Page 3
November 2008
The AC Phoenix
The Hutchinson Report: How Obama Took Race Off
The Table
By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson
In a speech on Feb. 10, 2007 on
the steps of the Old Capital Building in
Springfield, Illinois, then first-term U.S.
Senator Barack Obama quashed months
of doubts, speculation and rumors over
whether he was running for president. He
said he was, and that touched off obses
sive chatter over whether race would ulti
mately derail Obama.
Obama made sure it didn't. In his 25-
minute presidential candidacy announce
ment, he used the word "race" exactly
one time. And he did not use it as a direct
racial reference. He used it to make the
point that people could come together
across all lines for change. The rest of the
speech touched on ending the war, af
fordable health care, economic uplift,
energy independence. These became the
stock themes of his stump speeches.
Obama did his political homework well.
He correctly gauged that many white
Americans still harbor racial biases and
views about African-Americans. Polls
during the campaign showed that many
whites, even those who passionately
backed him, still clung tightly to the
some of the old shop-worn negative
stereotypes about blacks.
Yet, when it came to judging the worth of
a candidate, race is only one'often fuzzy
factor that voters considered in making a
vote decision. The other compelling fac
tors are their political loyalties, educa
tion, income, gender, sense of economic
well-being or hardship, and good feeling
or foreboding about the future and the
direction of the country. There are still
more compelling factors, such as a voter's
personal convictions, religious beliefs and
visceral likes and dislikes. In some ways,
race has even begun
to slip in relevance
and importance to
big segments of
voters.
In the last two dec
ades, significant
numbers of whites
have voted for black
candidates in senate,
congressional, state
legislative, guberna
torial, mayoral and
city council races,
even voting for
them when their opponents were white.
Obama was elected to the Illinois house.
Senate and the U.S. Senate with heavy
white support.
Obama did more political homework and
looked at what worked and didn't work for
previous Democratic presidential contend
ers A1 Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. They
had three glaring liabilities. They were
widely perceived as mostly protest candi
dates. They appealed almost exclusively
to black voters. And they were old line
civil rights leaders. This stirred fear,
even hostility, among many whites. If
Obama had given even the slightest hint
of a racial tilt in his campaign, his candi
dacy would have been dead at the start
ing gate. Obama prepped the political
ground so well that he convinced a ma-
iority that his campaign was solely about
the issues that mattered to the broadest
numbers of Americans.
That paid huge
dividends later
when he faced the
potential campaign
killing crisis over
his tie with his for
mer pastor, Rev.
Jeremiah Wright.
His anguished,
bare-the-soul
speech, positing
that Wright did not
In his 25-minute presidential candidacy
announcement, Barack Obama used the word
"race” exactly one time. (AP)
speak for him and
that he was ap
palled to hear
Wright’s rants at
the National Press
Club, was a tour de force. His supporters
and even detractors accepted his expla
nation and refused to believe that he and
Wright could have anything in common.
The media, which could have dug deep
and probed into Obama's 20-year con
nection to Wright and inflicted a big
wound on his campaign, bought his ex
planation and dropped the matter.
There was also much talk in and out of
John McCain's campaign and Republican
circles about snatching at Obama's racial
jugular and pounding him on his Wright
connection. Other than a mild, tepid,
half-hearted occasional mention of
Wright, McCain largely steered clear of
the controversy and the issue. When VP
running mate Sarah Palin took a shot at
Wright-Obama, McCain scotched any
effort to beat up on the issue again.
That, of course, didn't stop the GOP
independent groups from hammering
away with their last gasp saturation ads
trying to smear Obama with Wright.
But the smear didn't take, and there was
no evidence that McCain or the Repub
lican National Committee winked and
nodded at the cheap shot attacks. Not
that it would have mattered; the attacks
changed absolutely nothing. If anything,
they probably angered many voters and
made them even quicken their steps to
the polls to back Obama.
There was incessant talk that the so-
called Bradley Effect, the penchant for
whites to lie to pollsters about their true
racial feelings and vote against a black
candidate, would damage Obama. But
he had made race such a non-issue, that
the talk spun to a reverse Bradley Effect
in which some whites would vote for
him because he was black. This was
pure speculation, but even floating that
notion told much about how race had
been stood on its head.
This was final testament to the solid job
Team Obama did in insuring that race
wouldn’t and couldn't hurt the campaign
or his presidency in the cradle. They'll
do everything they can to make sure it
stays that way.
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