The day after he announced his presidential candidacy, Barack Obama matter of factly said that he didn't think race would matter much during the campaign. There are two compelling reasons Obama said that. Polls show that most whites say that color means nothing when it comes to voting for a candidate, and that the only thing that counts is the candidate's competence, character, and views on the issues. That may or may not be true. After all it's not fashionable to come off to pollsters sounding like a bigot. But when the contest is between a white and black candidate, many whites suffer acute election conversion when they get in the privacy of the voting booth.
Democratic representative Harold Ford Jr. found that out in his Senate race in Tennessee last November. He said and did everything to appeal to white voters. He professed Christian fundamentalist beliefs, backed the Iraq war, and campaigned in cowboy hat and boots. But Ford was still race baited in ads and came nowhere close to bagging a majority of white votes.
Obama may fare slightly better if he gets the Democratic presidential nod. He's a credible, mainstream candidate, and he'll probably get a majority of white votes in hard-core Democratic strongholds in the Northeast, parts of the Midwest and California.
But the other reason Obama downplays race has nothing to do with what the polls say about white voter attitudes. He's simply following the well-worn political script that Democrat presidential candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 followed.
The script called for them to try out shout Republicans on national security, defense spending and preparedness, the war on terrorism, and stay mute or cheerlead the war in Iraq. Obama will alter that script a bit this time on Iraq only because the majority of Americans want out. Meanwhile, Democrats said next to nothing about affirmative action, racial profiling, the death penalty, and drug reform. Their great fear is that this would fuel white anger by reinforcing the old perception that Democrats tilt toward minorities and the poor.
Clinton wrote this original flawed script for Democratic Presidential contenders when he virtually excised all talk of racial issues from his election campaigns in 1992 and 1996. But Clinton also hinted that a big part of his winning strategy was to shake the Democrats loose from the grip of Jesse Jackson and the civil rights leaders.
Gore followed Clinton's script to the letter. He spent most of his campaign avoiding appearances in black communities, and was mute on issues such as urban investment, health care for the uninsured, fixing lousy inner-city public schools, racial profiling, affirmative action, the racial disparities in prison sentencing, and the racially marred drug enforcement policy.
Gore got away with this blatant racial patronizing by playing hard on the terror and panic that a Bush White House win in 2000 stirred in many blacks. The Democrats dangled the nightmarish vision of Bush packing the Supreme Court with more avowed enemies of civil rights and civil liberties such as Supreme Court justices Anton Scalia, William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. But when blacks scurried to vote for Gore out of fear of a Bush win they gave the Democrats another free ride.
Gore said little about lack of abortion funding for the poor, drug enforcement reform, the glaring race iniquities in the death penalty, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, health care for the poor, increased spending for housing, business development and failing inner city schools.
Kerry followed the same script in 2004. He said virtually nothing about affirmative action, death penalty and education reform. It took a sharp blast from Al Sharpton and civil rights leaders to stir Kerry to finally speak out on civil rights issues. He made a tepid, and vague call at the NAACP and Urban League conventions for increased support for minority business, job creation, and against discrimination. But Bush had said pretty much the same thing. He further outflanked the Democrats by conjuring up the faith-based initiative, and tossed in his anti-abortion and pro family values pitch. That cinched the votes, or at least the silence, of a handful of top conservative black church leaders, and thousands of black evangelicals.
Gore and Kerry paid a steep price for their racial blindspot. It deepened the suspicion among many blacks that the Democrats take black votes for granted, and even triggered the defection of a crucial number of black voters to the Republicans in the must win battleground states of Ohio and Florida. Their defection helped sealed the White House for Bush.
Obama won't be able to fully follow the Democrat's flawed script on racial issues. Republicans (and even some Democrats) at times on the campaign trail will press or bait him on race. When that happens, he'll pick and choose his words carefully on the issue. That won't satisfy those that want him to say more about race, or those that want him to say little or nothing about it. For Obama, it's a lose-lose script.