Buzz Cut:
• Can Clinton coalition be rebuilt amid racial unrest?
• Baier Tracks: ‘Clinton Cash’ questions not going away
• Rand tackles Bush legacy: toppling Saddam a ‘mistake’
• Jeb edges Hillary in swing state poll
• Ah, youth
CAN CLINTON COALITION BE REBUILT AMID RACIAL UNREST?
Under President Obama, who once offered America the chance for racial healing, the nation is instead experiencing an era of conspicuous racial unrest worse than any in the past 40 years. Like another candidate who ran on ending “nation building” but who launched the most ambitious nation-building project in American history, Obama’s legacy on the subject of race relations will be the opposite of his promise. And as the unrest has grown and now, one hopes, culminated in the burning and looting in Baltimore, the president has mostly been a cipher.
He condemns violence but sympathizes with its perpetrators. He extolls the service of police officers, but suggests widespread systemic racism in their ranks. It’s complicated, for sure, but the fact that all Obama has produced is a couple of blue-ribbon commissions – Washington’s version of policy euthanasia – shows us a man tested on a core belief and promise and apparently at a loss. Despite the frustration among his supporters, Obama will continue to enjoy enormous support and understanding from black America. But what about his party’s presumptive nominee?
Hillary Clinton’s political rise was in part a product of the prior, more severe era of widespread racial unrest. Back when she spoke with an Ozark twang, she and her husband came to the national stage as “New Democrats” – white Southerners, who were moderate and socially conservative. This had particular appeal because of the way the radicalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s had put much of the country off the Democratic brand. And the race riots of the era were a big part of that. If Richard Nixon’s two victories were partly a backlash against urban unrest and Ronald Reagan’s new coalition consolidated such gains, the Clinton Democrats were about trying rebuild the old Democratic coalition.
Bill Clinton could connect with black voters but put blue-collar white voters at ease. He could be America’s “first black president” but champion welfare limits staunchly opposed by black leaders. He and his wife’s return to the White House, however, was derailed by a politician who no less skillfully bridged the racial divide in the Democratic Party, but did so from the other side of the chasm. Along the way, African American voters grew distrustful of the Clintons and the Clintons, at least Bill, grew resentful of the way black supporters had thrown them over for a “fairy tale” about Obama. It got very ugly. Now, as the Clintons mount another White House quest, the issue of race relations burns far hotter than it did in 2008. So how will they play the issue? So far, Hillary is attempting to channel Obama’s cipher stance – lamenting injustice and calling for healing. But black voters, and white liberals who share their cause, are unlikely to accept opacity on the issue from Clinton. Her top primary rival certainly isn’t going to let her get away with some Twitter sadness as an answer.
No matter what she does, Clinton will not be able to drive the kind of black turnout and support that Obama enjoyed. But she needs a strong African American showing in her new New Democrat coalition. At the same time, if she overcorrects to the left, she will destroy the fundamental part of her coalition: middle class white voters who are not likely to blame police when they see arson and looting in major American cities. This will be a test for even the most scalene triangulator. Obama was an empty vessel for voters, but there is too much in the Clinton carafe to start afresh.
