Obama’s Liberal Record Might be a Bigger Hurdle Than His Race
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Posted: Feb 06, 2007
Editor’s Note: While the political conversation is fixated on Barack Obama’s race, his liberal record is the first hurdle he has to cross in the Southern and border states writes New America Media Associate Editor Earl Ofari Hutchinson. Hutchinson is a political analyst and social issues commentator, and the author of The Emerging Black GOP Majority (Middle Passage Press, September 2006).
Whenever Barack Obama’s name comes up as a Democratic frontrunner for the presidency, the debate centers on whether the country is ready for a black president. But while race is a big X factor in Obama’s bid for the top spot, it’s hardly the only factor. The other crucial factor is his record and views on the issues and how they will play to voting blocs in the South as well as in Western states like Montana and Colorado, and the Border states that make up the northern tier of the South – Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland etc. The South alone has 144 electoral votes. The Border states and their neighbors hold 60 to 70 more electoral votes. They have been the absolute make or break states for presidential hopefuls since 1972.
When Obama’s record and views are separated from the mythmaking and rock star rapture he’s wrapped in, the problem of his electability looms large. Obama got a perfect 100 rating from the NAACP, National Organization for Women, National Education Association, the Children’s Defense Fund, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, the Illinois Environmental Council (during his stint in the Illinois legislature) and got a huge plus rating from the ACLU. These are America’s top liberal advocacy groups, and they are some of his most ardent cheerleaders.
Meanwhile, Obama bombed in the ratings he got from the conservative National Taxpayers Union, National Right to Life, the Gun Owners of America, the NRA, the Federation for Immigration Reform and the American Conservative Union. These are some of the nation’s top conservative advocacy groups, and they reflect the interests and views of millions of voters on immigration, spending, guns, abortion and military prowess. These voters will scrutinize his record and his views with a laser eye.
They are also the voters who gave George W. Bush and Republican presidents George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon their decisive margin of victory over their Democrat opponents. They are not, as the myth goes, mostly beer-guzzling, gun-toting, Confederate flag-waving rednecks. They are middle to upper income families who have a college degree or education and live in suburban neighborhoods. In surveys, fewer then one in five Americans labels himself as liberal.
In the South, the number of those that call themselves conservative soars to 70 percent. And they have been rock solid Republican for nearly four decades. Bill Clinton did not alter the political thinking or equation in the South. George H. W. Bush in 1992, and Republican challenger Bob Dole in 1996, got fewer white male votes than Reagan and Nixon. But those votes didn’t go to Clinton. Insurgent presidential candidate Ross Perot, with his anti-government assault in 1992 and 1996, grabbed a big chunk of them. That helped pry four Southern states out of the Republican column, and put them in Clinton’s win column. Even then, Clinton bagged only one-third of the Southern white vote. Eight years of Clinton’s centrist political tilt did not make the South more Democratic Party friendly. Pat Buchanan, not George W. Bush, proved that in the 2000 presidential campaign. His freewheeling, hard right rants appealed to many white male voters when he ran as an independent candidate in 2000.
Republican presidential contender Barry Goldwater in 1964 set the ugly tone for how campaigns have been waged, or more particularly, the bash and trash of Democrats with code words and wedge issues since the 1960s. Republicans have artfully stoked voter rage with code words and slogans that tap the gender and racial fears of millions of voters. Republicans have also played hard on the anger, frustration, and hatred that many American voters harbor toward government.
Reagan masterfully crafted the “get government off your back” line into a solid Republican selling point. He targeted the remnants of the Great Society programs. He crippled funding and further eroded public enthusiasm for social spending. Conservatives took the cue and painted the government as pro-higher taxes, pro-bureaucracy, pro-immigrant and especially pro-welfare and pro-rights of criminals. The Republicans’ repeated smear of the Democrats as tax and spend, liberal, big government proponents has struck and will continue to strike a chord with many.
Then Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s awkward, off-the cuff quip in the early days of the 2004 Democratic presidential primary that the Democrats must grab a bigger share of the “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks” brought howls of protest, and charges that Dean was a closet bigot. But Dean got it right. The white male vote in the South puts any Democrat in a deep hole before the first ballot is punched. Obama’s moderate to liberal views and voting record won’t change that. And that doesn’t even count the X factor of race.
