A friend sent me an e-mail yesterday that I’m only seeing just now. She said:
[A]s you’ll be reading this on primary day tomorrow, I wonder why so little coverage of Obama’s big lead in Oregon — considering it is a much whiter state that W. Virginia or some of the other states Hillary has done well in. Oregon has less than a 2% black population, but Obama is leading big. Could it be some white people actually will vote for him? Even working class ones from small states?
Good question. I don’t pretend to know the answer. I know a lot has been said about Appalachia and the poor whites of Scots-Irish stock who just won’t cotton to voting for a black candidate.
In the general election, when the debate is properly joined, I would like to see Sen. Barack Obama test this out. I want to see him persuade these voters that he’s a much better alternative to what the Republicans are offering.
In an interesting article in The New Republic, John B. Judis examined how race is used in elections and how it is likely to play in this election. History guarantees that Republicans will appeal to race in every way possible during the election. The lesson, he said, is for Obama not to become his own walking Willie Horton advertisement.
In The Big Race: Obama and the psychology of the color barrier, John B. Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic who has authored several interesting pieces on the contests between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, argues that Obama’s success in the general election may depend on what terms the debate is framed. Obama could hit electoral jackpot if he is able to change the subject to the Iraq war and the moribund state of the American economy, Judis wrote. He continues near the end:
Some of these have to do with abilities. A 1995 study found that voters believe black politicians “lack competence on major issues.” Other stereotypes relate to ideology.
Several studies have shown that if subjects compare a black and white candidate with roughly equal political positions, they will nevertheless see the black candidate as more liberal. Obama is already vulnerable to charges of inexperience, and, after Wright surfaced, he fell prey to an ideological stereotype as well. Whereas he benefited in the initial primaries and caucuses from being seen as middleof-the-road or even conservative, his strongest support has recently come from more liberal voters. In Pennsylvania, he defeated Clinton among voters who classified themselves as “very liberal” by 55 to 45 percent, but he lost “somewhat conservative” voters by 53 to 47 percent and moderates by 60 to 40 percent. In a national Pew poll, Obama’s support among “very liberal” voters jumped seven points between January and May, while his support among “moderates” dropped by two points. Since Obama’s actual policies are, on the whole, no more liberal than Clinton’s (his health care plan, for instance, is inarguably more conservative), these trends strongly suggest that some voters are stereotyping him because of his race.
If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he should be able to inherit the white women who backed Hillary Clinton. As political psychologists have shown, these voters should be largely amenable to his candidacy. He should also continue to enjoy an advantage among white professionals. But Obama is likely to continue having trouble with white working-class voters in the Midwest–voters who tend to score high on racial resentment and implicit association tests and who, arguably, decided the 2004 election with their votes in Ohio. Obama will also have trouble with Latinos and Asians, groups that score high on both indexes, and that can be important in states like California. It’s not hard to quantify Obama’s problem: If 9 to 12 percent of Democratic primary voters in swing states have been reluctant to support him because he is black, one can assume that, in the general election, 15 to 20 percent of Democrats or Democratic-leaning Independents may not support him for the same reason.
Can Obama surmount these obstacles? If the strong version of Mendelberg’s thesis is correct, then the very fact that Obama is African American will undercut any appeals to racial fears or resentments. And, if elections were held in the manner of the Iowa caucus, where voters publicly debate their positions and where Obama won substantial white workingclass support, then Mendelberg’s stronger thesis might well prove true. But elections are held in the privacy of a voting booth, where a voter can give voice to fears and resentments without danger of being heard. Obama may be able to sway some white voters to his side by drawing attention to race, but probably not enough to fully compensate for the disadvantage he faces.
If addressing racial resentments directly is not the answer, what is? As Mendelberg also suggests, it’s changing the subject–doing what the Republicans of the 1870s and the Democrats of the 1990s did. This year, that means diverting voters’ attention from the politics of race to the plight of the economy and the continuing quagmire in Iraq.
In the end, the lesson of political psychology for Democrats is not to avoid nominating black candidates. It is simply to understand that America’s racial history continues to influence the calculations of voters–sometimes near the forefronts of their minds, sometimes in the deep recesses of their unconscious. For liberals, acknowledging these obstacles is the first step to blunting them. If Obama can focus the election on the economy and Iraq, he could very well win in spite of the angry words of Reverend Wright and 200 years of both old- fashioned racism and newfangled racial resentment. If he can’t, he is likely to suffer the same fate as Michael Dukakis–and this time it won’t take a Willie Horton commercial.
I have been vacillating between being optimistic and not so far this year. I will settle for Obama coming out alive, his family and integrity intact, whether he wins the election or not.
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