Misstep Of Clinton Campaign's Anti-Obama Manuevers

In the concluding section of my article for Black Commentator.com (January 17, 2008-Issue 260), I proffered the following observation: “When push-comes-to-shove, my intuition and instincts tell me that, ultimately political personality attributes of Hillary Clinton, as they continue to shape in peculiar establishmentarian-liberal ways her campaign message and demeanor, will help to tilt the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination to Barack Obama.”

Political writers make projections both sincerely and tentatively, hoping that they have read the “political tea leaves” correctly, which I think I did in case of Hillary Clinton's campaign message and demeanor in the New Hampshire primary. Starting with the debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, three days before voting on January 8 and thereafter, Clinton began fashioning what might be called verbal maneuvers (or “verbal twist-of-words”) that sought to portray Senator Barack Obama as what Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, called “a poetic dreamer and herself a prodigious doer.” (January 9, 2008). Clinton's graphic expression of this anti-Obama verbal maneuver occurred in an interview on Fox News Television - Monday January 7 - in which she proclaimed that “Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ...It took a president to get it done.” The Times' columnist Maureen Dowd got it right which she wrote that Hillary Clinton's LBJ-over-King formulation as “sounded silly. ...Her argument against Obama now boils down to an argument against idealism....”

When Hillary Clinton made her observation in New Hampshire that she believed LBJ not Martin Luther King played the critical role in producing the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, my intuition and analytical instincts told me straightaway that Clinton was wrong. Wrong in two crucial respects. First, “historically wrong”--that is, in the “interpretive sense” of history, giving a conservative historiographic slant to a momentous American freedom-enhancing historical occasion. Second, Hillary Clinton was also “politically wrong”. Which is to say, she made a political misstep insofar as she didn't have a clue - not a clue - that her particular LBJ-over-King formulation about the relative inputs in the making of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would not just annoy but enrage the typical African-American citizen.

In arriving at this view of the “political wrong” associated with Clinton's LBJ-over-King statement, I used my own Black-identity ethos as a measuring yardstick for understanding what the broader African-American citizens' reaction to Clinton's statement might be.

As it happened, Hillary Clinton's curious formulation regarding the role of the courageous Martin Luther King-led Civil Rights Movement's contribution to the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act literally backfired in the face of her campaign. Within 24 hours, it sparked a firestorm of sharply negative reactions, not just from African-American leadership figures (such as the highest ranking Black Congressperson, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina who is also that state's leading Black political personality), but negative reactions broadly among African-Americans. On the weekend after the New Hampshire primary in an interview on NBC's Sunday program “Meet The Press”, Clinton compounded this misstep of her LBJ-over-King statement.

Clinton haughtily defended her curious view of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, saying that it was Barack Obama who distorted the meaning of her comment as news of it reverberated through the African-American population. However, in an interview with the press during Sunday afternoon of January 13th, Obama replied forcefully, as reported in the Boston Globe (January 14, 2008):

Clinton Campaign's Cool-Hand “Southern Strategy”

By the week following her “Meet The Press” interview (January 13), Hillary Clinton's slick verbal maneuver to elevate LBJ-over-King in the making of the 1964 Civil Rights Act had become perceived by millions of Black voters as a kind of cool-hand “Southern Strategy” against Barack Obama. Indeed, during the same week even the editorial column of the New York Times (January 17) arrived at a similar perception of the Clinton campaign's anti-Obama verbal maneuvers. The Times' editorial column put it this way:

It was clearly her side that first stoked the race and gender issue. ...Mrs. Clinton followed up with her strange references to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson—and no matter how many times she tried to reframe the quote, the feeling hung in the air that she was denigrating America's most revered black leader.

In addition to putting its influential imprimatur on what I call a “Southern Strategy” interpretation of Hillary Clinton's maneuver to elevate LBJ-over-King, the Times' editorial column (January 17) provided another interesting observation. This related to the tactics employed by the Clinton campaign machine to muster a high-profile defense for her. “Her staff and supporters,” the Times' editorial observed, “including the over-the-top former President Bill Clinton, went beyond Mrs. Clinton's maladroit comments—and started blaming Mr. Obama for the mess.” Furthermore, the Times' editorial remarked that the Clinton campaign machine called upon prominent African-American supporters of Hillary Clinton to challenge Barack Obama, and several such Black supporters of Clinton did so in a manner intent on demonizing Obama. As the Times put it:

Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, compared Mr. Obama to Sidney Poitier's character in 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' - a black man trying to insert himself into white society. Representative Charles Rangel of New York said that Mr. Obama had said some 'absolutely stupid' things.

Even a leading rightwing Black academic contributed to the endeavors to defend what the New York Times aptly called Hillary Clinton's “maladroit [LBJ-over-King] comments.” The rightwing Black academic was John McWhorter, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, who added an adroit-but-slick twist to the discussion. In an Op-Ed article in the Wall Street Journal (January 16, 2008), McWhorter claimed that Barack Obama's criticism of Hillary Clinton's LBJ-over-King comment didn't contribute to that comment's bad image among African-Americans. Rather, Clinton's statement became a bad thing in the eyes of African-Americans through what McWhorter dubbed the “tantrums” by Black supporters of Obama, persons bent on “playing the race card to pretend Mrs. Clinton is dumping on King.”

Curiously enough, McWhorter’s convoluted thinking leads him to place Barack Obama on a pedestal of high-mindedness, so to speak, while he attacks Obama's Black supporters. “In the name of speaking for Mr. Obama,” says McWhorter; the people throwing these tantrums are presenting a parochial, cynical face, rather than the thoughtful, cosmopolitan one that the candidate [Obama] himself is trying to show. Overall, Mr. Obama has not run a 'black' campaign. ...Hopefully Mr. Obama is too smart, and too much of a man of the world, to succumb to this twisted rendition of black identity.”

Savvy Black Voters And The South Carolina Primary

Now I agree with John McWhorter's characterization of Barack Obama as a “thoughtful [and] cosmopolitan...candidate”. But McWhorter and his rightwing ilk can never understand that persons who believe in Black people's honor and identity are also “thoughtful and cosmopolitan.” Accordingly, it was precisely some multi-millions of thoughtful-and-cosmopolitan Black-honor-minded and Black-identity-minded African-Americans who, by the week leading up to the January 26th South Carolina primary, revealed their genuine disgust with the Clinton campaign machine's cool-hand version of the “Southern Strategy”.

It happened that polls taken in October and November 2007 found Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama among Black voters in South Carolina by as much as 20 percentage points. And Black women voters favored Clinton more strongly than Black male voters. But a combination of new developments from late November onward slowly but surely reversed this equation.

One development was Obama's phenomenal Iowa Caucus victory on January 4th, which demonstrated broadly to millions of African-Americans that a skillful Black presidential candidate can gain significant support among White American voters. And although the Iowa victory was not directly reinforced in the New Hampshire primary owing to Hillary Clinton’s 39% to 36% victory, the Obama campaign derived indirect benefits from having kept the New Hampshire electoral outcome within 3 percentage points of Hillary Clinton's victory margin. As I put this point in my first article on Barack Obama's campaign (Black Commentator, January 17):

The Obama [New Hampshire] campaign sustained what can be called 'viable voter-support capability' for the long-haul primary campaign season. ...This was a kind of victory-in-defeat for Obama. Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination is standing upright-and-in-stride, following the New Hampshire primary.

Above all, however, it was the impact of the Clinton campaign's version of a cool-hand “Southern Strategy” among Black voters in South Carolina that prepared the way for the Obama campaign's victory in South Carolina on Saturday January 26th. In the Sunday issue of the Washington Post (January 27, 2008), Barack Obama's victory gained a full-headline announcement: “Obama Is Big Winner In S.C.”. This was followed by a small-headline announcement: “Clinton A Distant 2nd After Bitter Campaign.” Total election figures are shown in TABLE I.

Although the polls taken between the New Hampshire and the South Carolina primary showed Barack Obama with a double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton, many pundits expressed doubts that this high pre-election advantage given Obama in polls would hold up. But prevail it did. As the post-election report in the Sunday Boston Globe (January 27) observed:

Obama answered [the doubts] last night. Far more blacks turned out than in 2004, and Obama's margin of victory among blacks was far higher than polls had anticipated. Obama beat Clinton among African-American women by 60 percentage points, exit polling data showed. But Obama also won one-quarter of white voters and nearly tied Clinton among white men. ...In the state that was the first to secede from the Union before the Civil War and that still flies the Confederate flag in front of its State House, excitement about Obama among African- Americans was palpable.

A central issue that appeared in numerous newspaper and television commentaries prior to the South Carolina primary related to how African-American women might vote, given the fact that a powerful female candidate was among the two White candidates challenging Barack Obama. A keen post-election report by the Associated Press addressed this issue head-on, noting that

In the historic battle [S.C. primary] that pitted a black man against a white woman, the question on many minds was how black women would vote. They went overwhelmingly for Obama, in the same 8 in 10 proportion as black male voters. Nearly all the rest voted for Clinton. (Boston Globe - January 27, 2008).

We should also mention additional post-election findings produced by Exit Polls that provide us a fulsome understanding of the political and ideological issues involved in the voting results in the South Carolina. First, surprisingly White women voters gave Hillary Clinton only a plurality of their votes (42%), while giving Edwards 36% and 22% to Obama. Second, some 51% of voters said they preferred a candidate who would foster “needed change” and such voters favored Obama. Third, 75% of South Carolina voters reported to exit-pollsters that they “were ready to elect a black president”, and a similar 75% said they “were ready to elect a woman president”. When asked whether they thought American voters in general were “ready to elect a black president”, 90% said yes. Fourth, Black and White voters in South Carolina differed in their response to the question whether Obama or Clinton was the “most electable Democratic candidate”. According to the Associated Press report on exit-poll results, “two-thirds of blacks say Obama is most electable, while more whites think Clinton is most electable.” (See Boston Globe (January 27, 2008)

Interestingly enough, the “electability issue” as it relates to the relative electoral viability of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton against several possible Republican presidential candidates, was tested in a Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll taken January 20-22 and published the day before the South Carolina primary. Surprisingly - to me anyway - when matched against four possible Republican candidates, Obama proved superior to Clinton in what the Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll characterized as a hypothetical “head-to-head matchups [of Republican candidates] with the two leading Democratic presidential candidates.” As shown in TABLE III, when matched against John McCain as of January 20-22 - just four days before the South Carolina primary - Obama ties McCain at 42% each, while Clinton loses to McCain by 2 percentage points (46% McCain; 44% Clinton).

Insofar as the results in the Super Tuesday primary elections on February 5 have put McCain clearly on a path to gain the Republican Party presidential nomination, the results of this Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll might assist Obama as his campaign for the Democratic nomination continues after Super Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll is also noteworthy in regard to the finding that when matched against Republican Mike Huckabee, Obama defeats him by 55% to 33%, while Huckabee runs 8 percentage points stronger against Clinton and Clinton defeats Huckabee by 5 percentage points below Obama's 55% victory over Huckabee.

Be this as it may, its unmistakably clear that Barack Obama's impressive victory in the South Carolina primary placed the Obama campaign in a stronger position to contest the Democratic presidential nomination than did the previous primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. The victory in South Carolina pump-primed the Obama campaign, so to speak—pump-primed it for the larger primary election battle that lay ahead called “Super Tuesday”.

The Meaning Of Super Tuesday For Obama's Campaign

The results of the Democratic primary contests in 22 states on Super Tuesday - February 5th, 2008 - can only be viewed as an enormous boost to Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The overall aura surrounding the enormous boost that Obama's campaign derived from Super Tuesday was captured in the summary report carried in the Boston Globe the following day. “Obama scored a coup by winning Connecticut, where Clinton had led until a few days ago. He also captured Georgia and Alabama, again beating Clinton handily among black voters, who make up about half of the electorate there. He carried his home state of Illinois, which was expected, along with Delaware, North Dakota, Utah, Minnesota, Idaho, and Kansas.”

As shown in TABLE IV, the general results in the Super Tuesday Democratic primary can be viewed as miraculous in terms of Obama' campaign which, after all, is an up-start electoral phenomenon, a campaign challenging the best established electoral machine within the national Democratic Party - the Clinton Machine. Accordingly, the Obama campaign virtually matched the Clinton Machine in the crucial area of “votes won”, gaining 7,294,851 votes to Hillary Clinton's 7,347,971 votes, which was only a 53,120-vote advantage for Clinton. Second, Obama's “votes won” translated in to 13 “states won”, and this in turn translated into 839 “delegates won”, the same number of “delegates won” outcome for Clinton.

Insofar as it was the Obama campaign's central goal to stay close to the Clinton campaign on Super Tuesday in the “delegates won” column, the results of voting on February 5th were clearly heartening for the Obama campaign. This means that the Obama campaign remains “upright-and-in-stride”, as I characterized it in my BC article on Obama.

The Exit Poll data for the Super Tuesday primary provided additional evidence to support the characterization of the Obama campaign as “upright-and-in-stride”. Perhaps the crucial evidence produced by Exit Polls was that the African-American voter bloc was solidly and overwhelmingly for Obama. As Susan Milligan, the major political reporter for the Boston Globe (February 6, 2008), reported this crucial evidence, “Early exit polls reflected what the campaigns and pollsters had concluded weeks ago: that Obama would capture an overwhelming majority of the African-American vote....” Milligan's elaboration of the meaning of the Super Tuesday African-American vote was particularly informative:

Obama collected an average of 80 percent of the African-American vote in the Super Tuesday states, according to exit polls, winning Georgia last night with 88 percent of the African-American vote. And while the Illinois senator as expected lost Clinton's home state of New York, his campaign calculated that a strong showing among African-Americans in New York City would peel away some delegates in the Empire State.

It is also important to mention that within the massive Black vote for Obama, the votes of Black women were of great strategic electoral significance. As another political reporter for the Boston Globe (February 6, 2008), Lisa Wangsness, reported, “In every state where exit polling data were available last night, black women overwhelmingly voted for Obama, and they helped him carry states with a high percentage of black voters, including Alabama and Georgia. Black women chose Obama over Clinton by a 7-to-1 margin in both Georgia and New Jersey.... Obama carried Georgia where black women made up 33 percent of the electorate; Clinton won New Jersey, where 14 percent of voters were black women.”

Another important aspect of voting in the Super Tuesday primary states should be given special mention here - namely, the interplay between the votes of African-Americans and the votes of Latino-Americans. While all of the political pundits and professional polling experts recognized that the majority of Latino-American voters would support Hillary Clinton in the Super Tuesday primary - which they did - the primary results also revealed an important phenomenon. Namely, that, as reported in the Boston Globe (February 6, 2008), “voters in both communities said they liked both candidates [Obama & Clinton]”. Furthermore, this Exit Poll finding that Latino-American voters, while feeling very committed to the Clinton Machine are open to the Obama candidacy, was translated into positive electoral results for Barack Obama in the Super Tuesday election in the state of Colorado. Among the western states with a sizable Latino-American population—around 10%--the Obama campaign's electoral appeal gained enough Latino support to carry the state of Colorado in the February 5 primary.

A Concluding Note

By any reasoned and balanced reckoning, the combined electoral results in the South Carolina January 26th primary and the Super Tuesday 21-state primary on February 5th were solidly beneficial for Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. 12 months ago when I first heard that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was considering a bid for the Democratic nomination, I thought it was a fine idea and would add another page to the important history of Black electoral quests for a presidential nomination, a quest that Jesse Jackson brilliantly advanced especially in his 1988 campaign. However, on the day of February 6th following the Super Tuesday primary, I can hardly control my feeling of excitement for the Obama campaign.

In this connection, I should mention here that I concur with aspects of the somewhat guarded-friendly pro-Obama formulations presented in last weeks Black Commentator (January 31) by Bill Fletcher. The following observation by Fletcher particularly caught my attention:

We, who are concerned with justice, must be asking [critical] questions and in that sense, emulating precisely what Senator Obama suggested Dr. [Martin Luther] King would be doing today. The pressure that Senator Obama believed Dr. King would be exerting [on today's Democratic candidates] would be far more than that of a phone call, email or fax and it would be far more than an individual act. It would be organizing and mobilizing a movement, that is, hundreds of thousands of those who have decided that they are ready to take their futures into their own hands....

Finally, I want mention here that I also concur strongly with aspects of Professor Carlos Russell's keen characterizations regarding the need for those among progressive African-Americans who aren't satisfied that Senator Barack Obama is radical enough, to temper their dissatisfaction with a measure of what I would call “progressive modesty” and “progressive realism”. As Professor Russell put this issue so cogently and deftly (BC - January 31):

...Senator Obama must overcome those Blacks who say that he is not politically Black enough, or “progressive enough” to warrant their support. They, with a litany of, in my view, self-righteous “pronunciamientos”, argue that Senator Obama is not addressing the fundamental issues that affect the Black Diasporan Community. How can he do that and expect to win the presidency? Is it, at this potentially momentous time in our history, more important to ignore the realities of a political race in a nation that has been obsessed and impregnated with racism, imperialistic fanaticism, and an organic genuflection to corporate greed, in favor of politics of ideological correctness and purity? My response is a resounding NO! We must continue to attempt to grab hold of the 'Bully Pulpit’ of the planet and be able to preach, teach, and address the fundamental issues plaguing humankind. Super Tuesday is an opportunity for African Americans. Let's face it, were Obama to win the nomination, it would not, I repeat would not, substantially alter the direction of the nation, except on the Iraq war, and an approach to health care, but it would impact and affect the psyche of Blacks and whites. For Blacks the glass ceiling would be cracked, and for whites the fear of a powerful Black man would be diminished as expressed by their vote.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Martin Kilson, PhD hails from an African Methodist backgound and clergy: From a great-great grandfather who founded an African Methodist Episcopal church in Maryland in the 1840s; from a great-grandfather AME clergyman; from a Civil War veteran great-grandfather who founded an African Union Methodist Protestant church in Pennsylvania in 1885; and from an African Methodist clergyman father who pastored in an Eastern Pennsylvania milltown--Ambler, PA. He attended Lincoln University (PA), 1949-1953, and Harvard graduate school. Appointed in 1962 as the first African American to teach in Harvard College and in 1969 he was the first African American tenured at Harvard. He retired in 2003 as Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Emeritus. His publications include: Political Change in a West African State (Harvard University Press, 1966); Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970); New States in the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 1975); The African Diaspora: Interpretive Essays (Harvard University Press, 1976); The Making of Black Intellectuals: Studies on the African American Intelligentsia (Forthcoming. University of MIssouri Press); and The Transformation of the African American Intelligentsia, 1900-2008 (Forthcoming). Click here to contact Dr. Kilson.

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