Bi-racial Coalition Carried Obama to South Carolina Landslide

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By Erik Ose (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Erik Ose - Writer

Facing a loss in South Carolina, the Clintons did their best to spring a trap on Barack Obama. Their game plan was to lower expectations for Hillary, while making an Obama victory appear meaningless. As an unnamed top Clinton adviser admitted to the Associated Press, they would paint Obama as "the black candidate" in a state where African-American voters were 47% of the Democratic primary electorate in 2004.

Until the polls closed, it looked like things were going according to schedule. Hillary signaled South Carolina wasn't a priority by campaigning elsewhere for most of the week leading up to the primary, leaving Bill to tour the state on her behalf.

Pre-election polls seemed to show Obama's support among white Democrats in S.C. slipping to 10%. A Wall Street Journal headline from the day before the primary epitomized the effects of the Clintons' spin by proclaiming "To Truly Win in Carolina, Obama Needs Large Margin." The reporter speculated Obama "will have to win by a double-digit margin in order for voters nationwide to perceive South Carolina as a real victory."

But despite Bill's pledge to go door-to-door for Hillary in the black community if necessary, black voters in South Carolina were turned off by the Clinton campaign's increasing reliance on racially coded appeals against Obama.

Clumsy smears

One high profile episode occurred when Clinton supporter Bob Johnson, the billionaire head of BET, raised the specter of Obama's drug use as a young man at a rally in Columbia, S.C. Johnson told the crowd that "Hillary and Bill Clinton...have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood � and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in (his) book."

When called on it, Johnson shamelessly denied he was talking about drugs, claiming "my comments today were referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else."

The month before, Billy Shaheen had been forced to step down as the co-chair of Clinton's New Hampshire campaign when he first raised the drug use issue against Obama. But this time, the Clintons refused to disassociate themselves from Johnson's remarks.

On the day of the primary, Bill tried to downplay the significance of an Obama victory by invoking the specter of Jesse Jackson. Asked by a reporter why it was taking "two Clintons to beat" Obama, he helpfully pointed out that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

Despite his groundbreaking career as an outspoken civil rights activist and the first black American to make a serious bid for the White House, Jackson remains a controversial figure to many white voters. Clearly, Bill was trying to tar Obama with a negative brush. Either he was associating him with Jackson solely because both candidates are black, or trying to remind voters that Jesse ultimately came up short in his unsuccessful runs for the presidency.

Obama has already far exceeded Jackson's performance in the early primary states. In nearly all-white (91%) Iowa, Obama won with 38% of the vote, versus Jackson's 9% when he finished fourth in 1988. In New Hampshire, Obama was a close second to Clinton with 37%, compared with 8% twenty years ago for Jackson.

In 1984, Jackson won South Carolina with 25% of the vote, and in '88 he won again with 54%. But in both years, South Carolina held caucuses, and turnout was less than a tenth of the number who voted in this year's primary. And Jesse Jackson was born in South Carolina.

Jackson's insurgent campaigns were chronically underfunded and ran on shoestring budgets. By contrast, Obama has assembled one of the biggest fundraising operations in the history of presidential politics, raising raising $103 million last year, and an astounding $32 million during January 2008. Significantly, his funds have come from both large donors and a diverse, nationwide network of small contributors.

One of the highest ranking white elected officials to back Jackson in 1988 was the Agriculture Commissioner of Texas, progressive Jim Hightower. This year, the Democratic party establishment is genuinely split between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Liberal icon Ted Kennedy is only the latest prominent white Democrat to endorse Obama, following John Kerry, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and a string of sitting Senators and Governors from red states including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Landslide called early

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Erik Ose is a writer and political activist living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His columns have appeared in NC newspapers such as The News & Observer and elsewhere including Salon.com and The Hill. He is a veteran of community organizing and (more...)

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