Five Things President Obama Can do to Keep the Fox Guys Off His Back

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The then freshly elected President Clinton had barely dropped his arm after taking the oath of office in January 1993 before they started in on him. The “they” was Rush Limbaugh (Remember his “Day one of America held hostage” daily rant), packs of radio shock jocks, legions of Christian broadcasters, and, of course, the Fox Network. Clinton was allegedly too pro abortion, too pro big government, too pro tax and spend, too unpatriotic, too personally sleazy, and too married to Hillary. But his greatest crime was he was a Democrat. The Fox holy crusade against him didn’t end until he closed the door for the last time on his way out of the White House.
Now it’s Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama’s turn. The cast of the anti-Clinton holy crusade warriors remains unchanged. They are gnashing their teeth in horror while rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of a President Obama. They’ll soon likely get their wish and when they do they’ll dust off the Clinton bash script with all the same “too” hits that were leveled against him. Some may even be tempted to sneakily toss the race card into the script.

Obama won’t be able to keep the wolves totally at bay. He’s a centrist Democrat like Clinton. For the hardcore conservatives that alone is enough to send red flags shooting to the top of the pole and keep them there. The added plus is that an anti-Obama feeding frenzy is a potential ratings bonanza for Fox.
There are five things then that Obama can do to damp down the yelps against him.
1. The economic mess. He’s not Houdini and he can’t magically make it go away. It will be tough if not impossible to deliver on the ritual debate and campaign stump promise he made to virtually cut taxes for everyone while keeping tax increases to the bare minimum. That defies fiscal logic.

He can though arm twist banks to renegotiate, impose a moratorium on, delay payments, or repackage loans for thousands of foreclosed challenged homeowners. There’s even some talk about government intervention to use some of the bailout money to create a homeowner foreclosure relief fund to provide government guaranteed loans to directly aid those in most immediate danger of losing their homes. He can prod Congress to use some bailout money to help these severely distressed homeowners. He can act on the proposal to create a government sponsored small business credit fund to make readily available loans and lines of credit to credit worthy small and medium sized businesses that have been refused loans by banks.
Infrastructure Stimulus. Obama can take the Senate up on its offer to call a lame duck special session after the elections to pass an economic stimulus bill which includes more than 10 to 16 billion dollars for the federal-aid highway program, transit, and airport capital improvement projects. It’s not exactly the second coming of the old Roosevelt Great Depression job creation WPA but it will stimulate business, contractors, and suppliers, create thousands of jobs, and potentially ramp up tax revenues for cash strapped cities and counties.
Rein in Wall Street. He can push and prod the Fed to better monitor and enforce provisions that clamp a lid on dubious trading, lending practices, and investments by some banks and brokerage houses. That includes imposing severe penalties for those who break the rules.
The Iraq war. He can’t end the war in the six months as he promised when he was a middle of the pack Democratic presidential contender and then backpedaled from that promise when he became the lone Democratic presidential contender with a real shot at the presidency. But he can beef up Iraqi’s security forces and then conduct a phased withdrawal of American troops. This is a good faith step toward winding down the war without compromising Iraqi security and American troop safety.

Neutralize Fox News. In an off the cuff quip in mid October, Obama said he’d be much better off if Fox News didn’t dog him mercilessly. Obama’s pique at Fox was understandable since he’s been their number one punching bag for months.
But Obama can and should turn the tables on Fox. Carping and complaining about their legendary anti-Democratic Party bias, or trying to pretend they don’t exist isn’t going to change Fox, let alone make it go away. Instead, keep Fox in the loop. Obama should talk to the Fox guys like he routinely talks to the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN. That won’t make them sheath their daggers. It might though make them pull them out a tad slower.
These five things are time and cost effective doables. They will do much to help smooth out some of the bumps in President Obama’s road ahead, Fox notwithstanding.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Why Some Racists like Obama

Earl Ofari Hutchinson




Not long after Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama tossed his hat in the presidential rink back in February 2007, an odd, even bizarre thing happened. A hodgepodge of avowedly racist groups burned up internet sites not with rage, but glee. They were giddy at the thought that Obama might win.

Their rationale was that an African-American in the White House would prove their point that blacks were out to dominate whites and that whites would be so disgusted that they would unite in righteous and very racist anger. That in turn would trigger their long swooned over racist fantasy of a race war. This was dismissed for what it was, namely the ranting of the racist lunatic fringe. But that doesn’t mean that many whites who harbor hidden or even conscious racial animus won’t also back Obama albeit for their own reasons. A mid-September survey found about one quarter of whites hold negative views of blacks that are top heavy with the old shop worn stereotypes. The respondents said that blacks use race as a crutch, are not as industrious as whites, oppose interracial marriage, and are terrified of black crime (Obama mildly chided his white grandmother in his so-called race speech back in March for saying she feared black men). Yet nearly a quarter of them claim they’ll vote for Obama.

The standard explanation for this seeming racial schizoid view is that whites are so hammered by financial hardship that the economy trumps race and that Obama can do more to help them out of their financial hole than Republican rival John McCain. Others like him because his race neutral campaign is a soothing departure from the perceived race baiting antics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Still others like him because his racially exotic background supposedly doesn’t fit that of the typical African American.

There is truth in these reasons cited to explain Obama’s appeal to some racial bigots. But there’s another reason that hasn’t been cited. That’s the long, checkered, and tortured history of racial exceptionalism. That’s the penchant for some whites to make artificial distinctions between supposedly good and bad blacks. That’s apparent in the unthinking offensive, insulting, and just plain dumb crack made to some articulate, well-educated blacks in business and the professions that they are “different than other blacks or not like other blacks.”

Racial exceptionalism also stems from the ingrained, but terribly misplaced, belief that blacks are perennially disgruntled, hostile, and rebellious, and are always on the lookout for any real or perceived racial slight, and etch to pick a fight over it.

An African-American who doesn’t fit that type is touted, praised, even anointed by some as the reasoned voice of black America. A century ago the mantle of the reasoned, exceptional African-American was bestowed on famed educator, Booker T. Washington. He was showered with foundation and corporate largesse. In the 1920s and 30s, NAACP leaders always found a ready welcome at the White House. They were praised in the press and bankrolled by some industrialists. In the 1960s Urban League President Whitney Young, NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, and Martin Luther King Jr. before he fell out of favor with the Lyndon Johnson White House after his too vocal opposition to the Vietnam War and turn to economic radicalism, were lionized for their reason and racial moderation.

In the 1980s, Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. actively cultivated and promoted a bevy of younger GOP friendly academics, black business leaders, and black conservatives. Reagan and Bush Sr. plainly saw them as a leadership alternative to the black Democrats and the old guard civil rights leaders. The black conservatives were appointed to government posts, bagged foundation grants, were feted by conservative think tanks, and their columns were routinely published in major newspapers. They were continually cited by writers and reporters as a breath of fresh air among African-Americans mostly for their willingness to break ranks with and to blister Jackson, Sharpton, and the civil rights establishment.

Obama hardly fits the mold of a black conservative, but neither is he the ultra-liberal Democrat that some conservative opponents routinely paint him as. Even before his rocket launch to the threshold of the presidency, he was considered a moderate, centrist Democrat, a consummate party insider, and a rising Beltway establishment politician. Without that stamp of mainstream approval, his White House bid would have never got to political first base.

Obama bristles publicly at the notion that he’s in competition with or a critic of civil rights leaders, or that he is immune from racial jabs. He has repeatedly praised past civil rights leaders for their heroic battle against racial injustice. That’s good, but that doesn’t erase the nagging penchant to elevate some blacks above the racial fray, and declare them the exception. That includes some white bigots who say they’ll back Obama.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Colin Powell’s GOP Payback

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s endorsement of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama was a mere formality. Powell pretty much hinted that Obama would get the nod from him when he repeatedly dropped glowing and admiring words about Obama over the past few months. Powell’s stated motive for breaking with GOP ranks and endorsing Obama is by now standard stuff. He’ll put a fresh, new, or as Powell called it “transformational” face on America’s much bruised and maligned foreign policy.
There’s no reason to doubt that Powell endorsed Obama for that reason. But in another sense his endorsement is a bitter sweet payback for the harsh, odd man out treatment he got from some within the Bush administration and from others in the GOP.
Despite his impeccable military credentials, unwavering party loyalty, towering prestige, and diplomatic savvy, Powell always stirred unease, even deep furor in the bowels of many conservative Republicans. They were never awestruck by the general's bars, commanding personality, and public popularity. That first surfaced when Powell made some soundings that he might seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1996. Pat Buchanan and a strong contingent of conservative groups were appalled.
They sternly warned that they would make "war" on him if he were really serious about grabbing the nomination. If Powell had ignored their threat and charged ahead in his bid for the party's nomination they would have pounded him for backing affirmative action and abortion rights. They would have dredged up the charge that he did not take Saddam Hussein out when he had the chance as chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs during the Gulf War. The general got their message and quickly opted not to seek the nomination. As it turned out, they hammered him with the soft-on-Hussein charge anyway.
Even so, Reagan, Bush Sr., Gerald Ford, William Buckley and nearly every other Republican big wig were star struck enough with the general's magnetism and perceived popularity that they still wanted him on the Republican ticket. They remembered that in some opinion polls, Powell actually made it a horserace in a head to head contest with President Clinton. They figured that as the party's vice-presidential candidate he could breathe some life into the stillborn campaign of Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1996 while not alienating the party's hard liners.
This was the stuff of delusion. If Powell had actually chosen to run he would have been under the most savage scrutiny of any candidate in American presidential history. The public and press on foreign and domestic policy issues would have mercilessly grilled him. Powell would have been forced to answer the same tough questions and face the same objections as the Republican vice-presidential candidate as he would have as a presidential candidate. And Republican hard rightists would have objected just as strongly to the prospect of Powell being one heartbeat away from the presidency.
The talk of Powell as Republican VP candidate fizzled just as fast as the talk of Powell as presidential candidate did. In 2000, Powell knew that the same Republican rightists still itched to pick a fight with him. He quickly scotched any talk about a Republican presidential candidacy. The Secretary of State post was a much better deal. It gave him a high political profile without the risk of stirring the rancor of the right. As a Bush cabinet nominee, rather than a presidential candidate, Powell would implement, not make, policy. This supposedly kept him out of political harm's way.
But this also proved to be the stuff of delusion. The battle within the Bush administration between Iraq war hawks Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice over the war and the terrorism fight has been well-documented. Powell’s diplomacy first tact, his deep understanding that a unilateral too aggressive military policy posed the dire risk of a terrible blowback to U.S. security, and his personal inclinations that Saddam Hussein was largely an impotent, contained dictator who had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorism threat was anathema to the hardliners. They still demanded that he vigorously and enthusiastically help beat the administration's war-drum policy. It was a bitter pill for Powell to swallow, but swallow he did.
He dutifully put a respected face on Bush war doctrine. Even so, he was still closely watched for any hint of deviation from Bush's foreign policy line. This would have brought more howls from conservatives for the general’s head.
Powell survived but not without scars. The lies, deceptions, and staggering human cost of the Iraq war that Powell sadly shilled for tainted his legacy of admired, even revered public military and foreign policy service.

Powell’s Obama presidential endorsement then is much more than an endorsement. It’s a chance to buff a bit of the taint away as well as a nose thumb for past GOP scorn. Payback, if you will.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

How the GOP Will Suppress Minority Votes on November 4—Legally

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

News reports that state officials in the crucial battleground states of Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina were purging thousands from voter rolls illegally drew a flurry of media and public attention. The crude, dubious, if not outright illegal, stuff to suppress votes such as the absence of polling places in minority neighborhoods, ballot and vote machine irregularities, using lists of foreclosed homes to challenge voter’s residences, rigid time lines for filing voter applications, the lack of information, misinformation or deliberate disinformation about voter registration forms and materials has also drawn plenty of media attention over the years.

Yet, the main ploys the GOP will use to damp down minority votes on November 4th have drawn virtually no media attention. They include letter writing challenges, residence and citizenship challenges of non-native born Latino voters, and reliance on a provision in the Help America Vote Act on provisional ballots. Worst of all, these tactics are all perfectly legal.

Federal court rulings flatly prohibit Republican organizations from sending letters to newly registered voters in solely low income, black and Hispanic neighborhoods to verify their address. If those letters aren’t returned, the GOP contends that the recipient's address on their voter registration form is incorrect and the registration is fraudulent. When the voter shows up at the polls they are challenged. Republicans insist that the legal prohibition against this tactic applies only to the Republican National Committee and not to state and local Republican organizations and “volunteer groups.” Since GOP groups have declared themselves exempt from the court rulings against the tactic, they fully intend to use the letter writing ploy to challenge the registrations of people in certain designated zip codes. The zip codes just happen to be those in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods.

In April the Supreme Court handed the GOP an even more powerful weapon to water down minority votes. It upheld Indiana’s rigid voter registration law which requires government-issued identification, such as a driver’s license, a passport, or a state or military ID card. Though Indiana got much of the media attention when the court ruled, it’s hardly the only state to require rigid proof of identity. Florida and Georgia require photo IDs. Eighteen other states require either photo or non-photo IDs. In four states polling workers can demand that voters produce a photo ID. Many will. And they’ll likely have the blessing of nearly several dozen state election officials who were chosen in sharply partisan elections.

It’s a stretch to think that many will rein in their political biases when it comes to making the narrowest interpretation of the Byzantine tangle of state voting laws that allow election officials wide latitude to disqualify or assign to provisional ballot anyone with even the slightest real or perceived registration glitch. Polling workers will take their cue from state officials and tightly scrutinize the IDs and registration cards of voters at countless numbers of local polling places. If the election is close the over scrutiny of minority voters will almost certainly ignite an endless and bitter round of legal and court challenges with little certainty that they’ll be successful.

The other tact is to challenge non-native born Latino voters, mostly newly registered voters. They now make up about 10 to 20 percent of the Latino population in the Western battleground states of New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. The states have nineteen electoral votes. In a close contest their votes could be the make or break votes for Obama or McCain. Anti-immigrant rights groups with active or tacit support from local GOP organizations could station monitors, poll watchers, and volunteers at polling places in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods. Their presence would be a powerful disincentive for many non-native born voters to turn out. Polling officials will be on the lookout for any hint of impropriety in their registration.
Then there’s the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002. It’s supposed to help streamline the voting process and make registration easier. But the act is a two edged sword in that it permits voters who have been rejected for borderline legal reasons to cast provisional ballots. But these ballots are set aside and it could take days or weeks, not to mention court and legal challenges before determinations can be made which ballots can be counted. There will be thousands of these ballots and the overwhelming majority will be from black and Hispanic voters.

The aim of vote suppression is the same as it’s been for a half century and that’s to whittle down the vote total for the Democratic presidential contender, in this case Obama. Democrats will pull out all legal stops to fight voter suppression. They will nail the more blatant, patently illegal tactics. But their success in stopping them still won’t prevent untold thousands of black and Latino voters from being shoved out in the election cold on November 4th. Unfortunately, the law will be on the side of those who shoved them out there.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

The Presidential Debates That Aren’t

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

OK, we now know for the umpteenth time that Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain will cut taxes, provide affordable health care to everyone, drill for more oil, expand nuclear power use, end global warming, rein in the Wall Street fast buck artists, take out Osama Bin Laden, and end the war in Iraq either by withdrawal or victory. And yes we know that both have had a tough family upbringing, and therefore they know what working people have to go through.

These themes have been rehashed and reworked so many times that we can recite them in our sleep. But what we don’t know and certainly haven’t heard in the debates is what Obama and McCain will do about failing urban public schools, the HIV-AIDS pandemic, their view of the death penalty, the drug crisis, how they’ll combat hate crimes, shore up crumbling and deteriorating urban transportation systems, and what type of judges they will appoint to the federal judiciary and to the Supreme Court.
The latter is especially crucial since there may be two possibly three high court vacancies during the first McCain or Obama White House term. We don’t know what they’ll do about these problems because the debate format, the questions and questioners, and even the internet queries play it close, predictable and safe. The result is that the only thing the 50 to 60 million viewers who have tuned into the two debates know what McCain and Obama have to say about these equally vital public policy concerns and problems can only be gleaned from canned snippets from their speeches on the campaign trail, or more likely by going to their campaign websites. For most, that’s not going to happen.

Even on the issues of health care, Iraq, and Iran that the debates have obsessed on, the response from Obama and McCain has been a disappointment, a disappointment that is in that neither has gone much past the canned lines that they have endlessly recited when asked their stance on them. But there were at least two or three moments during debate two when both contenders seemed poised to turn and face each other, take the gloves off, and directly challenge each other on their votes and positions on legislation on taxes, health care, Iraq, and Iran. For instance when McCain demanded that Obama come clean and tell what the penalties would be on small businesses with his health care plan. Or, when Obama charged that McCain voted against the Children Health Act. Or, when McCain implored Obama to admit that the surge in Iraq worked, and wanted to know why he still wouldn’t admit it. Or, when Obama claimed that McCain voted multiple times against alternative energy funding.
These were missed opportunities for the voters to really get the measure of each one beyond the stock pitches. In the three week countdown to E Day, November 4, my suspicion is that voters will still be in a fog regarding Obama and McCain’s stance on the “other” issues that have gotten only the barest of shrift. But then again there’s one more debate.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Democrats Hands Aren’t Clean in the Financial Mess

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The normally expansive Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was anything but that when she was asked if the Democrats should get some of the blame for the Wall Street financial mess. Pelosi answered with a terse “no.” But Pelosi quickly got expansive when she finger pointed Bush and the Republicans for creating the mess. This is the standard Pelosi line. Bush and the Republicans eagerly cut sweetheart deals with financial industry lobbyists to gut lending and stock trading regulations, winked and nodded at the banks and brokerage houses as they engaged in an orgy of dubious stock swapping, buys, and trading, conned millions of homeowners into taking out catastrophic sub prime loans, and watered down the oversight powers of government regulatory agencies.
But Pelosi’s Bush rap is disingenuous. Democratic president Jimmy Carter and Congressional Democrats kicked off the rush to deregulate in the late 1970s when they cajoled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax lending standards for banks and S&Ls to provide more home loans for home seekers. Their goal was noble. It was to get the financial industry to loosen the lending purse strings to lower income and minority home buyers.

But relaxing the standards heightened the risk to banks and lenders and sent the signal that Democrats were willing to also relax regulations and oversight on banks and lenders. It was a short step from that to relaxing regulations and oversight on other financial transactions by the banking and brokerage houses.
It didn’t take long for Democrats and Republicans in Congress to take that step. Under relentless pressure from top bankers during the 1990s, Congress scrapped most of the provisions of the decades old Glass-Steagall Act. The Act was a Depression era measure that kept federally insured banks out of the go-go world of stock trading, exotic lending, and financial speculation. It also set rigid standards for mortgage lending and strict oversight over banking practices.

Clinton’s Treasury secretary Robert Rubin lobbied hard for dumping the Act. The rationale being that U.S. banks and brokerage houses needed to have the restrictions snatched off to stay competitive with Asian and European bankers and financial traders. President Clinton bought the line. The revision bill passed with bipartisan support in 1999 and Clinton quickly signed it.
Despite the havoc to the financial markets and damage to consumers the gut of the Act has created, Clinton still says that he has no regrets over signing the bill. The one regret that Clinton has in hindsight is that he didn’t push harder for tougher oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and financial traders. Clinton’s regret rings hollow given that it was Congressional Democrats and Democratic mayors who clamored the loudest to relax the oversight rules under the guise of bumping up minority homeownership. And it was Rubin and other Clinton administration officials who pushed Congress to loosen the constraints on financial trading.
In 2005, Senate Democrats had another chance to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Senate Banking Committee passed a bill to give regulators the power to require companies to shed their investments in risky assets (the so-named government-sponsored enterprises GSE reform bill).
The bill never got to the Senate floor thanks to Democrats. They killed it in committee. Democrats continued to parrot the line that any limitations on the financial industry would hamper its ability to compete in the financial markets. This was only part of the reason Democrats flacked for the financial industry. The other part is the sway that industry lobbyists have over Congress through the gargantuan amounts of cash they dump into the campaign coffers of top Democrats. That includes Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Banking Committee Chair and short lived Democratic presidential candidate Christopher Dodd.
Obama got more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama’s top presidential campaign contributors and bundlers read like a who’s who of Wall Street bigwigs. They have either directly contributed or bundled millions of dollars into his campaign.
Clinton ranks number 12 on the Fannie and Freddie PAC gift list. She has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees.
Dodd grabbed the top spot on the list of Fannie and Freddie PAC campaign payouts. He has received more than $165,000. Yet, Dodd has screamed just as loud as Pelosi that the blame for the financial muddle lay exclusively with Bush and Republican bungled policies.

Dodd griped that the Bush Bailout scheme was too skimpy on details. That’s a sure sign that if, or when, the Bush plan gets to the Senate, Dodd and other Senate Democrats will back it. Why not? They’re no different than Bush and Congressional Republicans in giving Wall Street pretty much everything else it has wanted, Pelosi’s Republican saber rattle notwithstanding.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Presidential Debates Are Good Theater, But Not Much More

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

To some, Republican presidential contender John McCain is a noble citizen for citing the urgency of the financial implosion as the reason for trying to delay the first debate with Democratic rival Barack Obama. To others, it’s simply a naked, crass, and desperate effort by McCain
to seize back a tiny patch of the high ground from Obama on his strong point issue of the economy.
It doesn’t much matter what the true motive for the stall is it won’t change the fact that presidential debates make good theater but not much more. In a late life reflection in 1987 on what went right and wrong in his long and checkered political career, former President Richard Nixon had this to say about presidential debates, "In the television age, a candidate's appearance and style count far more than his ideas and record."
Nixon more than any other presidential candidate in modern times should know about that. The widely held belief is that Nixon's fidgety, wooden style, and unkempt appearance in his first 1960 televised debate with a relaxed, tanned, youthful looking John F. Kennedy did him in.
In their two follow-up debates, though, a much better composed and relaxed Nixon came off as having as good, if not better, command of the issues than Kennedy. His perceived debate loss to Kennedy didn't finish him. The probable vote machinations by Democrats in Illinois, a lukewarm, belated endorsement by the wildly popular President Dwight Eisenhower, and Nixon's refusal to phone Martin Luther King Sr. to offer support when Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed for civil rights protests in Georgia badly damaged him. Kennedy made the call. As a result, Nixon's vote among blacks dropped nearly 10 percent from Eisenhower's in 1956.
Nixon's alleged debate wash out sealed the belief that an afternoon shadow, mussed hair, a malapropism, and a gaffe during a debate will make or break presidents and their challengers. That's a myth. In 1976, President Ford's bid for a full elected term supposedly went down the tubes when he blurted out that Poland wasn't under Soviet domination during his debate with Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter. Presumably, that gaffe shot to pieces Ford's credibility on vital foreign policy issues. But Ford could not shake Republican blame for the Watergate scandal, and his pardon of Nixon. This more than his debate miscue did him in.
In 1980, it was thought that Republican challenger Ronald Reagan's carefully scripted and rehearsed "There you go again" retort to Carter when he accused him of wanting to slash Medicare so befuddled Carter that his re-election bid came unglued. But by the time of their debate, Carter's presidency was badly tattered. Voters blamed him for high inflation, unemployment, waves of business failures, and the bungled Iran hostage rescue mission.
In 1988, Democratic presidential contender Michael Dukakis' automaton-like answer in his debate with Vice President Bush Sr. to the loaded question about the death penalty supposedly blew his presidential bid. But Bush Sr. carried Reagan's imprimatur. The Reagan administration gave the appearance of fostering an economic boom, had stunning foreign policy successes marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and stratospheric public approval ratings.
In his debate with Democratic challenger Bill Clinton in 1992, President Bush Sr. repeatedly glanced at his watch and seemed impatient to get the debate over. That allegedly soured voters on him. That did not torpedo his re-election bid. Bush's inability to resuscitate the economy and urban racial turmoil badly hurt him. What really nailed him was the insurgent campaign of Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot. He siphoned off thousands of potential Republican votes. That cost Bush more than a hundred electoral votes in thirteen key Southern and swing states that Republicans had either won during Reagan's presidential triumphs, or had run strongly in.
In 2000, Bush came off as personable, witty, and conversational in his debate with Democrat Al Gore. By contrast Gore was perceived as stiff, arrogant, and condescending. Yet, many experts believed that despite Gore's personality glitches, he still beat Bush on the issues. Gore went on to win the popular vote. It took the Florida vote debacle and a Supreme Court ruling to settle the matter for Bush.
Do presidential debates then really influence voters to back a candidate and educate them on the issues? Some studies find that a majority of voters feel they don’t learn much from the debates, and are disappointed at that. Even the minority of respondents who say they learn something from the debates insist that they don’t influence their decision on who to vote for. Party affiliation, long-standing political preferences, personal beliefs and values largely determine that.
Obama will win the White House if voters really feel that he can best handle the country’s economic mess. McCain will win if voters really feel that the national security and foreign policy concerns trump the economy and that he’s the best to handle them. As for the presidential debates, they’re still good shows though.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Did Palin Really Say She Wouldn’t Hire Blacks?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Sarah Palin admittedly hasn’t had much of a track record when it comes to acknowledging let alone promoting diversity during her short tenure as Alaska governor. She’s on record with a terse utterance on hate crimes legislation and another one on cultural diversity.

During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign she told the Eagle Forum that she opposed expanded hate crime legislation. In her gubernatorial campaign booklet in 2006, Palin gave her equally terse view of discrimination. She simply said that she and her gubernatorial running mate would provide opportunities for all Alaskans. There is no record that Palin has made any other public statements on diversity and minority issues since then. This in itself might be cause for only a slight eyebrow raise.
But Palin’s skimpy track record and paucity of words on diversity is relatively tame compared to the far more damaging accusation that’s making the rounds. On April 29, fourteen Alaska black leaders that included prominent ministers, NAACP officials, and community activists met with Palin to voice their complaint over minority hiring and job opportunities. During the meeting she allegedly said that she didn’t have to hire any blacks. Even more damning, she purportedly said that she didn’t intend to hire any.
This charge is so racially incendiary that it sounded like yet another one of the legion of Palin urban legends that have fueled the cyber gossip mill from the instant Republican presidential contender John McCain plopped her on his ticket. The charge had to be confirmed or denied. If Governor Palin or any other public official flatly said that they had no intention to hire blacks that would be politically unpardonable. And for a potential vice-president it would and should be the kiss of death.
In a phone message to this writer, Megan Stapleton, a Palin spokesperson who works with the McCain-Palin campaign committee, vehemently denied that Palin ever said that she would not hire blacks. Sharon Leighow, a communications spokesperson in the Alaska governor’s office, also disputed the allegation. She said that Palin’s press secretary was part African-American and that two of her senior advisors were Filipino and Korean.

But Leighow was also adamant that Palin did not hire staff persons based on color, but solely on talent and skill. As she put it, “Governor Palin is totally color-blind.”

In a call to this writer, Gwen Alexander, President of the African American Historical Society of Alaska who initially reported Palin’s quip stuck by her contention that Palin made the racially charged retort. She also charged that Palin did not support or even officially acknowledge the group’s annual Juneteenth Commemoration.
June nineteen is celebrated as the date of slave emancipation in Texas. Alaska is one of thirteen states that have designated it an official holiday. Other Alaska governors have sent the traditional greeting and acknowledgement to the Society. Alexander says Palin snubbed the group.
The unofficial charge then is that Palin is insensitive to the state’s African-Americans, and that includes refusing to hire and appoint African-Americans. That charge is hotly disputed by Palin’s staff and they cite names and numbers to back it up. But apart from the veracity of the charge and the denial, Palin’s statement that she’s absolutely color blind when it comes to hiring and appointments does set off warning bells.

The color blind argument strikes to the heart of the continuing debate over what and how far governor’s, indeed all public officials, should go to insure that their staffs and their appointments truly represent the broadest diversity possible. Officials must make a concerted outreach effort to make that happen. Palin’s color blind posture more often than not has been nothing but a convenient excuse not to seek out, and hire and promote African-Americans and other minorities in their administration, no matter how qualified.
Diversity is a major issue this election. It’s implicit in Democratic rival Barack Obama’s White House run. It’s explicit in Ward Connerly’s anti-affirmative initiative on the ballot in three states this November. Obama opposes it. McCain backs it, and so does Palin.

Palin’s commitment to diversity is no small point in Alaska. According to the 2000 Census figures blacks make up officially about four percent of the state population. But those who self-identify at least in part as African-American bump up the percentage much higher. This is not an insignificant number especially when American Indians, Aleuts, Eskimos, and Asians are taken together. Minorities then make up about one quarter of Alaska’s population. This makes the state one of the most ethnically diverse in the nation. Diversity must be more than a word that an Alaska governor pays campaign lip service to and then ignores.
Palin’s campaign and gubernatorial spokespersons say the knock that she is hostile to blacks and minorities is unfair. That may well be true. But to those Alaska black leaders who challenged Palin on her administration’s minority hiring practices, to them the knock is much deserved.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

White Democrats are Bigger Threat to Obama than McCain

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The much talked about recent AP-Yahoo poll found that many whites harbor vicious and vile stereotypes about blacks. This is hardly the revelation of the ages. Nor is its finding that hidden and not so hidden bias toward blacks can potentially torpedo Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama’s White House run. What is eye catching in the poll is the finding that many white Democrats are just as biased if not more so than many Republicans. If Obama sinks, they, not Republican rival John McCain will sink him.

Vote and party jumping based solely on race is nothing new. In a 2006 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, a Yale political economist found that white Republicans are 25 percentage points more likely to cross over and vote for a Democratic senatorial candidate against a black Republican foe. The study also found that in the near twenty year stretch from 1982 to 2000, when the GOP candidate was black, the greater majority of white independent voters backed the white candidate. There’s nothing especially surprising about that since it’s virtually an article of racial faith among blacks, liberal Democrats, and political pundits that overt and subtle racial bias is almost exclusively the monopoly of Republicans. That’s a politically correct delusion.
The study found that many Democrats were just as guilty of dubious Election Day color-blindness as Republicans and independents; maybe even more so. In House races, the study found that Democrats were nearly 40 percent less likely to back a black Democratic candidate than a white Democrat. The shift by conservative-centrist white Democrats to like politic GOP presidential contenders is a staple in recent American politics. The GOP scorecard in White House wins would not be seven to three over the Democrats since Richard Nixon’s win in 1968 if conservative white Democrats had not consistently shifted their vote to the GOP. Democrats have always had a gaping disparity in registered voters over Republicans. In 2004 there were ten million more registered Democrats than Republicans. On paper, the gaping disparity in numbers should guarantee a cake to the White House by any Democrat. Obviously, that hasn’t been the case.
1964 GOP presidential contender Barry Goldwater was the first to spot the opening for the GOP among disaffected white conservative Democrats. His naked states rights pitch and rail against big government and welfare sparked the first wave of white Southern Democrats to the GOP. Nixon exploited the opening even more in 1968. His appeal for law and order, bash of permissiveness, and crackdown on ghetto rioters sparked more flight from the Democrats by blue-collar ethnics. Reagan widened the breach even more among Democrats. Fed up with bussing, affirmative action, and crime (always seen as committed by African-Americans) droves of white Democrats flocked to the GOP in even bigger numbers.

The first big hint that conservative white Democrats could cause problems for Obama came in the Democratic primary in Ohio. Hillary Clinton beat out Obama in the primary and she did it mainly with white votes. But that wasn't the whole story. Nearly one quarter of whites in Ohio flatly said race did matter in voting. Presumably that meant that they would not vote for a black candidate no matter how politically attractive or competent he was.
An even bigger hint of Obama’s race problem came in Pennsylvania's primary. The voter demographics in the state perfectly matched those in Ohio. A huge percent of Pennsylvania voters are blue collar, anti-big government, socially conservative, pro defense, and intently patriotic, and there's a tormenting history of a racial polarization in the state. Take the state's two big, racially diverse cities out of the vote equation, and Pennsylvania would be rock solid red state Republican. Clinton, of course, trounced Obama in the state. The same percent of white Democrats as in Ohio told exit poll interviewers that they would not back Obama. Race was the prime reason. Clinton racked up victories in the West Virginia, Kentucky and South Dakota primaries. Again, a significant percent of white Democrats said they would not back Obama, and the reason was race. This time many white Democrats made no effort to hide their racial animus toward Obama.

In the AP-Yahoo poll one third of white Democrats said they had negative views of blacks. “Violent,” “lazy,” “boastful,” “complaining” and “irresponsible” were the terms many used to describe blacks. More than 40 percent of them said they would not back Obama. This is nearly identical to the number who say they will not back him in the key Democratic primaries.

Just how many of them actually mean what they say is a big question mark. But if past history of party switching by white Democrats holds up the odds are that more than a few mean it. They’d jump the Democratic Party ship even if race wasn’t the obvious issue. But it is, and that could spell trouble for Obama on Election Day.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

No Race Card This Time for O.J.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

O.J. Simpson and his attorney loudly complained that the jury in his Las Vegas robbery trial has no blacks on it. But there was never much doubt that it would. That’s the kind of jury that most minority defendants get in Clark County courts. He’s fortunate though that he did get two black juror alternates. Only 5% of the potential jurors among the 500 in the Simpson juror panel were blacks. African Americans make up about 10 percent of Clark County's population.

But even if blacks were on his jury, it wouldn’t much change the fact that this time around there is no race card to play. In the first trial, black and white tongues endlessly wagged and fingers furiously pointed about whether Simpson was a victim of racial persecution in his double murder trial. Polls taken immediately after Las Vegas prosecutors hit Simpson with multi charges showed that the racial divide was a marginal issue.

Oh, there were still more than a few African-Americans who complained that an African-American can’t get a fair trial in any court in America. They even said that was the case with Simpson in Las Vegas. However, there is no hint that blacks are willing to expend an ounce of emotional capital railing that Simpson is a victim of a racist system. Virtually none of the prospective jurors, blacks and whites, uttered anything about race during the jury selection process.

Too much has changed in the decade since the ill-fated trial of the century for that to happen. At the center of that change is Simpson himself; or rather his antics. He hasn’t exactly been the picture of the humble, empathetic, fade into the woodwork former sports icon, and much vilified double murder suspect. Simpson has had multiple encounters with the police and courts, been sued, and has appeared to take every opportunity he could to thumb his nose at the civil court that found him liable for the death of Ron Goldman and his ex-wife and slapped him with a multi-million dollar judgment.

This hardly does much to win Simpson friends let alone convince anyone that he was indeed the victim of a malicious, racist prosecution. Then there are the Las Vegas charges.

There's absolutely no evidence that Simpson was framed or that Las Vegas police licked their chops at the thought of getting him back in a legal noose. He was at the hotel, the goods were taken, and a robbery complaint was filed. There is no evidence that police in any of the cities that Simpson traveled to peddling sports cards and memorabilia routinely subjected him to a special get-Simpson profile. The best or worst that can be said is that Las Vegas prosecutors have taken great pains not too give any hint that they are giving him any special treatment because of his celebrity status. If anything they may be piling the extra heavy felony charges on him precisely not to give the impression of celebrity favoritism.

But then again Simpson of all people should have known that any allegation of his involvement in a crime he'd get the fast collar. That still has everything to do with his murder trial acquittal. Polls still show that a majority of the public think that he is a murderer who skipped away scot-free, and that the trial and his acquittal were a farce and a blatant travesty of justice.

Simpson didn't invent or originate this sometimes ugly divide in public opinion about celebrity guilt. It has always lurked just beneath the surface. But his case propelled it to the front of public debate and anger. The horde of Simpson media commentators, legal experts and politicians that branded the legal system corrupt fueled public belief that justice is for sale. His acquittal seemed to confirm that the rich, famous and powerful have the deep pockets to hire a small army of high-priced, high-profile attorneys, expert witnesses, experts and investigators that routinely mangle the legal system to stall, delay, drag out their cases and eventually allow their well-heeled clients to weasel out of punishment. Even when prosecutors manage to win convictions against celebrities such as Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan, their money, fame, power and legal twisting often guarantee that they will get a hand slap jail sentence, if that.

Whether the police did rush to judgment as Simpson claims -- and there's some wiggle room to debate the magnitude of the charges -- the chatter from most is that a killer is finally getting at least some of his due. Others will say that even Simpson can be a victim of a vindictive and unforgiving criminal justice system. The truth as always may lie somewhere between the two views.

But one thing is certain; race isn’t on the table of public opinion this time around. That’s not a bad thing.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote Beyond O.J.: Race, Sex and Class Lessons for America. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Why McCain and Obama Won’t Talk about Race, but Should

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made one speech in March to damp down
the furor over his relationship with his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright. He made another speech at the NAACP convention in July. Other than those two speeches he has not uttered another word about racial issues since. Republican rival John McCain spoke at the same NAACP convention. Shortly after that, he issued a terse statement backing the Ward Connerly concocted anti-affirmative action initiative on the November ballot in Arizona and two other states. Other than that he has not uttered a single word about racial issues since. The audience for McCain and Obama’s speeches at the NAACP convention were mostly blacks. That reinforced the notion that racial issues are by, and for, blacks, with no broad policy implications for all Americans as issues such as health care, jobs and the economy, terrorism and Iraq.

About the only talk about race during the campaign has been the interminable Hydra headed question of: Can Obama make history by being the first African American president? And if he doesn’t will race sink him? That’s hardly the candid, free wheeling, in-depth talk about the problems that impact the lives of millions of black, Latino Asian, and American Indian voters. Minority voters make up about one quarter of American voters and they deserve to hear what the candidates have to say about racial matters, and more importantly what their administration plans to do about them.
Obama and McCain’s racial blind spot has been ritual blindness in all candidates in recent America presidential races. Racial issues have seeped into presidential debates only when they ignite public anger and division. In a 1988 debate, Bush Sr. hammered Democratic contender Michael Dukakis as being a card carrying ACLU’er, a milksop on crime, and tossed in the Willie Horton hit to drive home the point. In one of their debates in 2000, Bush and Democratic challenger, Al Gore clashed over affirmative action.

Race has been a taboo subject for presidents and their challengers on the campaign trail for the past two decades for a simple reason. No president or presidential challenger, especially a Democratic challenger, will risk being tarred as pandering to minorities for the mere mention of racial problems. In stark contrast, Obama, let alone McCain, would never worry about being accused of pandering to Christian Evangelicals by talking incessantly about gay marriage and abortion.
The double standard on race is troublesome to Team Obama. The team knows that race is a minefield that can blow up at any time and the explosion can fatally harm their candidate. Even something seemingly incidental such as the media and public’s outlandish gossipy obsession with vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin poses a risk. In this case, her presence alone in the race has hurt. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll days after her entrance found that McCain was now beating oout Obama among white women. The month before Palin came along he was tied with him among the women.

But polls, white voter wariness over race, and Obama and McCain’s nervous eye on them can’t magically make racial issues disappear. In each of it’s annual State of Black America reports the past decade the National Urban League found that blacks are less likely to own their own homes, die earlier, are far more likely to be jailed disproportionately and receive longer sentences, receive less or poorer quality health care and earn far less than whites. They attend failing public schools, and are more likely the victims of racially motivated hate crimes than any other group.
The report also found rampant discrimination and gaping economic disparities between Latinos and whites. In the past decade, the income, and education performance gaps between blacks and Latinos and whites have only marginally closed, or actually widened. Discrimination remains the major cause of the disparities.

Shunting race to the back burner of presidential campaigns invariably means that presidents shunt them to the backburner of their legislative agenda. Yet, presidents have not been able to tap dance around racial problems. Reagan's administration was embroiled in affirmative action battles. Bush Sr.'s administration was tormented by urban riots following the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Clinton's administration was saddled with conflicts over affirmative action, police violence and racial profiling. W. Bush's administration has been confronted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, voting rights, reparations, and affirmative action battles, gang violence, and failing inner city public schools. By ignoring, or downplaying these issues until they burst into flashpoints of national debate and conflict, presidents have been ill prepared to craft meaningful legislation and programs to deal with them.
In the closing weeks of the campaign McCain and Obama will repeatedly tell how their administration will deal with problems from the Iraq War to the economy. They should also tell how their administration will deal with the crisis problems that slam minorities and the poor. One or the other will have to confront those problems in the White House.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Todd Palin No Poster Boy for Yup’ik Eskimos or other Native Alaskans

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

There was the ever so fleeting moment during her speech at the Republican National Convention when Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin paid tribute to hubby Todd. She lightly mentioned that he’s of Yup’ik Eskimo background. Todd Palin beamed with pride at the acknowledgement in front of the packed convention crowd and in front one of the largest TV audiences to ever watch a candidate’s convention speech. But the cheering convention participants and millions of viewers won’t see the same smiles on scores of other of Palin’s Yup’ik Eskimos and many other Native Alaskans.

They make up nearly 20 percent of Alaska’s population. A devastating report by the Alaska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 2002, “ Racism’s Frontier: The Untold Story of Discrimination and Division in Alaska” painted a picture of decades long economic misery, discrimination, neglect and alienation for Native Alaskans in Palin’s state.

VP candidate Palin boasted that she squeezed the oil and gas industry for billions that have enriched the state’s businesses, residents, and boosted employment in some communities. That prosperity hasn’t touched many Native Alaskans. Overall one fifth of Native Alaskans are below the poverty line. In some rural villages their jobless rate tops 80 percent. Despite sheaths of anti-discrimination laws, and even an affirmative action plan for special needs military veterans, on the books in Alaska, discrimination against Native Alaskans is rampant.

The Alaska Human Rights Commission notes that discrimination complaints jumped more than fifty percent in a seven year period in the late 1990s. Many of those complaints didn’t come from Native Alaskans. Native Alaskan leaders bluntly told civil a civil rights commission community forum in 2001 that they simply didn’t trust the system.

Native Alaskans are more likely to be sicker and have less access to quality, affordable health care than whites. Their infant mortality is more than double that of whites. Their tuberculosis rate is more than twenty times higher than whites. Civil rights commission studies attributed the appalling health statistics to overcrowded and insufficiently ventilated housing, impure water supplies, inadequate waste disposal systems, and general malnutrition.

The racial disparities between Native Alaskans and whites are even more glaring in public education and the criminal justice system. Native Alaskans are slightly more than 12 percent of the state’s public school students. They make up more than one quarter of school drop-outs, and are at rock bottom in their achievement scores in reading and math. Native Alaskans make up a paltry five percent of the teachers and administrators. Many of the students are taught exclusively by white teachers in grossly under-funded rural public schools. Many of the teachers have little understanding of or sensitivity to Aleut, Yup'ik, and Indian culture and language.


Then there are the soaring prison numbers. Native Alaskan males make up less than ten percent of the state’s population, but are nearly forty percent of those behind bars. Despite the outsized disproportionate jail numbers, the civil rights commission found that Native Alaskans are underrepresented in jobs in the child welfare system, legal system, and juvenile justice system.

The criminal justice system disparities are a double edged sword for Native Alaskans. While they are far more likely to be incarcerated than whites, they are also far more likely than whites to suffer rape, domestic violence and homicide. Native Alaskans bitterly complain of laxity by the police and the courts in finding and punishing those who victimize Native Alaskans. Many homicides of Native Alaskans have remained unsolved.

The violence rate against Native Alaskans is so high that some violence prevention experts say that some of the crimes against Native Alaskans could be tagged as hate crimes. Alaska state legislators for a brief time toyed with the idea of enacting a hate crimes law with greater sentencing enhancements. That went nowhere. Even if the legislature had acted, Governor Palin gave a strong hint what its fate would likely be if it landed on her desk. During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign she told the Eagle Forum that she opposed expanded hate crime legislation. She branded all heinous crimes as hate crimes.

State Equal Rights Commission officials have complained that the legislature gutted the commission’s budget and cut staff. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Despite the well documented widespread discrimination and disparities against Native Alaskans there is no public record that Governor Palin has gone to bat for increased funding for the Commission.

In report on the plight of Native Alaskans, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission called for massive increases in spending on job and skills training and programs to boost employment, improve education and public services. The commission called for sweeping reforms in the criminal justice and health care systems. The recommendations were made four years before Palin took office. Other than a brief mention of diversity in her gubernatorial campaign speech in 2006, there is no evidence that Palin has said or done anything about the commission’s recommendations. If she had it would have put a beam on the faces of thousands of Yup’ik Eskimos who aren’t named Todd Palin.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back (Middle Passage Press, August 2008).

Palin’s Blank Sheet on Diversity and Civil Rights

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


There’s no record that Alaska Governor and Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin uttered anything more than the obligatory complimentary congratulations to the woman that beat her out for the Miss Alaska title in 1984. The winner was Maryline Blackburn, an African-American. A ritual congratulatory wish from Palin would have been about the only public acknowledgement to date from her about an issue, in this case a beauty contest, where Palin was confronted with the issue of diversity in the person of a competitor.

Since then Palin’s record on race and diversity has been the blankest of blank sheets. The probes into Palin’s record on diversity and civil rights have almost exclusively focused on her views on gay rights, gay marriage, and equal pay. These are crucial civil rights issues. But so is racial diversity and civil rights. The on-line site On the Issues gives a comprehensive look at the positions of elected officials on the major issues based on their statements, speeches, campaign materials and policy position papers. Palin has taken no position on immigration, affirmative action, job and housing discrimination, school re-segregation, police-minority community relations, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system,



On the Issues did list two terse positions Palin took on hate crimes legislation and cultural diversity. Both give a tiny window into the would-be vice president’s thinking on diversity and civil rights. During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign she told the Eagle Forum that she opposed expanded hate crime legislation. She branded all heinous crimes as hate crimes. This legal counterintuitive view of what constitutes a hate crime goes squarely against the wide body of law and public policy that defines a hate crime as a willful act or threat based solely on racial, gender or religious animus. By lumping common crimes, no matter how repulsive, into the hate crime category, Palin would effectively gut enforcement of federal hate crime laws.

In her gubernatorial campaign booklet in 2006, Palin gave her equally terse view of discrimination. She simply said that she and her gubernatorial running mate value cultural diversity and would provide opportunities for all Alaskans. She made no mention of affirmative action, job discrimination, and the enforcement of civil rights laws.

Palin made no mention of Alaska’s affirmative action plan. It’s been in place since 1998 and mandates that the state make special efforts to insure that veterans, especially disabled veterans, have equal access to state jobs. Presumably, Palin backs the plan. Yet, she makes no mention on her website are any other place what her office has done to enforce the state’s tightly constricted affirmative action plan.

Knowing Palin’s views on race and civil rights, whatever they are, is more than just a matter political one upmanship. If elected, her views will carry much weight when it comes to making and enforcing legal and public policies that impact minorities and women.

That’s certainly been true in her home state. Alaska’s Eskimos, Indians and Aleuts make up more than fifteen percent of the state’s population. Indian activist groups there have protested discrimination and the disparities in health and education, as well as over their hunting and fishing rights. There is no record that Palin has spoken out on their plight.



Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, his VP running mate Joe Biden and Palin’s Republican mate, John McCain come from state’s that have diverse populations. In the Senate they have spoken out on, taken positions on, and haggled over legislation on immigration, hate crimes, affirmative action, job discrimination, and education disparities. They are keenly sensitive to the importance of civil rights and diversity issues.

The same has been true even with Bush. Before his election in 2000 he promised to make cultural diversity the watchwords in the GOP. That year, and in his reelection bid in 2004, he courted black conservatives and independents. He promised to boost minority business, HIV/AIDS funding, more aid and programs for failing inner city public school, praised the Voting Rights Act, and on occasion spoke out against racially motivated violence.

McCain and Palin, if elected, will likely have to do the same. They will also face sharp challenges on affirmative action, police misconduct, job discrimination, and racial disparities in drug laws, and school funding. They will also be called on to make administrative and court appointments that reflect diversity.

Democrats, much of the media, and a big segment of the public have pounded Palin for her non-existent experience and public pronouncements on foreign policy and national security matters. But she has been absolutely expansive on these issues in comparison to her past and present mute silence about diversity and civil rights.

During her tenure as Alaska governor, Palin didn’t have to say or do much about civil rights. She does now. And we shouldn’t have to wait for her to get to the White House before she does. That’s too great a risk for the country.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Palin’s Job: Fire Up and Keep Firing Up Pro-Lifers

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Republican presidential contender John McCain is if anything a good listener. The instant he heard the loud squeals from Republican pro-life hawks that his campaign would be DOA if he dared tried to shove former Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge or maverick Senator Joe Lieberman on the ticket, he back pedaled fast. Both are moderates on abortion. And that made them anathema to the hawks.
We’ll never know whether McCain’s brief float of their names as GOP VP possibilities was a trial balloon, a deft feint, or just loose talk. But it did set things up nicely for Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Despite much talk from McCain’s camp and the pro and con pundit chatter touting her as being fresh, young, a reformer, anti-GOP establishment and an ingenious pick, or slamming her as a political school girl novice, and a disastrous pick, the fact is Palin’s on the ticket to assuage the pro-life hawks. But more importantly to fire up the millions of men and women voters who demand that a GOP presidential candidate firmly oppose abortion. That’s the price for their vote.
The polls that show that the abortion issue languishes on the far back burner in the 2008 election badly miss this. Several major polls since 2003 have shown that while the abortion question at times has slid lower on the public’s issues radar scope, it never slipped entirely off it. Americans have been almost evenly divided between those who call themselves pro-choice and pro-life. In the five presidential elections between 1984 and 2000 the majority of voters who said that abortion was a major issue for them backed the GOP candidate. Pro-life leaning voters were more likely to dash to the polls to back the GOP candidate.

A Gallup Poll Values and Belief survey in May measured the effect of pro and anti-abortion sentiment on the presidential race. It found that the pro life voter edge translated out to about a 2 to 3 percent bump up for the GOP presidential candidate.
In a runaway election for either the Democratic or GOP presidential candidate that percent wouldn’t mean much. In a tight down to the wire election that percentage jump could be huge. The 2008 election appears to be just that; a squeaker win for either Obama or McCain. The Gallup Values survey also found one other thing that Team McCain almost certainly picked up on and that’s even when voters say abortion is only a minor concern, or one of many issues, that changes as Election Day gets nearer. It found a measurable jump in those who suddenly said that they do care where a candidate stands on abortion. The big majority of those for whom it matters label themselves pro-life.
Palin is a made-in-heaven choice to rev them up. Even amidst the heavy pot shots and ridicule at her non existent foreign policy and national security resume, the GOP cash tills have started to ring loudly. The Republican National Committee gleefully said that millions poured in within hours after McCain picked Palin.

The dilemma for Democrat’s is how to defuse the pro-life hot box. The obvious counter is to fire up pro choice advocates. They also number in the millions, and an aroused, impassioned plea to them and their march to the polls potentially could give Obama the bump up he needs from the pro choice side. NARAL-Pro Choice America and NOW wasted no time in lambasting McCain and Palin. They called his picking her a cynical ploy and smoking gun proof that he’s a rigid extremist on abortion. The big question though is will the blasts do more to fire up pro choice or pro life men and women voters?
A too bare fisted, down and dirty hit against her for her hard nosed pro-life stance could backfire in another way. Many might see this as tantamount to witness badgering. In criminal court trials, DA’s and defense attorneys always tread carefully with a witness who is a middle-class or working class mother. Beating up on them could stir juror sympathy for them and cost them a case. Palin is not only a tough politician but to some the epitome of the struggling American mother. Millions of struggling working class mothers could identify with her no matter what their views on abortion.
The pro-choice groups, though, had no choice but to quickly go on the attack. Palin has drawn a harder line on the abortion issue than any other presidential ticket candidate in the past two decades and that includes W. Bush. He showed a slight tinge of flexibility by at least saying that he opposed abortion except in instances of rape and incest and when a mother's life is in danger. Palin opposes abortion even on those grounds.
It matters little where one stands on abortion or Palin. Plopping her on the GOP presidential ticket assured that abortion won’t stay on the backburner much longer this election.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back (Middle Passage Press, August 2008).

Obama’s Acceptance Speech Refutes Post Civil Rights Myth

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Even if Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama didn’t utter Martin Luther King Jr.’s name once in his Democratic presidential acceptance speech, the legacy of King and the civil rights movement would hang heavy over Denver’s Invesco Field. Obama’s meticulously scripted decision to break convention tradition and give his acceptance speech in an open air site on the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington dispels the myth that Obama is a post civil rights generation African-American politician.
To his credit Obama never bought into the myth. It would be hard for him to anyway. He has frequently praised King and the civil right movement, and has said that he has read and studied closely King’s writings and speeches. But even if he hadn’t read a word of King’s speeches, Obama is not just the symbolic embodiment of the civil rights struggle, but an embodiment of the still unfinished business of the civil rights movement. That’s with one added caveat and a risk. The caveat is that the civil rights challenges that King faced and that he so eloquently spoke of in his I Have a Dream speech 45 years ago are even more complex forty five years after the March on Washington. The risk is the great temptation to see Obama’s historic candidacy as the end not the continuation of the civil rights battles.
The checklist of problems that King faced and Obama now faces include astronomically high unemployment among young blacks, gaping racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resegregation of neighborhoods and schools, rampant housing discrimination, racial glass ceilings in corporate hiring and promotions, black family instability among the black poor, police abuse, racial profiling, and racially motivated hate crimes.
There are challenges that King didn’t have to deal with or were barely issues a half century ago. One of these is that race problems in America are no longer exclusively a black and white problem. That’s because blacks are no longer America’s top minority. Latinos are. Immigration reform, English Only, and the fight for political empowerment are the new civil rights concerns.
Obama also faces a glaring problem that King had only begun to wrestle with in his last days. That's the plight of the urban black poor. As America unraveled in the 1960s in the anarchy of urban riots, campus takeovers, and anti-war street battles, the civil rights movement and its leaders fell apart, too. Many of them fell victim to their own success and failure. When they broke down the racially restricted doors of corporations, government agencies, and universities, middle class blacks, not the poor, rushed headlong through them. More than four decades later there are now two black Americas. The fat, rich, and comfortable black America of Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson, Bill Cosby, Condoleezza Rice, Denzil Washington and the legions of millionaire black athletes and entertainers, businesspersons and professionals. They have grabbed a big slice of America's pie.
The black America of the poor is fragmented and politically rudderless. Lacking competitive technical skills and professional training, and shunned by many middle-class black leaders, they have been shoved even further to the outer margins of American society. The chronic problems of gang, and drug violence, family breakdown, police abuse, the soaring incarceration rate of young black males, the mounting devastation of HIV and AIDS disease in black communities, abysmally failing inner city public schools have made things even worse for them.
Then there’s the political rise of, and influence of black conservatives, the black evangelicals, and the rancorous internal fights among blacks over gay marriage, gay rights, and abortion have tormented, perplexed, and forced civil rights leaders, who are mostly liberal Democrats to confront their own gender and political biases. They have tried to strike a halting, tenuous balance between their liberalism and the social conservatism of many blacks.
In his drive for the White House Obama has had to walk a tight line between those who demand that he say and do more about civil rights, and those who watch hawk like for any hint that an Obama White House will tilt toward minorities. That would have rendered his campaign DOA on arrival.
Obama’s decision to peg his acceptance speech to the anniversary of the March on Washington is not mere showy campaign symbolism. It stands as a fitting tribute to the civil rights movement that challenged the nation to make King’s dream of justice and equality a reality. Obama faced that challenge as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, during his stints in the Illinois legislature and in the Senate. He’ll face that same challenge in the White House. And that can hardly be called post civil rights.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back (Middle Passage Press, August 2008).

Whites Fading Fast But Blacks Could Fade Too

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


There were two eye catching things buried in the new Census Bureau projection that America will no longer be a white man’s country in 2042. One is that blacks also will fade in numbers or at least their numbers won’t get much bigger. The other is that the number of Hispanics will soar. They will make up about thirty percent of the country’s population then. That means that not only will America not be a white majority country, it will almost certainly be a bi-lingual nation. In many cities Spanish will as likely be heard on the streets, in schools and workplaces as English. The seismic demographic revolution is already happening in many urban neighborhoods. There been huge growth in Latino owned businesses, media ownership, and employment dominance in retail and manufacturing industries. In years to come the economic shake-up will be colossal in entire areas of the country.

The biggest shake-up will be in politics. That’s the one place that can cause the greatest potential for angst for blacks.

In 2000, the 23 million blacks eligible to vote dwarfed the 13 million eligible Latino voters, even though Latinos had by then virtually reached parity with blacks in the population. More than one-third of the Latino population was less than 18 years old. Forty percent of Latinos who were of eligible voting age were non-citizens. Only 5 percent of blacks that were of voting age were non-citizens.

Those numbers have radically changed. Since the 2000 election the number of Latinos of voting age and who are citizens has jumped. Beyond just eligibility, there are now an estimated 15 million Latino registered voters. That compares more favorably with the 15 million black voters in the 2004 election.

The surge in registered voters is not the only shift that has changed ethnic politics in America. In past elections, the majority of the Latino vote was concentrated in California, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. In the 2006 national elections, helped by the sharp increase in the number of legal and illegal immigrants in the Midwest and Northeastern states, the Latino vote will have national impact.

In the next couple of months, presumptive presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain will dump millions into Spanish language ads, pitches, and pleas for votes on Spanish language stations. When, not if, Democrats and Republicans cut an immigration reform deal, one of its features almost certainly will include some form of legalization plan that within a few years will turn thousands more Latino immigrants into vote-casting American citizens. Democrats and Republicans will pour even more time, money, and personnel into courting Latino voters. The potential political gain from a massive outreach effort to Latinos is far greater than putting the same resources into courting black voters.

It's sound political reasoning. That effort worked for Republicans in 2004, when Bush got nearly 40 percent of the Latino vote. The Democrats, meanwhile, maintain a solid lock on the black vote. In every election since 1964, blacks have given more than 80 to 90 percent of their votes to the Democrats. They will give even more of their vote to Obama this election.
With the tantalizing prospect of a small but nonetheless important segment of newly enfranchised Latino voters voting Republican, there's no political incentive for Republicans to try to do more to get the black vote. That even includes its relentless pursuit of the black evangelicals. Hispanic evangelical churches have an estimated 20 million members and those numbers are growing yearly. According to a survey by the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life project, the majority of Latino evangelicals are conservative, pro-family, anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. Latino evangelicals are GOP-friendly and they have political clout. They got several mainstream evangelical groups to back the Senate compromise immigration reform bill. And while the National Association of Evangelicals stopped short of backing the Senate bill, it still urged "humane" immigration reform.

The leap in Latino voting strength and the likely prospect that Democrats and Republicans can bump up the number of voters from the rising number of legal and illegal immigrants comes at a bad time for black politicians. Though the number of black elected officials has held steady in state offices and in Congress, their spectacular growth of prior years has flattened out. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reported after the 2004 elections only a marginal increase in the number of black elected officials. And that was mostly in a handful of Deep South states and Illinois.

There is some evidence that mainstream Democrats are already de-emphasizing traditional black issues. Obama and McCain have been virtually mute on miserably failing inner city schools, soaring black unemployment, prison incarceration, and the HIV/AIDS crisis that has torn black communities.
The new population reality is that immigration, both legal and illegal, has drastically changed Americas' ethnic and political landscape. Whites may be fading fast as the majority the great fear is that blacks could fade just as fast in numbers and more importantly political clout too.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

McCain and Obama Make Reparations a Campaign Taboo

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain don’t agree on much. But there’s one thing that they not only agree on, but have made a campaign taboo, and that’s reparations. Obama flatly opposes it, and has repeated his opposition to it every time he’s asked the question about compensation for slavery. McCain doesn’t even bother taking a public position on reparations. In fact, it’s such a foregone conclusion that he would oppose it no one has even bothered to ask him about it on the campaign trail.

The candidates sprint from the issue like the plague for reasons that make good political sense. They both read the opinion polls. A CNN/USA Today poll taken after blacks filed two well-publicized reparations lawsuits in 2002 found that seventy-five percent of Americans said that corporations should not pay reparations for slavery, and a whopping ninety percent said the government should not pay reparations. Informal public opinion surveys show that whites, non-blacks, and many blacks still think that reparations is a bad idea. National Urban League officials won’t even discuss reparations. For them the issue is simply too racially charged and polarizing. The NAACP doesn’t oppose reparations, but it’s an issue that NAACP officials rarely broach in any of their public pronouncements. The few times it comes up they give the politically safe answer that Obama gave when asked about it and that’s that the government should do more to create jobs and educational opportunities for the black poor.

Still, reparations advocates have grabbed at every argument in the book to dent the wall of public resistance to reparations. They insist that black billionaires, corporate presidents, superstar athletes and entertainers won’t et a dime of reparations money, that it will go to programs to aid the black poor, that it won’t guilt trip all whites, and that Japanese-Americans and Holocaust survivors have gotten reparations for the atrocities against them. These arguments fall on deaf ears. The reparations movement just can’t remove the public imprint that it is a movement exclusively of, by, and for blacks.

Despite countless speeches pleading for racial brotherhood and interracial cooperation by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders, that same tag was imprinted on the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. It took national shock and revulsion over Southern mobs beating, maiming, and killing white civil rights workers, and the massive presence of thousands of white students in Southern backwater towns before the civil rights movement gained widespread public and especially political acceptance as an authentic movement to change laws and public policy that would benefit labor, women, minorities, and even whites.



The reparations movement does not possess the inherent racial egalitarianism of the civil rights movement. It is ensnared by its racial isolationism. The focus is solely to compensate the descendants of black slaves for the wrong of slavery, and whipsaw whites for present-day racism. Most whites almost certainly applaud the fight to improve failing inner city public schools, health care, provide better housing and health care, and to battle drugs and the near pandemic scourge HIV/AIDS affliction among blacks. But they also believe that these are social ills that slam other minorities, the poor, and marginally employed working class whites nearly as hard. Reparations advocates make no mention of this.

As a consequence, reparations comes off as a hustle and scam to most whites that will flush their hard earned tax dollars down a black hole with nothing in return for them. In a time of soaring budget deficits, corporate meltdowns, the stock downslide, and the looming peril of massive layoffs that batter middle-class workers, reparations seems more than ever a frivolous issue that is politically divisive and racially polarizing.

That’s the last thing Obama needs during the campaign. He’s walking on the most fragile racial egg shells, and even the faintest hint that he has made race an issue in his campaign would do mortal damage to his election chances. He got a frightening glimpse of that when McCain jumped all over him for his off hand comment that he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on dollar bills. Unfortunately, any mention of reparations instantly smacks of race.

Despite the colossal resistance to reparations, Obama has made, and McCain if he so chose, could make the argument that it’s in the interest of government and business to pump more funds into specific projects such as AIDS/HIV education and prevention, remedial education, job skills and training, drug and alcohol counseling and rehabilitation, computer access and literacy training programs. They will boost the black poor, not gut public revenues. This will not finger all whites as culpable for slavery.

Obama won’t do that, and McCain can’t do that. And even though the reparations question will from time to time continue to crop up, count on the candidates to keep it a campaign taboo.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

McCain and Obama Must Break Their Silence on AIDS Crisis in Black Communities

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A clearly befuddled and flustered presidential contender John McCain stumbled almost laughingly over a question from an audience member during a townhall talk in Iowa in March 2007. The questioner asked what he’d do to combat the AIDS plague. McCain after several stumbles nervously said that he didn’t know enough about the problem and then tossed the ball to his advisors. He said he was confident that they’d come up with some solutions.
The media had a mild field day poking fun at McCains’ AIDS bumble, but the issue is hardly the stuff of a bad comedy routine. A few months after McCain’s wobble, Obama and wife, Michelle, in a widely shown photo were shown getting their AIDS test. Obama followed this with a public pledge to formulate a national AIDS strategy on AIDS, ramp up government spending on testing, education, and treatment, and expand access to generic drugs in Africa and other poor nations.
This was admirable but unfortunately it was a year ago. He hasn’t publicly addressed the issue since. During the campaign, he and McCain have given countless speeches, made statements, issued reports and position papers on the terrorism fight, the Iraq War, the Iran Missile threat, immigration, the housing and banking crisis, a tanking economy, and affordable health care. These are crucial problems and millions of Americans demand that both candidates tell exactly what they’re going to do about them in the White House. But as devastating as these problems are to many families, they do not pile up bodies and wreak catastrophic havoc on entire communities, mostly poor black communities. The AIDS/HIV plague does.

The Black AIDS Institute in a recent report backed up by statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sounded a loud alarm that the number of African-Americans afflicted with the disease is now so high that blacks would rank sixteenth among the nations whose citizens are afflicted with the disease. Blacks make up nearly half of all new AIDS cases in the United States. That figure has remained virtually unchanged for the past few years.

The AIDS plague has long been the single biggest health issue that has screamed for massive action by the government and health agencies in poor black communities. This is all the more reason for Obama and McCain to speak out on the crisis and then spell out just what they will do about it. So far they haven’t done that during the campaign. In a campaign position paper Obama has said he will push for more funds for AIDS treatment, education and testing. But much of his emphasis has been on African and other nations. In 2006 Obama did publicly lambast government negligence in the AIDS battle. But the government was the South African government for it’s disgraceful head in the sand attitude toward the mounting crisis in that country.

Bush actually went further and modestly delivered on his promise to increase funds for treatment and education programs and push for greater access of drugs in Africa. The Black AIDS Institute notes that since then the number of AIDS cases have dropped in some African countries. Even more embarrassing, more African-Americans are afflicted with AIDS than persons in Botswana, Ethiopia, Haiti, Rwanda and Vietnam. These are among the poorest countries on the planet and have been wracked by war, civil war, genocide atrocities, and chronic political unrest. Yet they have managed to reduce the numbers of their AIDS afflicted while the number of African-Americans with AIDS continues to rise.
Meanwhile, McCain hasn’t done any more homework on the AIDS crisis since his stumble in Iowa more than a year ago. HIV/AIDS is not even mentioned as an item in the detailed health care plan on his official website.

But even if McCain had boned up on the AIDS crisis and laid out a specific plan to confront the crisis, and Obama had fleshed out more details about confronting the crisis in African-American communities, it’s still no substitute for them speaking out on the campaign stump about the crisis and pushing and proding government, health agencies and private donors to do more to combat the AIDS plague.

Obama or McCain will occupy the White House in 2009 and he will be there in 2010. That’s the target year that the U.S. along with other international agencies have set to prevent seven million more HIV infections. The liklihood is good they’ll meet the target goal. The Bush Administration did play a role in helping some of the poorest of the poor nations dramatically turn the corner in combatting AIDS. But it happened because Bush reacted to the withering fire he got for not speaking out and doing something to help these nations. Presidential candidates Obama and McCain can and should do no less. They should break their silence now.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Connerly’s Anti Affirmative Action Measure Could be a Win-Win for McCain

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In 1998 Republican Presidential contender John McCain drew howls from conservatives when he opposed Senator Mitch McConnell’s federal transportation bill that would have replaced race- and gender-contracting set-asides with ones designed to help small businesses no matter the race or gender of the owner. But it was a Senate vote, and McCain’s vote passed way under the media and public’s radar scope. Most importantly for McCain, it was not a presidential election year. So McCain didn’t really gain or lose a whole lot by voting to keep racial preferences in place, at least at the federal level.
A decade later things are different, much different. McCain has deftly shifted gears and urges a “yes” vote on Ward Connerly’s anti-affirmative action initiative on the Arizona ballot in November. McCain bets that this time pummeling affirmative action will do far more good than bad for his campaign. It’s a smart bet. A big opponent of Connerly’s barnstorming state campaigns to dump affirmative action, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary candidly admits that the only way to beat back these initiatives is to keep them off ballots. That didn’t happen in California in 1996, in Washington in 1998 and in Michigan in 2006.
The anti-affirmative action initiatives won by solid even crushing margins in all three states. In the process, they galvanized public opinion, stirred subtle white resentment even anger against anything that smacked of racial preferences, and sent a big message that pushing affirmative action was a politically losing proposition. Michigan proved that. The two GOP candidates for governor and the Senate in the state opposed Connerly’s initiative. Both lost. But even more important the measure did not stir a mad dash by blacks, women, and Latinos to the barricades in Washington and Michigan to defeat the initiative. The lesson from the GOP candidate’s defeat and the relatively mild backlash to the initiative wasn’t lost on McCain.
At one point Connerly talked about taking his anti-affirmative action initiative fight to more than a dozen states. That hasn’t happened. But the number of states where Connerly dumped the initiative on the ballot isn’t important. What is important is the timing for placing the initiative on a state ballot and the states chosen to put it. Three states were picked for November. Nebraska is one. It’s a solid Red state, and almost certainly the initiative will win big there. election year or not. The other two states, Colorado and Arizona, are much more important. Democrats think that Colorado could for the first time in recent presidential bouts be in play for Obama. They think the same thing about McCain’s home state of Arizona. That’s mostly due to the big jump in the number of Hispanic and younger voters in these states. The Connerly initiative is just the thing to counter that by creating a mini wedge issue in both states that energizes conservatives too rush the polls to back the initiative and stick around long enough to back McCain.
That’s one political plus, but it’s not the only one. McCain can have it both ways on the issue. He can insist that he still strongly backs equal opportunity and just as strongly opposes discrimination. He can then make the standard anti-affirmative action pitch that he backs the Connerly initiative precisely because it strikes a blow against discrimination, namely racial preferences. And after all, isn’t everyone, and that even includes more than a few blacks, Latinos and especially Asians, against anything that smacks of racial unfairness?
There’s more still. Democratic rival Barack Obama appears to agree with McCain on this point. At first glance that seems a wild stretch. Connerly says Obama cut radio ads in 2006 hammering his Michigan anti-affirmative action initiative, and unabashedly saying that if it passed it would hurt women and minorities in getting jobs and in education. And he will oppose Connerly’s initiatives. But just as McCain wobbled in 1998 in opposing McConnell’s anti-affirmative action bill when it wasn’t a presidential election year. 2006 wasn’t a presidential election year either when Obama passionately defended affirmative action. 2008 is. He’s slightly wobbling on affirmative actions just as McCain did.
He has repositioned himself as a centrist Democrat and now flatly says he’s against quotas. That’s an easy call, since courts have repeatedly slapped down any affirmative action programs that mandate specific numbers of women or minorities be hired or admitted to colleges. But Obama wobbled even more when he says that the affirmative action measures should not be applied without taking into individual needs, and they should be applied to poor whites. The caution and even shading on how he speaks of affirmative action is a far cry from the ringing endorsement he gave to affirmative action for women and minorities.
It’s no real surprise. McCain aims to make Connerly’s initiative a political win-win for him. Obama aims to make sure that it’s not a total lose-lose for him.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).