What Kerry Knows: Democrats Can't Take Black Votes for Granted

Democrats thought they could ignore African Americans after two terms of centrist President Bill Clinton's successful appeals to white middle class voters. Al Gore's loss to Bush Jr. changed all that, and, writes PNS contributor Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Kerry knows he can't afford to treat blacks as a political liability. Hutchinson (ehutchi344@aol.com) is a political analyst and author of "The Crisis in Black and Black" (Middle Passage Press).

BY EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

Top Democrats finally admitted this election that they can't win without black votes. That should have been apparent after the 1960 cliffhanger presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Midway through the campaign, Kennedy made a courtesy phone call to Martin Luther King Sr. in Atlanta to express concern for Martin Luther King Jr., imprisoned on criminal charges following civil rights protests in Georgia. Nixon refused to call King. Blacks had up until then routinely given a significant percent of their vote to the Republicans. Instead, they voted for Kennedy in droves. This was a crucial factor in his victory.

In the near-half century since then, blacks have given 80 percent or more of their vote to the Democratic presidential contender. Democratic candidates knew that black votes could provide the safe cushion they needed for victory. That was the case in the winning effort of Jimmy Carter in 1976. Even in defeat, black votes could make the race respectable. That was the case with Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Top Democrats, however, did not reward that political loyalty. Following the smash victories of Reagan in 1980 and 1984, they concluded that blacks were a political liability, radically shifted gears and made a mad dash after white, middle class votes. That strategy seemed to pay dividends with Bill Clinton. He beat Bush Sr. in 1992 with an unabashed pitch to beef up law enforcement and defense spending, boost middle-class earnings, tout family values, downsize welfare, modify affirmative action and keep Jesse Jackson at arm's length.

The idea was to neutralize white male support among Republicans, or at least not do anything to swell the numbers of whites that would rush to the Republicans, while avoid being tagged by the Republicans as a tax-and-spend Democrat who tilted toward special interests -- i.e., blacks and Latinos. Despite Clinton's directional shift toward the white middle-class, the insurgent campaign of Ross Perot and the solid support of black voters enabled him to snatch four Southern states from Bush Sr. and ensure victory.

Gore pretty much followed Clinton's script. He said little about civil rights, health care and education issues, and until late in his campaign made few appearances in black communities. He paid dearly for it. In Ohio, also a key battleground state in 2000, Bush's margin of victory over Gore was less than 4 percent. But more than 100,000 eligible black voters didn't bother to vote in Ohio. If Gore and the top Democrats had made a real effort to inspire and organize them, they might have tipped the scale to Gore. Despite alleged Republican voter machinations, and the dumping of thousands of ex-felons from the rolls in Florida, many eligible black voters also didn't bother going to the polls there. A strong black turnout could easily have put Gore over the top in the state. The loss of Ohio and Florida because of the tepid black turnout ultimately cost him the White House.

Gore simply did not have the charisma and dynamism of Clinton, or his eight-year track record of paying symbolic attention to some black issues. They did not perceive that the stakes were as high in his race against Bush Jr.

Kerry learned from Gore's folly. He crunched the numbers and found two things: that the overall percentage of black voter turnout in 1996 and 2000 matched that of whites, and that the number of white votes that Clinton got in 1996 and Gore got in 2000 continued to decline. Kerry concluded there was little chance that he could increase his take of the overall percentage of the white vote, especially the white male vote, which makes up 40 percent of the electorate. Their flight from the Democratic Party during the Reagan years appeared irreversible.

Kerry and the Democrats also concluded that a marginal increase in the overall black voter turnout in the key battleground states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania could partially offset the solid bloc of white male votes that Bush had a lock on. Simply hammering Bush as the archenemy of blacks wasn't enough, however. Kerry had to pull a page from the past and make special appeals to blacks, even at the risk of being tarred by Republicans as pro-minority. He promised to increase spending on jobs and education, strengthen and protect civil rights, and civil liberties, and appoint moderates to the Supreme Court. He also did something that the Democrats hadn't done in the past three elections: he publicly embraced civil rights leaders and black elected officials. That ignited the missing spark among blacks, and considerably bumped black registration numbers up.

This was a significant break with the Democrats' sorry, recent history of retreating from black voters. It was also much overdue public recognition that in tight races the black vote can make or break Democratic presidential contenders.

(10292004)****END**** (C) COPYRIGHT PNS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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