Barrack Obama began the 2008 Presidential quest as a national unknown candidate with very little possibility of winning his party nomination. This grueling marathon is now done to sprint and the few remaining contests will determine who will face the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. When Obama began his quest, the black community was skeptical as the prevailing wisdom was that white America would not vote for a black president even though he graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School.
Barrack Obama’s victory in Iowa shocked the political world and the Senator from Illinois was immediately recognized as a candidate with charismatic appeal whose message of change in America resonated with white, black and brown America. That is the validation that the black community sought to rally behind Obama’s deracialized campaign.
As the race enters the last nine contests, it is imperative to look back and reflect on how Barrack Obama, win or lose, has had a dramatic impact on American presidential politics. Presidential campaigns had developed a mode of fundraising that depended almost exclusively on tapping the deep pockets of rich fat cats. In 2004 presidential campaign, Howard Dean tapped then untapped reservoir of the internet. Although Howard Dean failed to win his Party’s nomination, it paved the way for raising money on the Internet and to reduce the influence of the super-rich in the bodypolitic.
Obama engineered a grassroots campaign and through the mode of the Internet has raised more money than any other candidate who participated in the Republican or Democratic Party nomination exercise. Barrack has and continues to tap the reservoir of small donors who have been excited about campaign and the necessity to move America out of the Bush morass. Through the use of the Internet, he has been able to establish an independent method of communication with voters that has acted as a counterforce against the biased corporate media. By sending messages directly to the voters, he has established a connection and a personal touch that despite the Wright fetish, has given his candidacy a steady vibrancy.
This election has vividly demonstrated the chasm that separates the black leadership establishment from the rank and file black voters. The black leadership in large part has supported the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Those commitments were made when the presumption prevailed that Obama’s candidacy would not capture the imagination of white voters. It further reveals the vision-less state of the black political establishment. In the same way that most black established leaders failed to see the historical significance of Barrack’s candidacy, they have failed to use political power to change the conversation in America and to redefine the role of the state in an advanced capitalist society.
The primary in South Carolina revealed that the vast majority of black voters clearly understood Obama’s historical significance. It is at this juncture that the Clinton campaign began playing the race card. Bill Clinton likened Barrack Obama’s campaign to that of Jesse Jackson’s in 1984 and 1988, which became a spent force as Jesse’s appeal was limited primarily to black voters. But in 2008 this is a different America and a different world. In the interim from Jesse to Barrack, a new generation capable of transcending race has emerged. Race baiting, hopefully, is a less crippling force in today’s America than in yesteryear.
Obama started out running a deracialized campaign and the Clintons calculated that racializing the campaign would torpedo Obama’s candidacy and make Hillary Clinton’s quest for the nomination an inexorable force. What is amazing in this racially charged election is the complicity that has come from the backward elements in the black community.
There exists a coterie of black women who are supporting Hillary Clinton, which is their right. Black women like Faye Wattleton, Mary Francis Berry, Shirley Jackson Lee and Carol Simpson have thrown their support to Hillary Clinton, who certainly on domestic issues has taken progressive positions. But in their advocacy for Hillary, these women whenever they have appeared on television have “trumpeted” the right wing line of march aimed at the character assassination of Barrack Obama. Their despicable performance has to be compared with the Governor of North Carolina. In his support of Hillary Clinton, he has spoken eloquently on her behalf but recognized the idiocy of the Wright controversy and has stated of the high comfort level he has experienced in the black church. The Governor of North Carolina has focused on the issues critical to American people and not succumbed to the race baiting of the mass media.
The persistence of racism has not only been damaging to white people but it has also been devastating to black people. Any scrutiny of black-on-black homicides. Invariably must factor in internalized hatred that, despite the civil rights gains in recent decades, still has a crippling effect on black development.
Jeremiah Wright had a splendid opportunity to convey to the American people the praxis of social justice that is in an integral part of the black church committed to liberation theology. His church on the South side of Chicago is engaged in the ministry of making the weak strong and providing sustenance to the fallen. Wright used his time at the National Press Club to exacerbate old wounds and to inflict new wounds on his parishioner.
What this tumultuous primary season has underscored is the complexity of American society. There persists the fixation on race yet there is a new generation of Americans cognizant that race is a social construct. The Republicans have been using race since 1968 to win presidential elections, a span of 40 years. This span has not only resulted in rolling back some of the gains of the civil rights movement, but has thwarted the progress of working class voters from enhancing their material wellbeing. The American people are in desperate need of universal healthcare. Wages have remained stagnant for the last couple of decades and that problem has become acute in this new age of rising prices. The global market has reduced the number of jobs that pay a living wage and the reduction in the percentage of the workers in the labor force who are not protected by the unions has led to the peeling off of pensions and other benefits. In this age of globalization, the critical issue confronting the American worker is not race but the falling standard of living. Race has merely kept the American worker in the state of backwardness.
The historical significance of Obama’s candidacy is not that he is a black man running for presidency of the United States. His blackness or his bi-racial upbringing may have given him an insight into the American society and what needs to be done. His approach has thus far been to bring together the variegated forces in the society to effectively deal with the challenge of globalization, global warming and the persistence of endemic warfare in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
Barrack Obama has built an organization from the bottom up. In an age where there has been the trend of less and less civic participation and greater alienation in the society, his presidential candidacy has expanded participatory democracy. Democracy is not a top down system and does not work well when the voters are alienated from the political process. America is in desperate need of a movement that will re-energize American democracy
The civil rights movement deepened the democratic process in America. The feminist movement sensitized America to gender imbalance. In recent years the society has been enriched by developing the talents of women. The Obama political movement is aimed at extricating America from the clutches of specialized interest. The Obama movement can move America to a state where public policy I committed to the greatest good for the greatest number. In this new world, America needs to leave behind race baiting and political skullduggery. The Obama candidacy will overcome the scurrilous elements in the bodypolitic. The White House is not just in need of color but there is a yearning for a president with a different vision of the world from the hawkish neo-conservatives who through their duplicity and folly created the chaos in Mesopotamia.
