Photograph by Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recorded a version of this song that is at once beautiful, sad, funny, and heartbreaking all at the same time. Today’s New York Times story about Sen. Barack Obama’s struggle with the issue of race in his campaign to become the Democratic Party nominee for president makes me feel all of those things.
Mr. Obama has largely succeeded in muting the issue of race in this campaign. He has succeeded in making the campaign not about his race, even as he has benefited from race (the whole ‘a credit to his race’ thing). The Clintons, Bill especially, recognized what was happening and quickly ended their subtle attempts to remind people that Mr. Obama is black. They, instead, took up a megaphone and blared it to anyone who would listen.
Photographs by Ozier Mohammed/The New York Times.
They earlier made the false claim to the New Yorker Magazine that Latinos don’t vote for blacks. When Sen. Obama won in Iowa, they became more daring and explicit in New Hampshire before going overboard in South Carolina.
Former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, (D-N.J.), was fond of saying (and I forget who he’s quoting here) that race is America’s original sin.
Nowhere is it more explicit than in this race. Mr. Obama’s campaign, as great as it has been, has had some significant failures. The deficits in his support now are testaments to those failures.
His seeming inability to craft a message that could appeal to lunch bucket, blue collar white voters is telling. It is my belief that Mr. Obama’s message benefits this constituency far more than the people who have been flocking to his campaign so far. He needs to find the language to talk to them.
As for Latinos, it is right that Sen. Obama has to work to earn their votes, just as he had to work (with no small amount of help from Bill and Hillary Clinton) to win over African-Americans. Latinos are diverse and not one single message will reach them. Again, reaching them is not an insurmountable challenge.
This just means Mr. Obama and his staff have to work harder to earn their votes. That is part of the promise of Mr. Obama’s movement. The solutions to our nation’s problems have to be deep and lasting. The blood, sweat and tears in this effort will only make sure both the achievements and the progressive coalition more enduring.
This is not to exclude Sen. Hillary Clinton. First, let me say that any other year I would be banging the drum hard supporting her. It is just a fluke that she is running at a time when her opponent is this remarkable man. She has taken some unfortunate steps in this campaign which she’ll ultimately have to atone for.
What must not happen is troglodyte John McCain winning the presidency.
That said, I will support Sen. Clinton if she wins the nomination. She will have the task of crafting the same progressive coalition, which I hope she is working on now, to carry her to the presidency.
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