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Who's Afraid of Barack Obama?

By Joe Sims

Archives - Dates and Topics

2007 – print

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7-24-07, 11:30 pm

A Black president in 2008? Just months ago, many if not most would have scoffed at the prospect. Yet as summer blossoms, so too is the candidacy of Illinois Senator Barack Obama. A recent spike in June polls, the second in three months, shows him in a statistical dead heat with the formidable Hillary Clinton of New York, with the remaining Democratic hopefuls trailing far behind.

According to a USA Today story reporting a mid-June Gallup Poll, “The Illinois senator bests Clinton by a single percentage point, 30 percent – 29 percent, if the contest includes former vice president Al Gore. Clinton bests Obama by a single point, 37 percent – 36 percent if it doesn’t include Gore.” The poll was conducted among Democratic voters. In the view of experts, it is too soon to tell if Obama’s surge will deepen or peter out. Still, the growing strength this early in the election cycle bodes well.

Even more interestingly, another poll taken in the spring, surveying how candidates would compare in the general election, show Obama as the strongest Democratic candidate, coming within striking distance of defeating Giuliani, the strongest Republican in the survey. As reported by the respected Quinnipiac University poll, “Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has a slight 44 – 41 percent lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in a possible 2008 presidential faceoff … Giuliani leads former Vice President Al Gore 48 – 41 percent and tops New York Sen. Hillary Clinton 49 – 40 percent.”

Another major issue is Obama’s growing financial and organizational capacity, showing the senator is more than able to “run with the big dogs.” For example, presidential fund-raising stats issued in the late spring revealed some interesting and surprising trends with Senator Obama leading the pack in contributions coming from Wall Street. Giuliani was a close second, with Clinton a hair behind. Democrats also led in overall monies in their campaign coffers, at this point besting Republican totals.

Much is sure to be made of Obama’s strength among investment capital. Already, Hip-Hop mogul Russell Simmons has commented that he is in the pocket of and beholden to his contributors, calling him a “mouse.” Simmons bemoaned the Illinois senator’s lack of an independent grassroots financial base, and seemingly belittled the 30 percent of his overall total coming from small contributors, mainly over the Internet.

Simmons, in a New York Times Magazine interview, also dismissed Obama’s call for reforming rap lyrics, saying that if he really wanted reform, he should focus on reforming the material conditions that create the lyrics. Simmons has joined Rev. Al Sharpton and others in calling on the corporate recording industry to ban the use of the “n” word, an important and serious campaign. The former CEO of Def Jam records seemed to find in John Edwards a more serious approach to addressing the crisis conditions in African American and poor communities.

Notwithstanding these concerns it is worth pondering Obama’s strength on conservative Wall Street and the strength of the Democrats generally. Is this section of the ruling class more evenly placing their bets, feeling that the Republican revolution is spent, and that the pendulum has begun to swing back? Or is it a more cynical Machiavellian move, aimed at supporting a candidate they feel cannot win a general election? One wonders what kind of support was given in these quarters to Ralph Nader in 2004, insuring a Republican victory.

Well, it’s too soon to tell. Still Obama’s ability to raise the big bucks should not be belittled, nor should he be written off because of it, as some are wont to do. No one should forget that this presidential election occurs on the plane of bourgeois politics and New York is a bourgeois town. That should be the measure.

Another major issue is the African American candidate’s organizational strength. In this regard a June Walk for Change brought out 10,000 volunteers for door-to-door canvassing in 50 states. Press stories suggest a largely successful mobilization that utilized the Internet to gather volunteers. The Chicago Tribune reported that:

The day was largely organized over the Web, with e-mails going out to Obama supporters who also got a training video on how to campaign door-to-door. An interactive map on the campaign Web site allowed people to volunteer for a canvass by clicking on icons representing their locations. Volunteers directed via Web.

In many cases, the only communication before the event was over the Internet, and volunteers showed up with printouts of confirmation pages for their registration showing the location of the meet-up point. All of the major campaigns have invested in substantial Web operations, and the campaigns all have made a priority of using their sites to build electronic lists of supporters and to maintain enthusiasm. In the first quarter of the year, Obama used the Internet to raise $6.9 million from 50,000 individual contributors. The New York Post suggests that “the campaign has added another 40,000 Internet donors nationwide to the 100,000 captured last quarter, say staffers, aided mostly by a grass-roots network of predominantly anti-war voters,” no small achievement.

But where does he stand on the issues and importantly, what is his stand on labor? Here, the situation is predictably mixed and somewhat contradictory. While overall taking a strong pro-labor stand, the Democratic hopeful also skipped a presidential forum organized in February by the AFSCME union. His health care plan, while having positive features, is reported to fall short of the universal coverage favored by other candidates.

On an ABC Sunday morning news program when he suggested his daughters were “pretty advantaged” and should be seen so by college admissions committees. Adding grist to the mill during the interview was the suggestion that class be added as a consideration thereby including disadvantaged and working-class whites. Could it be that the Illinois presidential hopeful is backing away from supporting affirmative action? Given Obama’s past statements on the issue, this conclusion seems unlikely. However, as the presidential campaign heats up and Obama attempts to expand his reach and base, pressure will continue to build to soften positions. Does such accommodation mean capitulation?

Already some are questioning what the new star of Democratic Party politics stands for, suggesting he wants to be everything to everybody. Activist Bill Fletcher, in a recent article “Questions for Barack Obama, suggested his positions shift, according to who he’s talking to:

There is a way in which I cannot tell who is the real Senator Obama. For one, he has not carved out – at least as of this writing – any cutting edge issues where he is taking the lead and defining the terrain. Second, and to some extent more troubling, he permits people to see and assume in him what they want to see and assume. I have said to many of my friends that this situation reminds me of an episode from the original Star Trek series where there was a creature that appears to the viewer the way that the viewer would like to see it.

However, in the opinion of some, being “everything to everybody” is what the fight for the presidency is all about. Once several years ago, an old man suggested as much to this writer. “Becoming president,” he said. “is about offending the least number of people.” “In fact” he continued, “it might the essence of the question.” That gave reason for pause.

A recent article in Time magazine, however, paints a very different picture of Obama. Writer Karen Tumulty in an article entitled, “The Candor Candidate” says he is taking strong positions and telling people what they don’t want to hear. According to her, he criticized auto manufacturers on environmental issues at a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club and told an Iowa campaign rally that instead of decreasing the military budget he might in fact increase it, at least initially. On Social Security he apparently has entertained raising the retirement age and payroll taxes. Obama, accessing the state of the nation, apparently feels some tough choices need to be made and instead of telling folks what they want to hear, has to decided to tell the truth, as he sees it.

So is Obama a plastic focus group driven candidate, shifting with every change in the wind or is he Mr. Candor, speaking the truth, even when it hurts?

Probably a little bit of both. Part of the differences in perception are due to the ebbs and flows of the campaign in its early months and attempts to find traction in a changing political environment. Part too is surely a function of a tactical calculus aimed at calibrating an image of forthrightness, making the tough choices and taking the political and moral high ground. And that’s to be expected.

But some might ask, what about principle, platform and program? Well, what about it? This is bourgeois politics. And the game will be won or lost based on their rules of the game. Different ruling class candidates approach the matter in different ways, but the underlying principles are the same. Richard Nixon for example used to say the winning Republican tactic was to run as far to the right as you could in the primaries, and then back to the center in the general election. Clintonstyle Democratic Leadership Council candidates use another variation “triangulation” and “the politics of the vital center.” According to the rules of the game, the “center” is where the action is.

Some might argue this is a sad commentary on the sad state of US politics. And they’d be right. However, being right doesn’t change a damn thing.

At this juncture, the “movement” isn’t strong enough to force a different strategic paradigm, the way Harold Washington did when he ran for mayor of Chicago. There, program and platform, merged with “movement” in the form of a massive voter registration drive, that turned out the working-class African American, Mexican American and white vote. Washington maintained his principles and won an election. Despite the dramatic defeat of the Republican right in 2006, a defeat organized around basic “issues,” no such movement is yet galvanizing around any of the Democratic challengers. Don’t like it? Go out and build the movement. Street heat will help reinforce platform and change the rules of the game.

But what about affirmative action? Curiously, Obama’s position seems to be drifting toward center right stances, most recently articulated by some Republicans. Given the nature of US institutionalized racism, it’s doubtless that Obama’s daughters should remain beneficiaries. And so should their daughters’ daughters. Income is not the issue. Family background, experience and preparation is the issue. Black middle-class families, most of whom are first generation college graduates, have got a long way to go before there is a level playing field. They are not nearly large enough, nor have nearly enough “background” in terms of educational and financial capital. And this is doubly true for the Black working class and poor.

With affirmative action on the ropes, after the November election – it was the one issue that went down to defeat – it would be a huge mistake to buy into the “Black-middle-class-has-made-it argument. And what about poor whites? It’s an important issue that needs to be addressed. Unity requires the fight for an expanded pie. But let’s equate the two problems and treat them as if they are the same.

Will Obama be the candidate who is best able to build a winning coalition on these and others issues and defeat the Republican right? That question will be decided by democratic voters in the Democratic primaries in just a few months.

What should be the stance of the left? Other strong candidates are also raising important issues in the race for the White House. Hillary Clinton made an important point in a recent debate when she called for focusing fire on the Republicans instead of emphasizing Democratic differences.

Whoever emerges as the standard bearer one thing is sure: Obama’s candidacy will have lasting impact on the subject of race in the US body politic. In some ways it will never be the same. So dramatic has been his rise in fortune that it raises a question in a hitherto new and unprecedented way:

Who’s afraid of Barack Obama? Why, all of them are.

--Joe Sims is editor of Political Affairs. Write your letter to the editor to pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net

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