Before Barack Obama formally announced his candidacy for the US presidency last year, I did a three part series outlining why I thought he should run (1/25, 2/10 and 7/8/07); it wasn’t received nearly as well as it should have been on these supposedly high-quality NY blogs. And that’s because some of those who troll these sites, can’t see the nose on their faces even if standing directly in front of a mirror. I must admit that I was a bit saddened, perturbed and disappointed, at some of the responses elicited in the comment-sections; go see for yourselves. Thus Barack Obama’s victory last Tuesday is a vindication of sorts for me, since I was subject to some slight racial abuse in more than a few of those comments; especially in my finale, where I made a qualified prediction of this victory, when I said that only an “assassination” could stop him from winning.
When I first started writing about this moving phenomenon, one detractor said that I was on “crack” to even suggest that Barack could win. I didn’t scream as loudly as I could have because I have grown accustomed to that attack-stuff, which I now see it as “coming with the blogging territory” for as audacious a black man as I am. And despite the attacks, I did understand why some of the more respectful detractors felt that Barack wasn’t experienced enough. He could have surely used a little more seasoning in the Senate. But audacity seldom waits; and hope springs eternal; so it was inevitable that when both could meet on some optimistic street, they might just combine to beat the long odds against them. And they did. Audacity and hope.
Now, please don’t think for a minute that this is a self-congratulatory piece; it isn’t. I have had enough kudos dropped on me since January, to create the reverse-effect of applying preparation-H on my ego. Some have come in the form of calls or correspondence(s) from all over the world. I am already “souped-up” enough. I am using these facts to make my central point(s) here; that’s all.
When I predicted that Barack Obama would win the Iowa primary -almost two months before the caucus- some thought I was going crazy. Now today, it all looks so easy to many: “how soon do they forget!”
But back then, very few -even in the black community- allowed themselves the faculty of embracing the concept of an Obama presidency. Even when I was calling his demolition of the Clintons way in advance -during the democrats’ primary contest- there were those who suggested I should be sued for libel. And remember folks, I went into this election cycle feeling/thinking that Al Gore was the best candidate the democrats could have fielded for this race. My Obama transformation/transfusion was an evolution of sorts over the past four years or so.
I will have lots of time to write about the historical dimensions of this victory later on, but today I want to talk a little bit about what made this all happen.
This my first offering in terms of post-election analysis, and I really hope that my regular detractors on Room Eight New York Politics (www.r8ny.com) and the Daily Gotham (www.dailygotham.com), wouldn’t defile this great moment for the country -and the whole world- by getting into the comment-section with their vitriol and venom: it’s not needed; not today; not right now.
Three weeks ago I told you all that Barack Obama will win easily; the column was entitled: “My long-awaited Election Day predictions.” You can go up on my blog/ archives on either site to see it for yourself. I also told you unequivocally that he will win closer to 400 electoral votes than 300. I know I don’t get it correctly every time, but I will live with a success-percentile that’s in the high nineties: everyday of the week. LOL.
If I were given the task of describing in one word, the main reason why Barack Obama won the US presidency, it would be: “endorsements”. And I know that (as usual) many folks will come up on the blogs to terrorize my analysis. So let me go back down memory lane -short as it may be.
After Oprah Winfrey endorsed Obama over two years ago, I remember later stating, that “Oprah has placed a pair of wings on his back that will either take him to the White House or to heaven”. One friend called me to say that a chill ran down her spine, when she first read those words of mine. She understood it fully. She explained it impeccably.
Too many people missed this big endorsement. Oprah is an international icon. When she campaigned in Iowa for Barack, her website crashed from the overload of Republican hate-mail. She has a tremendous following among women of all races: especially white women. Her blessing was the catalyst for this phenom. Without Oprah’s endorsement Obama would have only been the vice-president today (at best); and that’s a maybe. She alone was good for quite a few million votes for Barack from the get-go.
Then Jesse Jackson and his congressman son (Jesse jnr.) both endorsed Barack, and so too did a few members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucus. Thus Barack didn’t see all electeds of color desert him for the Hillary Clinton bandwagon, and this had to help; at least with morale. Despite the fact that the senior Jackson had tarnished his star quite a bit over the years, he still remained a civil-rights icon. For whatever its worth it was a good endorsement. Then a few others from the civil rights crowd (an icon like Rev. Lowery, for example) followed Jesse’s lead. Then some members of the black-intelligentsia followed; people like Cornell West and Eric Dyson. And despite Barack’s relatively exotic foreign upbringing, he had been given a pass key by blacks with traditional backgrounds. This helped him to eventually overtake the Clintons amongst black voters. It took a while.
Then when Caroline Kennedy endorsed him and brought along her uncle (Senator Ted Kennedy), the primary race was -for all intents and purposes- far from competitive anymore; it was practically over. It’s only the Clintons and their fanatics who didn’t get the memo. Caroline was the beloved and treasured daughter of an icon (JFK). I couldn’t remember her as having endorsed anyone before this; at least not an endorsement of such profound dimensions. She even wrote a Sunday New York Times op-ed piece comparing Barack to her dead father. This was bigger than many will ever know. That was another very big day for the Obama campaign. There were many good days throughout. There were many contemporary icons, and many semi-icons who endorsed him along the route to victory. Every single one of these endorsements helped in bringing home the “W”.
And remember, Ted Kennedy was an icon in his own right; since he was the standard bearer of the “Liberal” brand. He had been a fixture in the senate from like since the renaissance; and his endorsement was icing on the Kennedy gift-cake.
Then Senator John Kerry (in his own right, a semi-icon of contemporary times) slipped another endorsement in there, and by then the Clintons were finished. I remember a column in which I wrote “stick a fork in Billary, they are done; they are cooked.” See my “Waterloo” or “Sonny Liston” columns -if interested. I even took flack for that from some well known progressives in this naked city, and also for repeatedly writing that the primary contest was over; it was a non-contest. There were so many who thought then, that my prognostications were premature; even after Barack racked up about a dozen wins in a row. Objectivity be damned.
And even before that, when I said that Billary would be punished for their pre-New Hampshire behavior, my detractors were incensed. But the Clintons did steal that primary with their total lies, obfuscations, fabrications and exaggerations about Barack’s abortion position (especially). They also mailed and “robot-called” these -and other- mendacities to the anxious female voters of that state. Sixty-one percent of the voters who came out in NH were women. As they say in horse-racing terms: she only won by a nose -despite the high female turnout. The female vote here was almost ten percent higher than normal. Ask yourself why.
But back to endorsements: sure and soon enough Senator John Edwards stepped in to do Barack; so too Governor Bill Richardson of New México. The latter brought quite a few Hispanics along for the ride. And by the time you got to Al (another icon in his own right) and Tipper Gore’s endorsements, you could feel a united party was going to leave the convention on the way to victory. Of course Bill and Hillary had to fall in line eventually; they knew what time it was. Then add Howard Dean and the progressive wing of the party to the mix; plus Biden, Dodd, Kucinich, presidential contenders et al; plus a loyal band of elected dems: and it was hard to envisage a losing election effort for this political party.
What must be extrapolated from all this, was the fact that when the contest started for the Dems nomination, Hillary Clinton had racked up more endorsements than even Vice-president Walter Mondale did in 1984. In New York State alone, she had about 120 of the 135-odd Democrats in the Albany legislature. She even staged an intimidating “show of support” with near all of them on the capitol steps one afternoon. It was some sight; but Barack is so cool that it seems like nothing intimidates him; far less that display of strength.
In the city itself, the percentage was even higher. The vast majority of elected democrats, cowardly saw her nomination as inevitable. In fact, all around the country, Hillary Clinton had picked up the endorsements of about ninety percent of the elected officials who were democrats. This was awesome in itself, once isolated from other objectively positive factors of any political campaign.
So it was understandable that a prediction made long before most of this (July 2007) -by an inconsequential blogger named Rock Hackshaw- saying that Obama will win once he isn’t assassinated; couldn’t even get that column linked to the national blogs, by his own editor (Ben Smith/Politico). After all, this was almost a year and a half out of the general election, and about six months from New Hampshire.
But for those of us who had read his two books, Barack Obama’s winning chances were always good enough to make a wager or two; and many of those who saw his brilliant convention keynote speech of 2004 felt there was something special about this “bad-boy”. Those who had heard his anti-Iraq War speeches -which he delivered before and after the start of the war- knew that he was a gifted orator. Some even felt that in ability, he was as comparable a speaker to any great American who ever lived. And many of the blacks who said this were great fans of Malcolm X -as a speaker.
Look, there are many other significant contributory factors to his victory that I won’t get into here in this column; but without Oprah’s early endorsement, this mulatto (Barack Obama) wouldn’t have gotten off the starting-blocks as well as he did. He would have been in mid-pack at best; not breathing down the neck of the two front runners, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards: as he was in the post-Oprah period.
And all along the way Barack Obama got some key -and timely- endorsements from people carrying tremendous credibility with certain segments of the population. They added up; every single one of them: although some weighed more than others.
Thus when the Republicans threw the kitchen sink at him, in the form of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi and others; and when they kept harping on his middle name “Hussein” -suggesting he was either a Muslim and/or Arab; and when they called him a “socialist” and/or “terrorist”, or at least a sympathizer of both socialism and/or terrorism; and when they advertised that we he was too “radical” and such; all these charges -with attendant innuendo- couldn’t stack up against the credible endorsements he had already captured. And that’s why -even today- the repugnant Republicans cannot understand how this country could vote in such an overwhelming way for Barack Obama. And furthermore, they saw him as only a freshman senator to booth.
And while we are on endorsements, don’t forget the newspapers. Barack Obama -as far as I know- held about a 250 to 110 plurality (approximation) amongst endorsements from mainstream newspapers all over the country. The circulation numbers were something like 25 million to 10 million (estimation). At colleges/universities the ratio was even higher; I got to something like 3 to 1 in my search of nearly 100. All these endorsements contradicted the stark paintings of Obama’s character that the Republicans were peddling, and yet they kept pushing the character smears on Obama like a non-repentant drug dealer. The folks at Fox News Network (except for Kirsten Powers) were the main culprits in this regard; now today, they are dancing in the streets like near everyone else: mesmerized as they should be, by what happened in front of their very eyes; and despite their treacherous cries and lies.
However, the “coup de grace” -as it relates to endorsements- came in the form of General Colin Powell’s late endorsement of Obama’s candidacy. This icon (again), who had garnered the highest approval ratings of anyone alive in this country -and maybe of anyone who ever lived here- essentially shut the door on Sarah Palin-mania. He incredibly deemed her as unprepared to step in and be president, in the event that John McCain was incapacitated or worse. Powell’s credentials and credibility gave the McCain camp very little room for a comeback. In fact, a few more Republicans immediately followed suit.
Along the way, Obama garnered further endorsements that were quite noticeable. A key one came from William Buckley jnr. His father was a conservative icon. The anger at Fox News Network was palpable. The haters over there suggested that William’s dad was rolling over in his grave; somehow I dispute that. Bill Buckley was a man of integrity; his character and intellect would have led him to endorse Obama like the many others who did. These endorsements made up the difference between winning and losing. Today the world feels like a better place because of the contribution(s) of these bold endorsees to the winning effort. They deserve a round of applauds. They deserve our thanks, cheers and praises.
Thank you Oprah; and thanks to all the others too.
Stay tuned-in folks.