[email protected]

Kerry Endorses Obama: Zzzzzz

Barack Obama's announcement of John Kerry's endorsement in South Carolina, where 50 percent of Democratic voters are African American, begs the question: Why?

Why would Obama want to be burdened with having to explain why Kerry conceded before all the votes were counted in Ohio? Also, Kerry didn't reach out to African American elected officials and community leaders until two months before the 2004 election.

On Sept. 11, 2004, the Kerry campaign convened an "African American Voters Briefing" to share the results of a poll of black voters in battleground states. For what it's worth, Kerry's favorability rating was 80 percent, but only 67 percent were strong supporters.

The briefing was timed to take advantage of the high number of elected officials and political influentials in town for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 34th annual legislative conference. The black political elite were pulled away from receptions, luncheons and other meal functions to attend a midday briefing in a hot, cramped conference room. The Kerry campaign showed so little respect that they didn't provide a single bottle of water or have any campaign materials available.

And with the exception of Massachusetts state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, no senior campaign advisers bothered to show up. The reason: They were off somewhere taking a group photo. Needless to say, the conversation was heated. One senior elected official fumed:

Black communities have nothing. There is no literature, no signs. There's no presence in the community.

Off the record, a campaign official said:

Nothing's been happening. But it's beginning to happen in a fulsome, major way.

After the meeting, I saw Kerry's top strategist Bob Shrum waiting for the elevator. As it turns out, Shrum was in the building as the briefing was taking place. With a won-lost record of 0-7 (soon to be 0-8), Shrum didn't think it was worth his time to speak to the folks that Kerry was counting on to mobilize black voters.

Kerry's endorsement of Obama brings to mind B.B. King's lament about "some outside help that I don't think I really need."

 

Oops! They Did It Again

After the 2000 presidential election, the mainstream media said they wouldn't do it again. The MSM promised not to call an election before the polls close. So, eight years later, they're calling the election before the first votes are cast.

Before the polls opened in New Hampshire, pundits, including the self-styled "best political team on television," had declared Sen. Barack Obama the winner and pronounced Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign over.

The MSM have largely abandoned their traditional role as watchdogs of our democracy. Instead, TV pundits’ baseless and incessant chatter is undermining the democratic process.

My friend Danny Schechter, an Emmy Award-winning TV producer and director of "Counting on Democracy," a documentary about the 2000 election debacle that I wrote and produced, told me:

It's Florida all over again. It's perception trumping reality. I don't expect them to rethink how they cover elections and do something different. They have a template, the same clichés; just the names of the candidates change.

My fear was that Obama would win and the media would say the election was over. They would have confirmed their own suspicions and wrapped up the whole process.

The MSM wring their hands over citizen journalism, but they refuse to accept that their own performance has given rise to the growing cohort of "people who were formerly their audience," in Jay Rosen's formulation.

The know-it-all pundits said Iowa showed the country had moved beyond race but New Hampshire told the rest of the story. When white voters are faced with a black candidate, they often tell pollsters what they want to hear. But in the privacy of the voting booth, the "Bradley effect" kicks in:

But there was no Bradley effect in last week's Iowa caucuses. Obama led in the polls and he led on election night. But, in Iowa, it was a public caucus where neighbors saw who neighbors backed.

In New Hampshire, as in California in 1982, in Virginia in 1989 and North Carolina in 1990, the presidential primary voting took place in private – behind the curtain of a voting booth. It was possible for voters who had said they were for Obama to cast their ballots for Clinton.

That's how "The Bradley Effect" works.

And if "The Bradley Effect" was in play in New Hampshire, then Barack Obama may face a greater struggle to bridge the often-unmentioned gaps that remain in a nation that has long been divided along lines of race and class.

It is not merely Obama's struggle, however. It is America's struggle, as well.

On Tuesday night, Obama told his supporters:

We've been asked to pause for a reality check.

America's racial history tells us that reality sometimes bites.

Battle for South Carolina

Sen. Hillary Clinton's surprising victory in the New Hampshire primary sets the stage for a showdown with Sen. Barack Obama in the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary.

In stark contrast to the virtually all-white electorate in Iowa and New Hampshire, African Americans will make up 50 percent of primary voters in South Carolina. The "black primary" will unfold in the state that was the first to secede from the Union, the site of the first battle in the Civil War, and where the Confederate flag still flies on the Statehouse grounds.

While black men got the right to vote before black women, sisters will determine whether Clinton or Obama leaves the Palmetto State with a pep in their step as they march on to Super Duper Tuesday.

In his concession speech last night, Obama said:

But the reason our campaign has always been different, the reason we began this improbable journey almost a year ago is because it's not just about what I will do as president. It is also about what you, the people who love this country, the citizens of the United States of America, can do to change it.

That's what this election is all about.

That's why tonight belongs to you. It belongs to the organizers, and the volunteers, and the staff who believed in this journey and rallied so many others to join the cause.

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

While I remain neutral about Obama, I fully embrace his message of change. I left Washington nearly eight years ago because I had a bellyful of the bitter partisanship, gridlock and the revolving door of lobbyists feeding at the public trough (and here).

The true agents of change are the new voters that Obama has inspired, energized and mobilized. If this new generation of activists stays engaged and understands that change is a process not a campaign event, they can "take this country in a fundamentally new direction."

I don't believe in "fairy tales," but I have hope that a new majority can indeed bring about change.

ObamaNation?

New Hampshire polls show Sen. Barack Obama is poised to win today’s primary. Obama’s seemingly overnight success was 20 years in the making.

National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial, who like Obama is a former state senator, said at the Wall Street Project's political forum:

We need to be clear that Rev. Jesse Jackson paved the way for Obama’s historic candidacy in 2008. Too much of American politics has become punditry and Pepsodent politics. Whether the smile is right, the clothes are right rather than a discussion of issues of substance.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now:

So when the media says, well, Barack was not a part of the civil rights struggle, he’s a beneficiary of it, not a benefactor of it, but each generation becomes beneficiary and then benefactor. This year he’s a beneficiary of that struggle; next time, those who came in because of him, they’ll be the beneficiaries, he’ll be the benefactor. But the struggle continues. And so, from the ’54 end of apartheid to the Voting Rights Act, to the urban breakthroughs, to Harold Washington, the ’84 and ’88 campaigns, to me, this is historic, a non-broken line.

Well, there’s a sense in which many Americans want to focus on racial reconciliation, and they ignore racial justice and racial equality. And you cannot ultimately get past those concerns.

On CNN, the abominable William Bennett, who once suggested aborting every black baby in the country to reduce crime, said:

Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, wins this for the Democrats. I have been watching him. I watched him on Meet the Press. I watched him on your show, watched him on all the CNN shows. He never brings race into it. He never plays the race card. Talk about the black community, he has taught the black community you don’t have to act like Jesse Jackson, you don’t have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. Great dignity. And this is a breakthrough, and good for the people of Iowa.

Call me skeptical, but the lesson of Iowa may simply be roughly 90,000 liberal white Democrats voted for a black candidate in a Democratic Party caucus. As my colleague Michael Fauntroy writes:

Democratic voters around the country have been voting for Black presidential candidates for years. After all, the hated Jesse Jackson won seven primaries and four caucuses 20 years ago. He scored wins in, among other places, the White-as-Iowa Vermont (95 percent White) and disproportionately White Delaware (70 percent White). Indeed, the real surprise will be when a Black candidate wins a Republican primary.

Obama won the support of 38 percent of Iowa caucus-goers in his victory. That means, of course, that 62 percent of caucus-goers did not want him to be their party's nominee. This is all the more significant given the incredible turnout much of which has been attributed to Obama's campaign of hope. He expanded the playing field and got his people to the caucuses for which he should be commended. However, it should be noted that Senator John Kerry also received 38 percent support in his 2004 Iowa caucuses victory. Obama's win was solid and comfortable, but it wasn't earthshattering.

If Obama does indeed win the Democratic nomination, it will take more than hope – and a “freedom high” – to bridge the partisan divide on issues like illegal immigration and the war in Iraq.

We Are Family

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
-- Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son”

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. convened a meeting of the family yesterday at the 11th annual Wall Street Project conference. The kinfolks included Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Florida state Sen. Tony Hill, Davey D, Janice Mathis, Marc Morial, Charles Ogletree Jr. and Charles Steele Jr.

The purpose of the gathering was to get an update on the state of black America and discuss solutions to the challenges facing black folks, including the “subprime crime crisis.”

Ogletree observed that it was “the best of times and the worst of times.” While a black, a woman and a Latino are running for president, six black teenagers face a 20-year prison sentence for a schoolyard fight. So, there has been “progress but also regress.”

Morial agreed that it “ain’t been no crystal stair” but cautioned:

We dishonor Whitney Young, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer and Mary McLeod Bethune if we suggest that we’ve made no progress. We do not have to define our position by saying that the nation has not made progress.

But that doesn’t mean black folks should allow outsiders to define their community. The gathering rejected the claim of non-kinfolks that Sen. Barack Obama’s historic victory in the Iowa caucuses means race no longer matters. There is structural inequality in the system. Rev. Jackson said:

One can be out of slavery, out of Jim Crow, have the right to vote and starve to death. We’re beyond the barbarism that hurt us and embarrassed white people. Today, we are fighting for equality. The National Urban League’s annual report, “State of Black America,” measures where we are.

And where are we? Blacks are last in wealth and business revenues but first in poverty, home foreclosures, unemployment and incarceration rates, infant mortality and life expectancy. Morial noted:

The economic disparity is the widest of all the disparities. We may want to feel good and have a sense that there is no more racism but the facts show that the disparities are real.

There is a growing divide in black America. It is a tale of two cities within. As a result of civil rights laws, affirmative action and doors being opened, we have a class of success. This growing divide between the have-some and the have-not-a-lot threatens the sense of cohesion we need around core issues of economic equality and protection of civil rights.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee underscored the importance of unity in the community:

No agenda will be accomplished if we are divided. If we follow after symbolism rather than substance…I don’t talk about race. I talk about opportunity. No movement can embrace all Americans unless all boats are lifted.

If we deny our history, we deny those dusty bodies lying in dusty soils. You cannot abandon who we are just so that you can get to where you want to go. We must not abandon who we are because of what we have achieved.

Janice Mathis captured the family’s mood:

We were enslaved as a group. Segregated as a group. Denied voting rights as a group. It’s still group time. Race still matters.

Dem Changes

Well my mind keeps goin through them changes
I think I'm goin outta my mind
-- Buddy Miles, "Dem Changes"

Well, after her loss in the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Hillary Clinton may be going out of her mind. Sen. Barack Obama's victory derailed Clinton's express train back to the White House.

It was serendipitous that I ran into my dear friend, Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree Jr., who's in town for the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Obama and his wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, were students of Prof. Ogletree in the late '80s. So, naturally I was eager to get Tree's take.

Tree told me:

Barack Obama's success in Iowa is a message for democratic change. This is reminiscent of John Kennedy's success 40 years ago. Barack Obama's message has changed the American orthodoxy in politics. There is no way nor no one who can stop him now.

He is a unique candidate who brings together Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans who are committed to uniting America in one voice and in one strategy that is inclusive, progressive and positive.

I asked Tree what does Obama's victory mean for black Americans. He said:

A skinny kid from Hawaii has gone from an anomaly in the Illinois senate to the prohibitive favorite for the White House. And he happens to be unmistakably the first African American candidate with the likelihood of being elected.

Tree's observations were echoed by another good friend, Florida state Sen. Anthony C. "Tony" Hill Sr., an early Obama backer. In an email, Tony wrote:

We smell history in the air and it smells like Barack Obama in 2008. This is the biggest story in political history this country has ever experienced. Fifty-one percent voted for change in the Iowa entrance polls. I think we will end up with an 8 to 10 point lead. This is unheard of in American politics.

The record turnout of 239,000 Democratic caucus-goers shows what happens when unlikely voters show up: the election outcome is unpredictable. While politicians routinely say they want to increase voter turnout, the dirty little secret of American politics is that incumbents – and front-runners – don't want to expand the electorate. They merely want a higher turnout of their supporters.

In his victory speech, Obama promised:

To end the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.

As Tony well knows, when the "vanishing voter" shows up on Election Day, the paradigm shifts. In the 2000 presidential election, Tony and then-Florida state Sen. Kendrick Meek mobilized a coalition of hundreds of thousands of disaffected, young and first-time voters and made history in an election that was too close to call.

If Obama continues to inspire new voters to participate in the political process, a new coalition could change the course of history and bring about change in the direction of the country.

Showtime in Iowa

Tonight, Iowa voters, or more accurately, a narrow slice of caucus-goers, will separate the presidential contenders from the pretenders. Or not.

On the Democratic side, the race is too close to call. Polls show Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in a three-way tie. I won't predict a winner because race matters and respondents don't always tell pollsters what they really think on matters of race. So, it remains an unanswered question whether white voters are ready for a black president.

That said, the election will turn on voter turnout. While a record turnout is expected, it's anyone's guess who will show up. Sixty percent are projected to be first-time caucus-goers; a whopping 40 percent may be independent voters.

Candidates will use high-tech data mining and low-tech "knock and drag" to get their supporters to the caucuses. While Clinton won't hang a lamb chop in the window á la Perle Mesta, she is dangling sandwiches and chips to draw crowds.

On the Republican side, it's a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. In politics, organization trumps inspiration. Huckabee's underfunded volunteer army of Christian soldiers, home-schoolers and gun nuts will likely be outflanked by Romney's war chest and brigade of paid campaign workers.