"Establishment Frightened Of African-American Swing to Obama"

Chris Bowers:

From the recent ABC-WaPo poll:

Clinton's and Obama's support among white voters changed little since December, but the changes among black Democrats were dramatic. In December and January Post-ABC News polls, Clinton led Obama among African Americans by 60 percent to 20 percent. In the new poll, Obama held a narrow advantage among blacks, 44 percent to 33 percent. The shift came despite four in five blacks having a favorable impression of the New York senator.

From the recent Time poll:

As for the Democrats, Clinton's lead has eroded since the last TIME poll. Obama has closed to within 12 points (36% to 24%), gaining seven points since January, a reflection perhaps of the dust-up over anti-Clinton comments by Hollywood mogul David Geffen, who is now supporting Obama. The African-American component of the Democrats polled appears to be evenly split between the two senators.

It is remarkable that Time would credit Obama closing the gap to the Geffen sideshow when they have the actual answer for Obama pulling closer in the same paragraph. The reason Obama is pulling closer to Clinton in national polling is because he is quickly making up ground, and even taking the lead, on Clinton, among African-Americans. A couple of months ago, Clinton's lead in national polls was largely buttressed by an enormous lead among African-Americans. For example, in a late November poll from Pew, Clinton lead Obama by 20 points, but held a much larger, 54-21 lead over Obama among black protestants. For Clinton to have held leads among African-Americans of around 35-40 points, and to now either be tried with Obama or even trailing, probably represents the entire amount of ground Obama has made up on Clinton over the past month. And Obama has indeed made up ground on Clinton in every single poll taken within the past two weeks:

Poll Current Clinton Lead January Clinton Lead Shift
Fox, 2/28 11 28 17
Time, 2/26 12 19 7
ABC-WaPo, 2/25 12 24 12
Zogby, 2/24 8 15 7
Four Poll Mean 10.75 21.5 10.75

Now, all of these polls include Al Gore except for the most recent Zogby (which means Clinton's lead in probably somewhat larger than 10.75 points), but for Obama to make up ground on Clinton despite Al Gore being removed from a poll is actually quite remarkable. The second half of February appears to have seen a substantial shift toward Obama that is verified across quite a few polls. The source of this shift is two fold. First, Obama has raised his name ID by about 5-10% among Democrats. Second, and more importantly, Obama appears to have benefited from a major swing among African-Americans. Obama's coalition now appears to have three pillars instead of two: young people, liberals, and now African-Americans. At the current rate of change, Obama will equal Clinton by the end of April. My guess is that if he does catch Clinton, it will take a month or two longer than that, since the low hanging fruit is always easier to grasp.

It is not difficult to see how the rise of Obama could distress certain elements in the media. Since at least 2005, it has been widespread CW within elite media and political circles that Clinton would be a shoe-in for the nomination because of her supposed rock-hard support among African-Americans. It was assumed that this support would inoculate her against any potential netroots challenge from the old Dean coalition, which, whether or not it is accurate, is still perceived in those same circles as being young people and liberals. Now, large elements of the old Dean coalition are merging with African-Americans to pose an extremely serious challenge to Clinton. This is dangerous to the media and political elite for at least three reasons: it shows the CW was wrong, poses a threat to the political machine status quo, and greatly enhances the strategic positioning of netroots power. A netroots alliance with African-Americans forms a powerful reform coalition within the Democratic Party that even the Clinton machine might not be able to stop. In Chicago in early 2004, I saw this alliance steamroll anything that stood in its way, and wondered if it could happen on a national stage. Considering that Obama is once again the candidate leading the alliance, I am left with a striking feeling of déjà vu. Right now, Obama is still tied with Clinton among African-Americans, and with Edwards among the netroots. If he were to take a sizable advantage in either category, much less both, the days of Clinton's lead would be over.

Whatever people may think of Obama himself, his coalition is a real threat to the establishment status quo. I can't help but wonder how much this threat plays in role in the constant drumbeat about whether or not he is "black enough" to deserve African-American support. CNN recently had Candy Crowley pump out another story along those lines, and now the Baltimore Sun is doing the same. Overall, Google comes up with 100,000 results for a search on "Barack Obama" and "black enough." The entire question strikes me as a constant drumbeat designed to keep African-American support behind establishment political machines, and to prevent the above described reform alliance from coalescing. It also makes me realize that if Obama manages to win the Democratic nomination via this alliance, expect the nastiest smear season ever against him in the general--the sort of shit that will make swiftboating seem mild. This is because whether or not Obama is a threat to the status quo, the netroots-African American coalition absolutely is. Expect virtually every element of the establishment to do whatever it can to make sure that it is never allowed to take power in America.

H/t to Booman. Cross-posted at www.seattleforbarackobama.com.