PROGRAM SUCCESS – OCTOBER 2009 PAGE 5
Obama Can ’ t Talk About Race Even If He Wants To
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson Guest Columnist
The bitter truth is that President Obama can ’ t talk about race even if he wants to . This has absolutely nothing to do with his mixed racial upbringing , or his straddle of many worlds . It has everything to do with politics .
If Obama spoke out on race he ’ d confirm the deep suspicions of the right that he ’ s a closet racial panderer , ala Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson . He ’ d also get creamed as a Democrat who tilts to minorities . Democratic presidents and candidates Clinton , Gore , and Kerry in four presidential elections avoided that tag like the plague . It was deemed a political kiss of death . Obama followed the same script to the letter during the presidential campaign . He talked race only when he was shoved to the wall forced to denounce his former pastor Jeremiah Wright . That was the price to save his campaign .
Obama well knows that the GOP lost an election , but it still packs a wallop . It can disrupt , obstruct , and create chaos for his administration , his political agenda , and him personally . And it does it not only because that ’ s the warfare that Republicans wage against Democrats anyway , but because the GOP has masterfully reignited its populist base against Obama . The base is
Earl Ofari Hutchinson Obama Race Talk Tallahassee , Florida October 2009
rock solid conservative , lower income white male loyalists , with a heavy mix of hard line Christian fundamentalists .
Despite the GOP ’ s wailing that racism has nothing to do with the white fury at Obama , the final presidential vote gave ample warning that many white voters do not and will not accept a black president . Contrary to popular belief , McCain ( not Obama ) won a slim majority of the vote of white independents in the final tally . Obama bombed badly among Southern and Heartland America white voters . They gave McCain nearly 60 percent of the overall white vote . The percentage he got was even higher among white males .
McCain would not have been competitive in the presidential campaign without their vote . The flip side is that Obama would not have been competitive if African-American voters
had not turned his election into a virtual holy crusade and gave him a record percentage and record number of their vote . Hispanic , Asian , young voters , and a significant Earl Ofari Hutchinson percentage of independents , and progressives also gave him overwhelming support .
It ’ s true that blue collar white voters have shrunk from more than half of the nation ’ s voters in the past decade to less than forty percent in national elections . This hardly means that the GOP ’ s white vote strategy is doomed to fail . Elections are usually won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters . White males , particularly older white males , vote consistently and faithfully . And they vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks have in most elections .
Blue collar white male voters can be easily aroused to vote on the emotional wedge issues ; abortion , family values , antigay marriage and rights , and tax cuts . GOP presidents and aspiring presidents , Nixon , Reagan , Bush Sr . and W . Bush , and McCain and legions of GOP governors , senators and congresspersons banked on these voters for victory and to seize and maintain regional and national political dominance . It didn ’ t work for the GOP in 2008 only because of Bush . His mangle of the war and the economy , and the terrible stench of GOP corruption and sex scandals , was too much even for legions of traditional GOP voters to stomach . Their vote for Obama or more likely their decision not to vote at all was more a personal and visceral reaction to their horror of the mess Bush and the GOP made of things . The GOP may well be an insular party of Deep South and narrow Heartland , rural and , non-college educated blue collar whites . But this isn ’ t a demographic to sneer at . Their numbers are still huge .
The recent straw poll among religious conservatives which put former Arkansas Deep South , religious fundamentalist governor Mike Huckabee at the top of their vote heap as their
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