The Morning After by Noam Scheiber

[babylonsister]

The Morning After by Noam Scheiber
The second thoughts of Hillary's African American endorsers.
Post Date Wednesday, February 27, 2008


On January 30, readers of The New York Times' website might have noticed something intriguing in its "City Room" section. Nestled between outtakes from a night with young Republicans in Staten Island and part four of a five-part series on tenant-landlord issues was the headline: "On Michelle Obama's Guest List: Alma Rangel. What followed was a report on how the wife of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, the legendary Harlem representative, had dropped by an Obama fund-raiser on the Upper East Side.

What made the item so curious is that Rangel is a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter. He's credited with the inspiration for her maiden Senate bid in 2000; the next year, he played a pivotal role in bringing Bill Clinton's post- presidential office to 125th Street, Rangel's backyard. That such an inner member of Rangel's inner circle would be caught nibbling bruschetta behind enemy lines seemed like a major breach of protocol.

Or was it? A few days later, Alma Rangel came out from the shadows and officially endorsed Obama. Atmospherics being what they are in politics, it's hard to believe she would have taken that step without at least a tacit green light from her husband. Less hard to believe is that Rangel would have given it. With African Americans now overwhelmingly embracing Barack Obama--something that remained in doubt as recently as two months ago--these can be lonely times for the black elected officials who've endorsed his chief rival.

It was, of course, the night of the South Carolina primary when it first became obvious that African American voters had parted company with many black leaders on the matter of presidential preferences. As the exit polls gushed in showing Obama winning roughly 80 percent of the black vote, Hillary endorsers like Sheila Jackson Lee, an African American representative from Texas, suddenly found themselves waging a rearguard p.r. battle. "In South Carolina, you saw a convergence of pride and respect on the outstanding candidates that they had, and certainly in Senator Obama," was all the grim-faced Jackson Lee could muster. "There's nothing wrong with that. People choose who they want to choose."

In retrospect, the South Carolina results exposed a divide in the way the campaigns courted African American pols. The Clintons had largely operated from a top-down model--relying on personal relationships and the self-interest of black politicians and hoping their constituents would follow suit. In one now- famous episode, they went so far as to give State Senator Darrell Jackson, a prominent pastor, a consulting contract. By contrast, the Obama campaign generally observed a "no walking-around money" policy. It made the case to African American politicians by pointing to its grassroots strength (though it didn't hurt that Obama's PAC handed out nearly $200,000 to candidates and political groups in early primary states last year). "After we won Iowa, I went to a lot of leaders and said, 'You better get on the train before it comes rolling through here,'" recalls Anton Gunn, Obama's South Carolina political director. "Some laughed it off; others recognized this was for real."


more...

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=22eab0c0-de64-4933-9f0d-0fa76f2358e1