The euphoria among black voters over Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama is not solely driven by the giddy thought of getting a "brother" in the White House. Their expectation is that an Obama White House will fight hard for civil rights, health, education, and job creation programs, and criminal justice reform. They will likely be disappointed. Obama did not vault past Hillary Clinton in the hunt for the Democratic presidential nomination by embracing the in your face race tinged politics of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
In a recent interview, a chagrined Jackson was asked whether Obama had asked him to play any role in the campaign. The answer was a terse no. Al Sharpton has not endorsed Obama. Sharpton even publicly pleaded for Obama and Democratic Party officials to seek his console in the tough nomination battle that looms at the Democratic convention and in the fall general election. His plea so far has gone unheeded.
There's a good reason Obama hasn't heeded it. His campaign would have been marginalized and pigeonholed as merely the politics of racial symbolism. He would not have raised record amounts of campaign cash. He would not be cheerled by the gaggle of Hollywood celebrities, and corporate and union leaders. The media would not bestow the Teflon coat that has shielded him from any serious public and media scrutiny. He would not bag the endorsements of the unlikely cast of establishment figures from Paul Volker to Ted Kennedy to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's granddaughter. He certainly wouldn't have been declared the second coming of JFK.
Obama's generic message of hope, change, and unity is long on flowery symbolism, and emotional button pushing and short on specifics. There is not the slightest racial or confrontational edge to it. It can't have.
Black voters make up about 12 percent of American voters. If he won every black vote in every state it wouldn't insure him the Democratic nomination, let alone the White House. White males still make up nearly 40 percent of the American electorate, and older white women make up a big bloc of voters. The majority of them are Democrats. He has courted them furiously, and has been relatively successful in getting growing support from them.
He will need substantial support from Latino voters. They make up about 15 percent of American voters and Asian voters are increasingly important in American presidential politics. They make up about eight percent of American voters. The Latino and Asian vote will be particularly important in California, the Western states, and New York.
That's especially important against his likely GOP opponent John McCain. McCain has backed immigration reform and social security benefits for undocumented workers and does not stir the reflexive antipathy of Latino voters on immigration that the GOP hardliners do.
Obama has publicly distanced himself from Bill Clinton's conservative Democratic Leadership Council. But he still follows closely the blueprint Clinton-DLC laid out for Democrats to win elections.
That is talk of strong defense, the war against terrorism, a vague plan for winding down the Iraq War, tax reform, beefing up police forces, a tame plan for affordable health care and the sub-prime lending crisis, and the economic resuscitation of mid-America. This non-racial, centrist pitch does not threaten or alienate the white middle-class. It is plainly designed to blunt the standard Republican rap that Democrats pander to special interests, i.e. minorities. Meanwhile, Obama has been virtually silent on issues such as racial profiling, affirmative action, housing and job discrimination, the racial disparities in prison sentencing, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, failing inner city schools, ending the racially-marred drug sentencing policy, and his Supreme Court appointments.
Obama is a moderate centrist Democrat whose program for health care reform and the sub-lending crisis is more conservative then Hillary Clinton's. During his stint in the Illinois state legislature he got high marks from Republican legislators as a flexible politician and consensus builder who listened to the views of his Republican opponents. As president he will be pulled and tugged at by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, moderate and conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all will vie to get White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests.
Civil rights and the ramp up in spending on education, housing and jobs, and health care programs have not been a priority for presidents in the past half century. Lyndon Johnson was the sole exception. That was only because of relentless pressure from the civil rights movement and the urban violence that tore America.
An Obama White House will be a historic and symbolic first. But it will be a White House that keeps a firm, cautious and conciliatory eye on mid-America public opinion, and corporate and defense industry interests in making policy decisions and determining priorities. All other occupants of the White House have done that. An Obama White House will too.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).