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I've been ruminating about the irony confronting the Clintons in this election cycle. For most of the last decade and a half the Clintons have been wildly popular with African-Americans. The hyperbole included calling Bubba Bill "the first black President." More concretely, when Bill C. left the White House he moved his base of operations to an office in Harlem where he was received like the prodigal son.
African-Americans are certainly one of the major core voting groups supporting Democrats, clearly the most reliable. So...if you were to hypothetically imagine a candidate who could beat a Clinton for the Democrat nomination for President, you would have to think of a candidate who could lure this core group away from the Clintons. Logically, you would conclude that person would need to be even more attractive to African-Americans than the Clintons are, while not being so hard-edged that liberal white voters were driven away.
What amazing bad luck for the Clintons that the exact person you would have hypothetically imagined actually existed in the person of a very junior Senator from Illinois, one B. Hussein Obama. Here was a quite literal "African-American," son of an African father and an American mother, who was raised by whites and fits in comfortably in white society. The fabled Clinton electoral operation must feel like they have encountered the perfect storm. Perhaps the long primary marathon will be over Tuesday night; I think I'm about ready for it to settle down into the head-to-head battle for the Presidency.
---o---O---o---I was chatting politics with my brother-in-law yesterday. Each of us votes our clear-eyed self-interest and neither apologizes for doing so. He votes Democratic most of the time, as I vote Republican most of the time. It was an interesting, entirely civil discussion which revealed that we hold dissimilar world views - no surprise there. We agree that the country should work much harder to control illegal immigration, but that view will not much influence his vote in November.
---o---O---o---The last two presidents who have come from Texas have had a tough time of it. Democrat Lyndon Johnson didn't run for reelection as a result of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and his identification in the popular mind with that conflict. Republican George W. Bush was reelected but ended up in his second term almost as unpopular with his own party as he was with Democrats. Republicans running for the party's nomination for President have studiously avoided being identified with W.
Two other Texans who have thought to run for the Presidency - Phil Gramm, Lloyd Bentsen - have had little luck. Is there something about being a Texan that creates problems for politicians at the presidential level?
