As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were doing their best to turn the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary into a springtime jamboree for the Moral Majority and the NRA, all anyone could talk about were white, small-town voters.
The results, though, would indicate that, while Obama was explaining that he meant “bitter” as a compliment and discovering his love for the shooting arts, he should have been tending to his base.
It was black voters, as much as anyone, who cost Obama the primary.
The inhabitants of Hillary’s Hillbilly Firewall caught the nation’s attention after Obama was caught on tape explaining their gun-loving, Bible-reading, illegal immigration-hating ways to a roomful of San Francisco donors.
He was trying to make his Bay Area friends understand why he needed these country folks, who probably seem less real to maxed-out Democratic contributors in Central California than Big Foot or astral projection. It would prove to be a costly sociology lesson.
In the weeks that followed, the post-racial Obama tried hard to excuse his comments about small-town Americans. He could not be branded as another pro-gun control, secular, Northern liberal. The Democratic Party has spent billions of dollars and four decades proving that those kinds of candidates can’t get elected.
And in Pennsylvania, like America, there is no path to victory that doesn’t include a medley of evangelical Protestants, observant Catholics, gun enthusiasts and foes of open borders. But the challenge for Obamais unique.
His race, name and background automatically make Obama harder to sell to voters from Scranton to Sedona. In addition, his voting record and positions put many values voters out of reach.
As much of a challenge as those views and traits have been and will be, two key groups have put Obama close to his party’s nomination: young people and blacks. And of those two, black voters are the more important.
History shows young voters are not reliable. Inflamed passions are snuffed out by school vacations – or by the disillusionment brought on by even limited exposure to political reality. It takes a 20-year-old about a minute to write off someone as lame, and why go vote for a lame dude when you just got the X Box warmed up.
Black voters, though, have been the most reliable Democrats of the past century. And this, by all rights, should be the moment of vindication for them. The primaries prior to this week have certainly borne that out with more than 80 percent and as much as 95 percent of black voters backing the Illinois senator.
On Super Tuesday in Missouri, Obama eked out a one-point victory over Clinton. Key to that success was the fact that black voters were 17 percent of the Democratic total according to exit polls. In a state where blacks represent only 12 percent of the population of all ages, that kind of showing caught plenty of attention.
Later in February, Obama obliterated Clinton in Virginia by 24 points. That time, exit polls showed blacks to be 30 percent of the total primary turnout despite being only 20 percent of the population at large.
On March 4 in Ohio, Clinton managed to hold on to enough of her once-towering lead to win by double digits. Even then, black voters made up 18 percent of the turnout in a state with a 12 percent black population, sparing him from a rout.
But in Pennsylvania, where Obama went to such pains to make common cause with mill workers and small-town whites, the tsunami of black participation turned into a gentle wave.
Exit polls found 14 percent of Democratic primary voters to be black. While that’s still above the 11 percent of the state’s population at large that is black, it’s nothing remarkable.
Compare Obamain Pennsylvania with Jesse Jackson there in 1984 and 1988. Black voters made up 17 percent of the total Pennsylvania Democratic turnout in both primaries, despite being only about 9 percent of the state’s total population throughout the 1980s.
Pennsylvania’s blacks now make up a larger portion of the state’s population, but their turnout for an election featuring the most viable black candidate in U.S. history actually decreased. Despite an election that featured an opponent whose organization race into the campaign, black voters turned out at lower levels than in states where race had not been raised.
A year ago, before anyone took him seriously, many political pros thought Obama would be deemed not black enough for black voters.
If he continues to play to rural white voters, Obama may dampen the enthusiasmof black voters and find himself without a sufficient natural base.
