Tuesday, April 1, 2008

A Campaign Like No Other: Barack Obama, Race, and the Democratic Primary

Superdelegates should not overturn the pledged delegates. At least that is what Obama said almost as soon as the final Super Tuesday delegate tallies were in, on February 5th, putting the superdelegates on notice that should they go for HC even if she were behind in this measure, there could be problems.

This argument is an incredible one for several reasons. First, it shows that from a very early stage Obama knew that this would be a horse race, and second, and most interestingly, it indicates that Obama knew from the very beginning that race would play a huge role and not in the way most folks expected.

What is at least as interesting is the attention that Obama’s argument about the role of the superdelegates has gotten from the media. There isn’t a television news program or newspaper that hasn’t discussed how unfair it would be or how it would be courting disaster for the nomination to be decided by the superdelegates should Obama be ahead in pledged delegates but still not have enough to reach the magic number needed for nomination. Obama has known since Super Tuesday, when someone “leaked” what thus far have been incredibly accurate and detailed projections from the Obama campaign showing that he would likely have more pledged delegates at the conclusion of the campaign.

But the projections also indicated--publicized to Obama's supporters really--that he would not have enough delegates to win outright and that the nomination would likely be decided by the superdelegates. Linking the superdelegate vote to the total pledged delegate count, and emphasizing early on to his supporters that it would be unfair for the superdelegates to do anything else, was the strategy to overcome the fact that though he would have a slight lead in pledged delegates, Clinton would likely have the overall lead based on pledged delegates and superdelegates. His argument, of course, is tailored exactly to his situation and the media has swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

What isn’t clear, is why other alternatives or other bases for the superdelegates’ votes haven’t been considered by the media. Why, for example, should the superdelegates vote based on the number of total pledged delegates instead of, say, with the voters in the state in which they live? Or if not that, why not vote based on the winner of the popular vote? And what about the role of superdelegates in the first place—aren’t they supposed to exercise their judgment as they see fit? Some pretty high profile Democratic pols, like Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, claim to have the same understanding of the superdelegates’ role as Obama but, as will become clear, the reason they might support this argument, even if they don’t believe it, is pretty apparent.

With any of the alternatives Clinton would likely get most of the superdelegates. If the superdelegates were to vote based on the vote of the state in which they reside, for example, HC would get all the superdelegates from California, New York, and Ohio. Obama would get the superdelegates from the states he won—Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. And if superdelegates were bound by the popular vote? HC is behind in this now, but may be ahead in this number when the primary is over. Obama wouldn’t do so well either if the superdelegates used as their main criterion who would be more electable in November. At the very least all of these are as reasonable as Obama’s suggestion. So while you can’t blame Obama for making this argument, you can certainly ask why the media hasn’t questioned its reasonableness or spent much time considering the alternatives.

Obama has been navigating a razor’s edge deftly throughout the primary: minimizing all overt signs of race, and racial difference in his speeches to attract white voters while having both a hypersensitive understanding of how it will play out in the campaign and a high octane strategy to exploit this. Obama and his campaign have exploited this issue by using its incredible bottom-to-top organization to target and organize precincts and caucuses with large black populations, knowing full well that the Democratic Party cannot afford to alienate perhaps the most crucial portion of its base by being perceived as denying the election to Obama via the party elite, the superdelegates.

Looking back now at the Obama campaign’s nearly dead-on predictions of the delegate count over the course of the campaign which were released just after Super Tuesday, it is clear that it was Obama’s intention all along to make race a fundamental aspect of his campaign, both by targeting blacks in a way never done before, by amassing slightly more delegates than Clinton, and, because neither he nor Clinton could win without them, browbeating the superdelegates to go with the candidate ahead in the delegate count. Obama’s campaign was likely never built to win outright but rather (1) to establish and maintain a mathematical lead in the pledged delegates and then (2) strong arm the superdelegates to vote for him or risk alienating black voters. (For the February 7 Obama campaign projections see politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0208/Obamas_projections.html).

Obama’s construction concerning the superdelegates is premised on his popularity with blacks. As soon as Obama won in Iowa, that is, as soon as he was able to show that whites would vote for him in significant numbers, his campaign could be certain that blacks would flock to him. And they did, as evidenced by South Carolina, the first primary with a significant black vote. He won nearly 80 percent of blacks and since that early primary has continued to win them at between 80 and 90 percent. It is hard to remember another time when such an important single Democratic constituency has voted in such numbers and with such passion for a candidate. It is this support, of course, which Obama hoped to receive and knew he had to receive for his pledged delegate-superdelegate strategy to work.

Once it was clear that blacks recognized him as a viable candidate, he could play his trump card—linking the superdelegates to the pledged delegates--and introduce to his fervent supporters the idea that it would be unfair in the extreme if the superdelegates were to decide the race in favor of Clinton when she did not lead in pledged delegates. And, as both a superdelegate and Speaker of House, Nancy Pelosi, looking for gains in the House, knows better than anyone how disastrous it would be if blacks don't vote in November. This, no doubt, is why she shares Obama's understanding of the superdelegates. Had both Democratic candidates been white, or both candidates black, a call to link the superdelegates to pledged delegate totals likely would have gotten little mileage from the press, Pelosi, or anyone else for that matter.

This has turned out to be a brilliant strategy for the Democratic primary and Obama may well ride it all the way through and be the party’s nominee. It won’t be much use in the general election, I suspect, but that’s another story. The real story of the primary is Obama’s awareness, navigation, and exploitation of race. It has been deft, nearly opaque, and is on the verge of making him the party’s nominee. It is difficult to fault him for campaigning in this way--that is what it is all about, motivate and get constituents to turn out, get the media to act on your behalf, and seize control, if possible, of the party’s tortuous nominating process.

It is one of politics’ great ironies, though, that Obama, whose campaign largely rests on his promise of drawing people together, transforming politics as usual, and looking beyond race has focused on and exploited the issue of race throughout the campaign in a way that hasn’t yet come fully to light. And it is more than a little disturbing that an important part of that campaign relies on the echoes of the injustices suffered by blacks as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, and all the other indignities to which blacks have been subject in this country, not the least of which is the idea that the nomination of the candidate so many blacks feel so passionately about could be snatched away from them by the white establishment via the superdelegates and the DNC.

That is exactly what Obama has done, though, and it is an important part of why he is likely to win the nomination.