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Skin Deep (Just how strong is black affection for the Clintons?)
TNR ^ | Feb. 13, 2008 | by Michael Crowley

Posted on 01/25/2008 9:16:55 PM PST by jdm

When Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign first began, there was reason to think she would be hard to beat in a primary. Despite her Iraq vulnerability and assorted baggage, she seemed to have an impenetrable bulwark in the black vote. "Bill Clinton's popularity with blacks has been presumed to carry over to her and help her win the important South Carolina primary ... and other similar Southern primaries," explained Newsweek in November 2006. Newsweek wisely noted that the candidacy of Barack Obama could change that presumption. But, even after Obama joined the race, some Clinton advisers didn't fret. Last January, one party strategist told Politico that "this is all about loyalty and the strength of relationships that the Clintons have engendered over the years. It's going to be hard to look them in the face and say, 'I can't support you.'"

At first, that seemed true. A CNN poll in October showed Hillary leading Obama among blacks nationally by a comfortable 57-31 margin. But, by mid- January, those same numbers had swung a stunning 52 points, leaving Obama with a 59-31 advantage.

For the Clintonites, this turnabout has been a nasty surprise. One black Democratic operative told me the Hillary campaign did not distribute talking points on her civil rights record until this month. "They didn't think it was going to be an issue," according to the operative.

What happened? In part, Iowa dispelled the assumption that racism made Obama unelectable. The Clinton campaign also alienated some blacks by striking allegedly racially charged chords like Obama's cocaine use. But a look back at the Clinton years, and at Hillary's own public persona, suggests that the black firewall may have been overstated from the start.

Back in 1992, the Clintons were decidedly not heroes to black America. Bill ran on a platform of welfare reform. He was tough on crime, and some felt he gratuitously supported the execution of the brain-damaged African American killer Ricky Ray Rector on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. When Clinton scolded the obscure rapper Sister Souljah at a meeting of Jesse Jackson Sr.'s Rainbow Coalition, Jackson called it a "Machiavellian" gambit for white votes. That fall, Clinton carried 82 percent of the black vote--a low sum compared to other Democratic nominees. (In 1988, for instance, Mike Dukakis carried 89 percent of the black electorate.)

Once in the White House, the Clintons continued to irritate African Americans. In 1993, they dumped their friend and Justice Department nominee Lani Guinier because of her ideas about racial reapportionment. By 1995, Jackson was complaining that Clinton had ignored civil rights issues and hinted at a primary challenge or independent presidential run. A major test came in 1995, when a Supreme Court ruling imperiled federal affirmative action programs. Under pressure from ascendant Republicans and his pollster Dick Morris, Clinton wavered, but ultimately he settled on his famous "mend it, don't end it" formulation.

But soon, the Clintons were clashing with black leaders again. In July 1996, Bill signed a tough welfare-reform bill crafted by the Gingrich Congress. Behind the scenes, Hillary supported his decision--a stance that ruptured her friendship with her one-time mentor, Children's Defense Fund chairwoman Marion Wright Edelman, who called signing the bill "a great moral and practical wrong. " That fall, Clinton was reelected with another deflated 84 percent of the black vote.

It wasn't until the Lewinsky scandal that Clinton won over skeptics. Black voters appeared to sympathize with him as the target of a rigged right-wing prosecution and, moreover, feared a conservative power play that might threaten their political interests. On the House floor, Clinton's African American lawyer, Cheryl Mills, even described impeachment as a threat to "civil rights."

At the height of impeachment, in a now-infamous New Yorker essay, Toni Morrison declared Bill "the first black president," saying that he "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working- class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas." He evinced his egalitarianism streak every time he rode around in a golf cart with Vernon Jordan or BET founder Bob Johnson. He even sought spiritual counseling from his old nemesis, Jesse Jackson. It mattered little that, on policy, Clinton still left many black elected leaders cold. As Al Sharpton put it, "We must show mercy on him that he didn't show on us in the welfare bill and calling for the death penalty."

The outpouring for Bill seamlessly transferred to Hillary. In a 2005 focus group conducted by pollster Mark Mellman, eight of ten African American women named Hillary as their all-time political hero. But, in fact, black voters may have had little real sense of Hillary. "Nationally, most of what's known about Hillary Clinton [among blacks] is that she was Bill Clinton's first lady," says David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "But it's not like African Americans had any first-hand experience with her."

And the sudden, mass defection to Obama suggests that Hillary's black support may not have been so intense after all. Hillary, of course, doesn't posses any of the cultural signifiers that Morrison touted. When Hillary spoke from the pulpit at an Alabama black church last spring, for instance, she drew ridicule for affecting a clumsy Southern accent. "She has no black characteristics whatsoever. She's an uptight white wonk" raised in a lily-white Chicago suburb, says one neutral pollster tracking the race question. To connect with black voters, she reaches back three decades to recount her internship under Marion Wright Edelman.

Without Bill Clinton's cultural ties, her identity rests more on Bill Clinton's record. And that's where she begins to run into trouble. Even Clinton administration veterans like Christopher Edley, who advised the president on race, aren't so sure that his old boss's record can be counted as an overwhelming success. "There should be" a "reconsideration" of Clinton's race legacy, Edley says. While praising Clinton as "stunningly effective" on affirmative action and federal appointments, he adds that, "on several fronts, the marks should be low," including crime legislation, education reform, Rwanda, and AIDS in Africa. Similarly, Harvard Law School professor (and occasional TNR contributor--see "The TNR Primary") Randall Kennedy calls the impeachment outpouring "puzzling." Kennedy, who is African American, has also written that Clinton favored the white middle class while offering blacks "chastising lectures that legitimated the essentially conservative notion that the predicament of the poor results primarily from their own conduct."

It wouldn't be too hard for Hillary Clinton to argue past these criticisms. Rising black incomes and Bill's pivotal defense of affirmative action would be strong hands to play. Yet she rarely does so, even in outlets like BET, apparently for fear of leaning too hard on Bill's record. "Senator Clinton is running on her own record," says campaign spokeswoman Traci Blunt.

With black voters turning away from her, Clinton has found a new firewall: Latino voters, whose reputed tensions with African Americans will lead them, some Clintonites believe, to reflexively oppose Obama. Indeed, the black embrace of Obama poses a threat if it makes him appear to be the "black candidate," perhaps driving away some white voters, too. If that happens, Hillary, in a twist few could have predicted, might win the nomination much as her husband first won the presidency--using the black electorate as a foil.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: africanamericans; blackvote; clintonhatesblacks; clintons; race; racewar; skindeep

1 posted on 01/25/2008 9:16:58 PM PST by jdm
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To: doug from upland

ping.


2 posted on 01/25/2008 9:17:12 PM PST by jdm (A Hunter Thompson ticket would be suicide.)
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To: jdm

I don’t know how strong black affection for the Clintons is but it appears the Clintons are not ready for a black man to be President.


3 posted on 01/25/2008 9:23:44 PM PST by Texas Eagle (Could pacifists exist if there weren't people brave enough to go to war for their right to exist?)
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To: jdm
Sounds like someone is trying to trade the plantation for a Commune.
4 posted on 01/25/2008 9:24:50 PM PST by OKIEDOC (Kalifornia, a red state wannabe. I don't take Ex Lax I just read the New York Times.)
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To: jdm
Skin Deep (Just how strong is black affection for the Clintons?)

I'm black and I hate strongly dislike them.

5 posted on 01/25/2008 9:27:27 PM PST by South40 (Amnesty is a slap in the face to the USBP!)
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To: jdm
Hmm/Ewww...the Sink Emperor(ess), has no clothes....she's threadbare (sorry, for the disgusting mental imagine :)
6 posted on 01/25/2008 9:31:42 PM PST by skinkinthegrass (just b/c your paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you. :^( FRed was LMSM roadkill)
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To: jdm

From an ABC interview with Louis Farrakhan:

BASHIR: Hillary Clinton was, her husband, Bill Clinton, was described as a black president. What does that make her?

FARRAKHAN: Really, not much. Although black people looked at Bill Clinton as a black president, he did less for black people than other presidents. We lost the safety net under his administration, for welfare mothers. We lost a lot. But his charisma, no one can take that away from Mr. Clinton. His ability to use language in many ways has attracted the hearts of black people. And the more the establishment beat up on him with his inappropriate behavior, the more black people understood his weakness, and forgave him, and came around him.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2938016&page=2


7 posted on 01/25/2008 9:41:27 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee ("A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.")
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To: South40
I'm black and I hate strongly dislike them.

Conservative blacks don't count. According to the liberals, they aren't 'authentic'.

8 posted on 01/25/2008 9:45:01 PM PST by Jeff Chandler (It takes a father to raise a child.)
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To: jdm
Consider the source--the always-liberal New Republic (which presumably would be supporting Gore if he was running, but which is always anti-Republican). While pretending to be critical of Hillary, the article pulls its punches: it makes it sound like the references to Obama's past cocaine use were somehow inadvertent, not deliberate tactics, downplays the Rector execution (I believe Clinton had to make a special trip back to Arkansas during the midst of the campaign in order for him to be executed), and leaves out Hillary's connection to the Black Panthers in New Haven while she was a law school student.
9 posted on 01/25/2008 9:46:30 PM PST by Verginius Rufus
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To: Jeff Chandler

Oh.


10 posted on 01/25/2008 9:57:54 PM PST by South40 (Amnesty is a slap in the face to the USBP!)
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To: South40
Well, do you think The New Republic considers the opinion of Clarence Thomas when they discuss blacks? He's a conservative, so, as far as the Democrats are concerned, he is not black.

Conservative blacks are invisible to the Drive-By Media, too.

11 posted on 01/25/2008 10:01:55 PM PST by Jeff Chandler (It takes a father to raise a child.)
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To: jdm
Iowa dispelled the assumption that racism made Obama unelectable

this is such horsehockey...whites love to vote for minorities period....right or left...it makes whites feel good about themselves

and blacks love to vote for their own ...it's natural

nothing racist about any of it

12 posted on 01/25/2008 10:06:03 PM PST by wardaddy (Political Correctness is to Western Culture what the Aids virus is to the cake community)
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To: Texas Eagle
Clintons are not ready for a black man to be President

that has nothing to do with it really...they just want the Cankle to be President. lol...so many petards...so few lamposts...we are imploding across the board as a culture from our own ridiculousness over race

13 posted on 01/25/2008 10:11:11 PM PST by wardaddy (Political Correctness is to Western Culture what the Aids virus is to the cake community)
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To: South40

South40, I’d like your opinion on this: I think the immigration issue is being wasted by the GOP candidates. I see much room for progress in both black and Hispanic demographics. I heard a very eloquent Miami-area Chamber of Commerce woman on Bennett’s show the other day addressing this opportunity. I think we all know all that the revolt against last summer’s amnesty effort was defeated by 70% of Americans, not all conservative, obviously.


14 posted on 01/25/2008 10:32:18 PM PST by BIV
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To: jdm
Kennedy, who is African American, has also written that Clinton favored the white middle class while offering blacks "chastising lectures that legitimated the essentially conservative notion that the predicament of the poor results primarily from their own conduct."

Becoming a single mother is the leading indicator for becoming mired in poverty. Whose conduct is causing that?

15 posted on 01/25/2008 11:25:02 PM PST by SirJohnBarleycorn
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To: Texas Eagle

Dick Morris spelled out their strategy on H&C tonite. While I dis-trusted him through alot of his career, he is no Clinton fan.


16 posted on 01/25/2008 11:33:24 PM PST by eyedigress
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To: OKIEDOC
Sounds like someone is trying to trade the plantation for a Commune.

I don't know about you but except for scale I can't see the difference.

17 posted on 01/25/2008 11:39:43 PM PST by fella (Is he al-taquiya or is he murtadd? Only his iman knows for sure.)
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To: Texas Eagle
The Clintons are not ready for a black man to be President.

Great material for a tagline.

18 posted on 01/26/2008 2:51:26 AM PST by Mark was here (Hard work never killed anyone, but why take the chance?)
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To: Texas Eagle
I don’t know how strong black affection for the Clintons is but it appears the Clintons are not ready for a black man to be President

Clintons have made total fools out of the black electorate for twenty years. The problem is that few Blacks have the self-esteem necessary to admit to themselves they've been hosed, and adjust accordingly. One old black lady I talked with one time said "I know they ('rats) haven't really done anything much for us, but at least with them we can hope!"

Hope springs eternal, and come November, the black vote will be there for Clinton.

19 posted on 01/26/2008 12:49:40 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: wardaddy
...that has nothing to do with it really...

Maybe. Maybe not. I'm just playing their game. If Obama becomes the DemocRAT nominee and he ends up trailing in the polls, the mantra from The Left will be, "America is not ready for a black man to be President."

Of course, if Her Royal Heinous is the nominee and she/it trails in the polls the mantra will be, "America is not ready for a woman to be President. "

20 posted on 01/26/2008 3:02:10 PM PST by Texas Eagle (Could pacifists exist if there weren't people brave enough to go to war for their right to exist?)
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