Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide

NYT: Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide
By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: February 12, 2008

....The race issue got all of five minutes at that (2006) meeting, setting what Mr. Obama and his advisers hoped would be the tone of a campaign they were determined not to define by the color of his skin. As he heads into a fresh round of contests Tuesday, the Potomac primaries, in a tight rivalry with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and with an impressive record of victories across the nation in which he drew significant white votes and overwhelming black support, he claims to have accomplished that goal. Some South Carolina supporters summed up his broad appeal and message about transcending differences in a chant: “Race Doesn’t Matter.”

Glimpses inside the Obama campaign show, though, that while the senator had hoped his colorblind style of politics would lift the country above historic racial tensions, from Day 1 his bid for the presidency has been pulled into the thick of them. While his speeches focus on unifying voters, his campaign has learned the hard way that courting a divided electorate requires reaching out group by group.

Instead of following a plotted course, Mr. Obama’s campaign has zigged and zagged, reacting to outside forces and internal differences between the predominantly white team of top advisers and the mostly black tier of aides. The dynamic began the first day of Mr. Obama’s presidential bid, when white advisers encouraged him to withdraw an invitation to his pastor, whose Afro-centric sermons have been construed as antiwhite, to deliver the invocation at the official campaign kickoff. Then, when his candidacy was met by a wave of African-American suspicion, the senator’s black aides pulled in prominent black scholars, business leaders and elected officials as advisers.

Aides to Mr. Obama, who asked not to be identified because the campaign would not authorize them to speak to the press, said he stayed away from a civil rights demonstration and did not publicize visits to black churches when he was struggling to win over white voters in Iowa. Then, a month after Representative John Lewis of Georgia endorsed Mrs. Clinton, setting off concerns about black voters’ ambivalence toward Mr. Obama, the campaign deployed his wife, Michelle, whose upbringing on the South Side of Chicago was more familiar to many blacks than Mr. Obama’s biracial background.

The campaign’s strategy in the first contests left Mr. Obama vulnerable with Latinos, which hurt him in California and could do the same in the Texas primary on March 4....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/politics/12obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

and it really shouldn't have been.

It was supposed to be about the content of one's character.

And it might still be......but unfortunately, in their eagerness to win with "Anything goes" policies, The Clintons did exactly that; attempted to paint Obama as a one dimensional "Black" candidate for their own sake for winning.

Just like NAFTA, Welfare Reform, DADT and the IWR, they made bad decisions that helped them get by...without a care of how this would affect any of us. I have a real problem with that.

seems to fit here also.

Forum Name General Discussion: Primaries
Topic subject Chicago Tribune: "What... shattered hopes among Latinos... was Obama's pandering to anti-immigrants"
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4499866#4499866
4499866, Chicago Tribune: "What... shattered hopes among Latinos... was Obama's pandering to anti-immigrants"
Posted by bidenista on Sat Feb-09-08 11:29 AM

When they were useful, they were used. And when they stopped being useful, they were thrown under the bus. An article in the Chicago Tribune explains why many Latinos don't trust Obama:



Latino vote a big loss for Obama

By Maria De Los Angeles Torres
February 10, 2008

Last week's primaries were dubbed "Hispanic Super Tuesday," and indeed the Latino vote proved pivotal to Hillary Clinton's gains. She received an overwhelming majority of Latino votes despite Barack Obama's last-ditch efforts to differentiate his position on immigration. The support Obama had enjoyed in Illinois' Latino communities even slipped significantly since the last time he ran for office. Some have speculated that Latinos support Clinton because she is better-known. Others say Obama's advisers just don't get Latinos. Still others speculate that Latinos will not vote for an African-American. In reality, Latinos have supported African-American candidates for decades. That has been true across the country, in many races, including the 2004 U.S. Senate contest that Obama won. Though the Democratic primary in that race included a popular and prominent Latino candidate, Gery Chico, 70 percent of Illinois Latinos voted for Obama.

Why? Issues.

Obama campaigned against the war, at the time a top issue for Latino voters. Most importantly, he embraced humane and comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to legalization. He pledged his support for issuing driver's licenses regardless of immigration status. He supported the Dream Act, which would give all high school students qualified to enter universities a shot at financial aid regardless of immigration status. On the foreign policy front, Obama also supported policies aimed at strengthening Latin American economies, a key component of a sound hemispheric immigration policy. Latino support for Obama continued—and indeed grew. Like so many Americans, Latinos were moved by Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and especially by his reference to his own immigrant roots. Latinos everywhere held major fundraisers for him.

Once in Washington, however, Obama disappointed many of them. There were many unexpected votes, including his vote to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state—his first chance to truly act on his expressed opposition to the war. But what truly shattered hopes among Latinos across the nation was Obama's pandering to anti-immigrant sentiments during the 2006 congressional races, and his vote to build a fence along select stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border. For Latinos, and for many people around the world, the fence symbolizes backward and bigoted thinking, particularly in a modern era committed to bringing down walls, not erecting them....

More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-latinos_thinkfeb10,1,6612604.story

After Durbin got him that plum committee assignment, he did nothing.

She would have been confirmed anyway. But Obama could have spoken out, at the very least. I was disappointed.