In 2002, the Texas Democratic Party ran a “dream ticket” – a Latino for governor, an African-American for the U.S. Senate, and an Anglo for lieutenant governor. At one point during the campaign, a white political science professor expressed his concern that, with demographics changing, the Lone Star State might get to a point where the ranks of Democratic lawmakers would no longer include whites.
That story comes to mind as I consider recent twists in the soon-to-end Democratic presidential nomination fight, what Barack Obama calls the “politics of division and distraction.”
Part of that is the question of whether white liberals and other so-called progressives in the Democratic Party have progressed enough to allow African-Americans, and other people of color, to advance from supporting cast to center stage.
There is no question that the party owes African-Americans a debt of gratitude for helping elect Democrats in local, state and federal races since the 1960 campaign, when John F. Kennedy helped break what had been a Republican stranglehold on black support by getting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. released from jail. Today, nearly 50 years later, the only question is whether Democrats will pay up by rejecting the rationalizations offered up by Hillary Clinton partisans that Obama, the candidate with the most delegates, the most victories and the most cash on hand, can't win because his support is not broad enough.
Clinton and her supporters rely on euphemisms about how Obama can't win over “blue-collar” voters, as if there are no blue-collar African-Americans. But the message is clear and based on an uncomfortable truth: If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee – as now seems likely – there are a sizable number of white Democrats who say they won't back him. Some of them live in Indiana and North Carolina where, according to exit polls last week, about half of the Clinton voters said they would not support Obama if he were the party's nominee. And, for all the talk about “bittergate” and “pastorgate” and “patriotismgate,” it's still hard not to see race as a factor.
What we've been watching isn't just the process of a party choosing its nominee. That would be too easy. It's a party trying to live up to its values, and that's not always easy. In fact, at times in this campaign, it has been quite messy.
To see just how messy, consider what happened last week during CNN's election night coverage when political analysts Donna Brazile and Paul Begala got into a verbal smackdown. It started when Brazile, an undeclared superdelegate who leans toward Obama, mentioned something about there being a revitalized Democratic Party. Begala, who supports Clinton, took that to infer that “working-class whites” would no longer be welcomed. A frustrated Brazile insisted that wasn't what she meant. Begala pressed on that Democrats “cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans” or, as he called it, “the Dukakis coalition, which carried 10 states and gave us four years of the first George Bush.” The winning formula, Begala said, was to do what President Clinton did in two elections and reach out to “working-class white folks and Latinos,” something he insisted that Clinton has proved she can do but Obama hasn't.
Brazile reminded Begala that, over the years, she has gone into plenty of working-class neighborhoods to campaign for Democrats and “drank more beers with Joe Six-Pack, Jane Six-Pack and everybody else than most white Democrats.” What was crucial, she said, was to not divide us up into all these groups with code words such as “blue-collar voters.”
Begala dug himself in deeper by suggesting that “the only way to win this in my party – is to stitch together white folks, and African-Americans, and Latinos and Asians.”
“What do you mean my party?” responded Brazile angrily. “It's our party, Paul,” she said. “Don't say my party! It's our party.”
There it is. That's the key to understanding that the Obama-Clinton battle now coming to an end has much to do with the sort of liberal condescension Begala displayed, as it does with the indignation Brazile showed in countering him. The way I interpreted the exchange, Brazile was insulted by the suggestion that a party she has worked for her entire professional life belongs to some people but not others.
African-Americans have long supported the Democratic Party. Should Obama become the nominee, we'll learn if Democrats are willing to return the favor.
Navarrette can be reached via
ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.
