Against All Odds: Why Barack Obama’s Incredible Achievement Must Be Lauded and Admired

March 4, 2008 
Category: Analyses & Opinions

The pundits and Clintonians who have chastised Barack Obama–the real underdog–for failing to wrap up the nomination against Hillary Clinton–the expected victor–always seem to forget one simple evidence: Barack Obama is not just any “normal” candidate in this race, he is a BLACK candidate.

In other words, it is a black candidate we are talking about here, not a white candidate. Because of this reality, the way we build our expectations and analyze the rapport de force between the two Democratic candidates must be reformulated and contextualized. This reformulation is important if we are to remain objective and give his true due to Barack Obama.

That we are even talking about Obama being close to wrapping it up (or having a hard time wrapping it up) is nowhere close to being a testimony to his weakness. On the contrary, it is a testimony to his unbelievable strength as a black candidate running for president in a United States of America in which, just about two or three months ago, no one expected him to become the frontrunner, especially not in a Democratic primary in which several excellent, better known and more experienced white or whiter candidates such as John Edwards, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, and Chris Dodd competed.

The fact of him being a black candidate who overcame unbelievable odds to become the frontrunner in the Democratic race should never be lost from perspective when talking about Barack Obama. The young senator came from so far in the polls and so low in the expectations that his making it almost certain today that Hillary Clinton would not be the Democratic nominee for this historic race is a historic accomplishment by itself. No matter how hard Hillary Clinton and her campaign have hit Obama with negative ads and racial innuendoes aimed at scaring white voters away, Obama has held firm on his small lead and managed to convince a majority of voters of all races, ethnicities and cultures that he is the candidate for the unity of America, the candidate for a new America, the candidate for change in America, in other words, the right candidate at the right time for an America more than ever thirsting for vision and inspiration.

This is especially true when considering the fact that no one a few months ago predicted that it would be Hillary Clinton who would be fighting for her political life at this juncture of the primary process. Not only that, no one in today’s America predicted that it was going to be a black man of the innocence and inexperience of Barack Obama giving so much trouble to an established household name such as that of Hillary Clinton.

Yes, Obama has certainly benefitted from tremendous momentum following his wins in the Iowa, South Carolina, Super Tuesday #1 and the Potomac primaries. However, for the uninformed pundits to look at this momentum as a sufficient condition for determining the likelihood of an outright and easy victory by a black candidate over a white one would be to ignore the historical and psychological odds against which Barack Obama has had to fight just to remain in the race. And these are the odds that both explain the difficulty he is having in wrapping it up as quickly as one would have hoped, and the very nature of a race whose outcome hinges on a storyline never before contemplated.   

Hillary Clinton’s troubles in the face of a Barack Obama who came from nowhere are, in fact, a testimony to Barack Obama’s strength as a candidate, and to Hillary Clinton’s weakness as a once-upon-a-time prohibitive frontrunner.

What Barack Obama has achieved against so many odds in just a few months of campaign limelight is so overwhelming and momentous that it must go down in history as the truly single-most historical feat of our time. Obama’s inexperience and novelty in politics is unlike the inexperience of past candidates for president. It is one of his most obvious weaknesses; yet, for some reason, this weakness, against all odds, seems to have totally crushed the experience and readiness argument in this race.

Obama’s blackness is, perhaps, another one of his most visible weaknesses. In spite of the Illinois Senator being himself an embodiment of the enormous progress the country seems to have made when it comes to the politics of race, Barack Obama’s blackness typically means that he  has to prove himself twice as hard as Hillary Clinton in order to be taken seriously. The Black Man’s Burden is certainly a fact that people tend to lose from sight in this race, probably due to Obama being incredibly successful at not playing the race card, but it remains a reality of America that the yardstick is never the same for Blacks as it is for Whites. In a country that has, for centuries, based its beliefs on the premises of race and racial antagonism, Blacks have typically had to do twice or thrice the same effort as Whites in order to deserve the same type of respect for themselves and recognition for their accomplishments.

One way of measuring this burden consists in simply considering this simple fact: if it were Barack Obama who had been down in the delegate count, popular vote and public favorability, there would have been more pressure for him to bow out of the race in order to allow for an easier Clinton victory against McCain come the general election. Hillary Clinton is being given more benefit of the doubt than she deserves, and, instead of looking at the “normal” and expected “incapacity” of Obama, a black candidate in America, to easily finish Clinton off, pundits should, rather, look at Hillary Clinton’s inability, with all her earlier advantage in polls, money and name recognition, to crush an unknown, inexperienced black candidate who, just a few months back, was still trailing by 20 points or more in the polls. The fact that Barack Obama, thanks to his incredible momentum and appeal, has come so close in the polls should not be used against him or viewed as a weakness if he does not win Texas and/or Ohio. Those two states were and have always been expected Clinton victories. It is rather a testimony to Obama’s strength that, in the space of less than a month, he has been able to narrow the gap and come close to nullifying any potential benefit that Hillary Clinton could derive from a victory in both states today. As things stand today, a 5% margin of loss would be a real victory for Barack Obama in both Texas and Ohio, and would be sufficient to prevent Hillary Clinton from making any consequential gain in pledged delegates.

Putting the burden on Obama would not therefore, to be fair, constitute a very objective take on the state of the Democratic race today. And, clearly, Hillary Clinton’s refusal to bow out of the race to allow a black candidate to make history is a testimony to the disbelief in which America finds itself today: no one expected a black candidate to go so far, and do so well, so quickly, so convincingly.

But there is a darker side to the Hillary Clinton onslaught on Barack Obama. It takes no brain surgery to understand that the whole argument about readiness, experience and fairy tales advanced by the Clinton camp is playing on a number of fears, the most pernicious one being that of race. Clinton’s campaign rhetoric is full of undertones that are basically urging white voters not to take a chance, not just with an inexperienced candidate, but also with the unknown of electing a black candidate to the highest office of the land at a time when we are not really certain the country is ready for such a drastic change. And because the Democrats want to win back the White House, Hillary Clinton’s subliminal message to white Democrats seems to be:  “Well, it’s ok to be progressive, but do not forget that there is still racism in America. If we nominate Barack Obama, there is no way he is going to win against John McCain in November. Americans will never put a black man in the White House, at least not this time. So, history for history, why not put me, a white woman, there first, and perhaps reconsider Obama eight years from now?”

When, therefore, all things are considered, Barack Obama emerges as a formidable candidate who had to overcome formidable obstacles to become the frontrunner he is today. He had to overcome the Clinton machine and its inevitability; he had to overcome the doubts within the Democratic establishment; he had to overcome the politics of race and alleviate the doubts and apprehensions of the white electorate; he had to overcome the doubts that even black people themselves had about not only him, but also about white people in this country ever going out of their way to nominate a black candidate for president of these United States of America.

And that’s the beauty of Barack Obama’s story.

A story that takes an even more formidable dimension when considering the fact that, beyond the historical role that the Civil Rights movement has played in advancing the interests and rights of black people in this country, no previous black candidate really adequately prepared the ground for Obama to be where he is today. In fact, previous black candidates never came close to where Obama stands today. While Jessie Jackson certainly generated a lot of buzz, the likelihood of him winning the nomination was never there. Just as did Al Sharpton after him, Jessie Jackson ran on a black Civil Rights platform for black people, unlike Obama who is running on a platform for America that speaks to all, irrespective of their race, origin, ethnicity or religion. Preparing the ground for Obama would have supposed a previous black nomination winner with a discourse of unity who would have gone to the general election to fail, thereby making it a bit more “normal” to see another black man going for it again, with added chances of winning the general election. Obama had no warning and gave no warning. He simply erupted on the political scene, surprising both blacks and whites.

What is more, black Democrats have often instinctively voted for the best white candidate even when black candidates such as Al Sharpton were in the race. No black voter in this country has ever believed in the possibility of a black candidate being elected to the White House, especially if such a candidate is running on a narrow black platform that is likely to give rise to white guilt. As a result, black candidates never enjoyed any significant type of support among the black community. In fact, Hillary Clinton, until about two to three months ago, was still enjoying universal support among black voters who simply did not believe Barack Obama could get anywhere. Black voters (as well as white ones) were simply swept off their feet by the Obama phenomenon. Blacks came to Obama only after they saw he could win in white states such as Iowa.

Those judging Obama’s performance in this race must always keep in mind that what we are really talking about, here, is the fact of a black man having been able to pull off victories in a white country with a history of racism that most people, until two months ago, did not expect to see breaking Obama’s way. Until Iowa, most of America was still wrapped up in its old beliefs about the irremediable rift between blacks and whites, and as a result, no one was truly prepared for the Obama shock, which was more revealing of the changes in white society than in black society. While whites had already begun to unnoticeably change their attitudes towards blacks (and may have been seeking for the unlikely opportunity to force blacks to look more into the future than into a past that made them feel too guilty), black remained untrusting of their white counterparts and continued to remain prisoners of old attitudes, beliefs and recriminations. Barack Obama changed all that, and allowed America to look at itself with new eyes, and new hopes for reconciliation.

It is therefore a testimony to Barack Obama’s overwhelming strength that he was able to undo, in just a few months, all the odds that were stacked against him, and, in fact, unite voters across the racial, ethnic, and cultural divides in order to win unlikely victories in both white households and black households, blue states and red states, with, at times, margins that were surprisingly large in states with negligible African-American representation.

The strength of Obama is even more formidable when considering the fact that, in most pre-primary and primary polls, he was so behind that the odds of him ever becoming frontrunner were never there. Furthermore, because of what one may call “white voter’s guilt”, it is possible to imagine that 5 to 10% of white voters who may have initially wanted to vote for Obama usually changed their minds at the last minute to break for Hillary Clinton. This is what may have explained the New Hampshire results, where the margin of Obama victory expected by the polls may have been within the range covered by the “white voter’s guilt” principle, thereby ending up tilting the victory Hillary Clinton’s way on voting day. The white voters who are affected by this last minute “guilt” usually do so because of the two issues of race–the momentousness of actually voting for a black candidate who could actually become president of the United States–and newness–Obama is not a household name for most Americans, and voting for someone who came into national politics so suddenly with so many unknowns always tends to cause some uneasiness in voters who, otherwise, would have voted for him.

This is to say that if Obama had been, say, a white man, his margins of victory would have been even bigger against Hillary Clinton. What this means is that, whenever Clinton wins, say, 55% vs. 45% over Obama, one must, in reality, factor in the fact that a good percentage-5 to 10%-of Clinton’s victory is based on white voter’s guilt, that is, those very people who, for some reason, would have preferred to vote for Obama, but are forced, by last minute considerations on both his blackness and his novelty, to go for Hillary Clinton. This assumption would be congruent with the “Bradley Effect” as defined in a 1991 study by Finkel, et al., whereby whites were 8 to 11 points more likely to state their support of the white candidate in the 1989 Virginia governor’s race when speaking with a white interviewer. This means that, conversely, 8 to 11 % were likely to state their support for a black candidate when, in fact, they fully intended on voting for the white candidate. Various pundits on political sites across the Internet have also pointed out a considerable trend in late deciders swaying in Hillary Clinton’s direction in the current primaries. My contention is that this principle may have always been at play, even in those states that Barack Obama won, therefore suggesting the possibility of much wider support for Obama across the board than his victories in white states actually suggest. Thus, where Obama could have actually won 65% to 35%, he may have ended up with a victory of 55% vs. 45% due to last-minute “white voter’s guilt”. Similarly, Where polls would have expected him to win 50% to 45%, “white voter’s guilt” could have swayed the results in favor of Hillary Clinton.

While the above are basically wild guesses formulated in an attempt to explain what I believe may have been at play in these historic primaries, the examples given convey, in one way or another, my contention that Barack Obama’s candidacy has really been impressive in its ability to surmount the various obstacles that were inherently militating against its success.

When, therefore, assessing the Obama phenomenon, it is important to always keep in mind the reality of this race: Obama has come from so far, and from so many odds, that his victory in these primaries, if he wins them, should stand out as a miracle. If Barack Obama had been a white candidate, he would have wrapped up this nomination in New Hampshire. But because he could not, one has to conclude that last-minute “white voter’s guilt” is probably what accounts the most for his inability to totally break away. “White voter’s guilt” plays in two ways: it plays at the level of the voting booth with last-minute, gut-level change of heart; it also plays in favor of Hillary Clinton as a gut-level, racially-based reaction to the momentous possibility of a black man actually becoming president in an America which, just two months ago, still thought this possibility to be unlikely.

But here we are today, with an America as surprising as Barack Obama himself. That America is ready for a black man to be president is no longer really in doubt. It is just that all of us, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians , etc., never saw it coming. We all thought ourselves to still be prisoners of past racial prisons and fences, but it took a candidate named Barack Obama to show us the path to a new America.

Win or lose, Barack Obama will have been the most groundbreaking presidential candidate, not just of this election, but really of this generation. He allowed America to see a more positive side of itself. Those white voters who, against all odds, gave the victory to a black candidate in such white states as Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, and the like, have taught us all an unexpected lesson: America has indeed changed, and we just did not see it coming.

Not only did we not see it coming, we never got any warning. It just happened, suddenly.

For having allowed America to begin to come to terms with itself, for having allowed white America, for the first time, to be in tune with black America in a context of insurmountable odds, Barack Obama can only stand as the best candidate for America, at this very defining moment in American history.

 

Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey)

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