2008 may be the best chance Obama gets, but that does not mean he can win. As Bob Herbert points out in the NY Times today (TimesSelect), Republicans are salivating at the chance to oppose an inexperienced, northern, and, lest we forget, black Democrat in the 2008 election. As the Washington Post's Thomas Edsall has written (first in 1992's "Chain Reaction" and most recently in the smart and illuminating "Building Red America"), race remains one of the Democrat's biggest electoral problems.
Edsall's numbers show that the Democratic party paid a steep price in the votes of whites, especially white men, for its civil rights initiatives, and the votes of those white men still determine many elections. "Chain Reaction" argued that as long as "white, European ethnic, often Catholic voters in the North...and lower-income southern white populists...cast Democratic ballots, the liberal coalition thrived; when they did not, the liberal coalition collapsed." Edsall says these northern white Catholics and southern poor whites stopped voting Democrat because of the Democrats' civil rights initiatives.
This remains as much of a problem for Democrats now as it was when "Chain Reaction" was first published in 1992. Edsall said as much in a recent Washington Post interview, "The politics of race continues to contribute to the larger debate, especially over taxes and social programs. Many whites, including many former Democrats, see their taxes going to pay for programs that disproportionately benefit minorities. Democratic candidates continue to lose by 20-plus percentage points (a landslide) among whites with just high school degrees, i.e. just the working class voters that the "party of the people" ought to carry by a landslide, in theory at least. Race is not the only factor, but it is one of a number contributing to these continuing Democratic problems."
Maybe Obama could win the Democratic nomination. But is America (and the white, once-Democratic voters who defected on race issues) ready to elect a black President?
