Obama’s Ethnic Problem

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Editorial / Periscope - Niall O'Dowd

Obama’s Ethnic Problem

August 21, 2008

Editorial

ON the eve of the Denver Democratic Party Convention, Senator Barack Obama is on the verge of achieving perhaps the greatest breakthrough ever in American politics by becoming the first ever African American president.

After an impressive primary victory over Senator Hillary Clinton, the Illinois senator set forth with a wet sail for the White House. Since then, however, his campaign has seemed becalmed at times. He remains only three to five points ahead of Senator John McCain in major national polls.

In his primary campaign Obama put together African Americans, liberal whites and moderate independents, but never cracked the DNA of the white ethnic working class who remain the single biggest voting block up for grabs, especially in key states.

That remains his major problem. Some attribute it to racism, which may be correct to a point. However, there is a broader concern that such voters don’t really know Obama, and don’t fully trust him.

Worse, the Obama camp seems reluctant to engage the ethnic vote in a manner eerily similar to Al Gore in 2000, who threw away countless opportunities to engage ethnic communities such as Irish Americans in the full throated way that the Clintons did.

In one celebrated instance, Gore turned down a packed hall Irish rally in Florida on the week of the election. The 532 votes he lost by in that state would surely have been present in the hall that night.

Obama’s lack of outreach is becoming a major concern in the Irish community. Writing last week on the top political blog site the Huffington Post, Tom Hayden, former California state assemblyman and husband of Jane Fonda who is a committed Obama supporter stated, “Aside from producing green O’Bama tee shirts earlier this year the Obama campaign has not yet displayed the rhetoric or resources necessary to win its share of the Irish American vote.

“Barack Obama needs the huge Irish American vote in closely fought Pennsylvania battle grounds like Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia suburbs…there are similar pockets of Irish American swing votes in other key states.”

Meanwhile in the Irish Echo last week, Professor John McCarthy, a conservative Catholic commentator, also took issue with Obama’s lack of outreach.

Commenting on his “failure to visit Ireland” on his recent overseas trip McCarthy stated “One cannot imagine Hillary Clinton avoiding such a trip…surely an aspiring world leader would want to acquaint himself in greater detail with an apparent success story in the resolution of conflict.”

McCarthy went on to note, “A more likely explanation might well be the unimportance his campaign strategists attach to the Irish vote in America.”

That could certainly be the case. Repeated attempts to have Obama address an Irish presidential forum have failed, while it now seems very likely that John McCain will take the opportunity in the near future.

Perhaps there is no place for the old ethnic building coalitions in the new politics that Obama says he represents — or perhaps there is.

In 1980 Americans struggled with a similar type election which pitted incumbent Jimmy Carter, a known quantity like McCain, against former actor Ronald Reagan, then very much like Obama, considered a leap in the dark.

Eventually Reagan won the ethnic vote over in droves, creating an entire new category of voters called “Reagan Democrats,” and cashed in with an historic win.

Obama’s task is to succeed where Gore and Kerry failed, to win back those Reagan Democrats for his own party. So far he has sounded an uncertain trumpet on whether he has what it takes for them to change.

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