I posed this simple question to a savvy political columnist for a popular black newspaper: Why hasn't Barack Obama run away with this election? Instead, according to the latest Zogby/Reuters poll he's on the slide. Republican rival John McCain now has a not insignificant poll lead over Obama. Even more galling to the Democrats: more voters say that McCain, a Republican of all things, can better manage the economy than Obama. At first glance this makes no sense. Here we have a Democratic presidential candidate with every star aligned for him that a presidential candidate could only dream of. That's a miserably failed Republican presidency, an apparent confused, disoriented, and divided Republican party, a bombed economy, an unpopular war, a cash cow campaign, a fawning media, and charisma too boot.
The columnist's retort to my question was, "Easy, he's black."
The answer was blunt, straightforward, and even a tinge bitter. It's also dead wrong. During the Democratic primary wars Obama racked up a phenomenal string of nearly a dozen victories. This effectively knocked Hillary Clinton out of the contest. He didn't do it solely with black votes. In most of these primary or caucus victories, there were few black votes to be had. He did it with white voters. They were young and old, and many of them were disenchanted cross over Republicans and independents. From the instant that Obama jumped in the presidential race, polls have been unwavering and showed that many whites were so fed up with Bush's failed policies that they'd overwhelmingly back a Democrat who stood for change, no matter what color.
For a time Obama seemed to be that candidate. When he stopped becoming that candidate, or least perceived as not being that candidate, the seeds of voter doubt crept in. None of this has anything to do with race.
The list of things that caused that doubt is long. He back-flipped and supported the FISA bill. He rejected public financing, blasted the Supreme Court's decision striking down the death penalty for child rape and in the process proclaimed that he's not against "a blanket" prohibition on the death penalty. He showcased his Bible acumen with Christian fundamentalists, backpedaled from his pledge to sit down for talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he wouldn't support the reinstatement of the fairness doctrine and endorsed white conservative Georgia Rep. John Barrow in his election battle with Regina Thomas, a liberal black state representative.
The most painful Obama flop is Iraq. His much played up anti-Iraq war stance was the biggest single thing that galvanized liberals and radicals. His new line that he favors a glacially slow, vaguely laid out timetable for a phased withdrawal from Iraq seems not much different than what McCain advocates.
Obama, Team Obama, and some pundits tried to put the best face on his shifts and turns and explain them as the correction that he had to make to have any chance at centrist and conservative votes. That part makes sense. Voters don't elect American presidents on the extremes. In the serious stages of the campaign, Republicans that have run to the right move left toward the center and Democrats that have run to the left move right toward the center. Obama is simply following the formula. And besides, some argued, didn't McCain flip flop on some of his positions?
This argument doesn't wash. McCain did not pose himself as a candidate of change. Obama did. The Zogby poll showed that this is the single biggest reason for Obama's poll reversal. It's not exactly a mass exodus, but plainly a lot of liberals don't like his shifts. His support among them plunged more than 12 percent. Another ten percent said that they were undecided. That's a dangerous number, since presumably most are Democrats.
Obama is making the same potentially lethal stumble that Democratic presidential contenders John Kerry and Al Gore made in keeping McCain in a race that should by all rights be a rout. He ignored his base in the chase after the mythical Democratic votes on the right and conservative center. That base is liberals, young voters, and especially blacks. He stopped talking about change, and the war, and has been virtually mute on failing inner city public schools, criminal justice reform, the Depression-level unemployment among minority youth, gang and drug violence, the HIV/AIDS plague and immigration reform.
He hasn't used the campaign stump as a bully pulpit to talk about them. The continued failure to do this will cost him even more dearly with liberals, young voters, and could even sour some blacks on him. McCain's inch ahead of Obama then has little to do with race. It has everything to do with a candidate who a little more than two months out from November 4 can't make up his mind whether he's Change Obama or Conservative Obama, and risks winding being neither.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).
At a time when when he should be clobbering McCain and the GOP, his ratings are dropping. Why? Answering questions about abortion with cloudy speak like "it's not my pay grade" and lying about his defense of the FISA bill is catching up with the flipper. The mainstream press is still in bed with him, but Joe Average voter is seeing through his thin skin. If BHO had a record (other than abortion), or if had some political accomplishments that we were aware of, it might be different. But a campaign that survives on lofty platitudes and promises that have no root in proved credibility is an empty one indeed. And worse of all, his belief in his own press wrapped in hubris will hand the election to McCain on a silver platter.
1. Summer time malaise
2. A little disillusionment among the far left (aka some Progressives) and
3. The Clintonistas holding out for Hillary (it really is TOO soon to expect all of them to have come home yet)
Independents and Progressives make up people choosing to believe Obama has flip flopped, when careful analysis of Obama's explanations will make them realize alot of these so called flip flops are decisions based on logical reasoning, not their dogmatic ideology or his political posturing.
I believe Obama's rationalizations for his decisons make sense, if people bother to listen instead of getting up in arms over headlines about FISA or offshore drilling without HEARING what the man is actually saying about his decisions. He shows he is a careful, thinking, man, the kind of person we should want in a leader.
I think as Obama continues to define the differences between him and McCain, and the Clintons enthusiastically and convincingly embrace Obama's candidacy at the Convention, we will see some of this change.
Furthermore, Summer time polls mean nothing!!! If they did, Dukakis would have won in 88, Gore, Kerry, etc. It's all about the Fall!
I understand the impetus to believe in Obama, but this is not the time to sit pat. As David Sirota noted in his piece here today (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/seizing-the-obama-moment_b_120199.html): "Though the media's horse race coverage and the Left and Right echo chambers 'win at all cost' psychology would have us believe that elections are ends unto themselves, our Founders envisioned them as means to ends -- instruments by which the people's will is debated, politicians are pressured, and a mandate is crafted."
Perhaps a convention less tightly controlled and policed would help the process. But blind belief and naive conviction that all will be well IF ONLY we could elect Obama skirts your dynamic role in the process. The Fall is upon us, in more ways than one.
His handling of the Wright controversy was telling - how easily he would ditch the past to in orer to to please( not only ditch ,but turn on and denounce ) .So many people who backed him as a single issue candidate( his non vote against the war) without considering other factors are no different than people who vote only on abortion.
Some friends of mine cannot stand Mc Cain about the war in Iraq
Dislike Mc Cains immigration policy big time
Does not trust anything about Mc Cain and are afraid he will place us in harms way with more wars.
These frinds of mine are voting for him and stumple when i question them about Barak so then talk about experiance.
The nessage is Race does play a important roll in this election and allot of people have not worken up yet that we ALL are G-DS children.
Neither Obama nor HiIlary promised immediate withdrawal from Iraq, but they did promise withdrawal. Obama can still whip McCain on Iraq. He will also win back the ground lost on the economy. McCain is no populist and won't be able to hold onto that mantle. It's not time to lose heart and write post-mortems.
Well, you may get your wish and we will all be the worse for it.
Remember, this is the man who said(in 2004 at the DNC Convention):
"Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America...There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
This could be reiterated now, once again, in 2008. Obama does not represent Liberal America, or Conservative America, he represents the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, like it or not. We all bleed the same color.
LATELY HE'S PLACED MORE EMPHASIS ON SAFELY COMING HME- NOT A FLIP FLOP!
A FLIP-FLOP S WHEN THE BUSH TAX CUTS "OFFENDED YOUR CONSCIENCE" & NOW YOU TRUMPET THEM!
LOOK AT ALL OBAMA'S SPEECHES THRUOUT THE PRIMARIES- 16 MOTHS- SAFE PACE- NEVER STRAYED FROM THAT!
And it is because he's black. I mean George W beat McCain in a primary, and he's dumber than McCain.
Things haven't changed that much when a Harvard grad running for prez is called elitist- Had he gone to Morehouse they'd be saying he's a "black separatist.
All you have to do is look at past candidates and ask yourself how much respect THEIR ideas received and you can trace jsut about every public reaction--including from blacks themselves--to Obama's race.
It's called being stuck in the syndrome of having to offer "twice as much to get half the credit."
Obama's problem is that he has to be nearly perfect. Where previous candidates were NEVER examined to the extent Obama has been (in spite of them having as little or less experience--and a lot less intelligence--compared to Obama: Bush, Reagan...What kind of military experience did Clinton have?...).
Even McCain's nasty ads take it to a new level...because he can-- and with impunity, too. People are quicker to overlook or forgive the white guy's foibles while the black guy's are quickly used to reinforce what they wanted to think was the case all along.