hotmail.com or geofbrown07@gmail.com
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