Race drives strategy, stirs uncertainty

By: John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei October 6, 2008 08:58 PM EST

Journalists by instinct tend to hedge their bets, so most don’t say in public what they really think. But our conversations with colleagues make clear what many think about the great race between Barack Obama and John McCain: This election is just about over, and Obama is just about to be president. There’s a big difference, of course, between just about over and stick-a-fork-in-it over. A lot could happen, after all, in the 29 days before Nov. 4. And that leads to something else that a lot of political reporters — and a lot of political operatives and elected officials from both major parties that we have spoken with — believe to be true but tend not to say when cameras are rolling. By far the most likely thing that could derail Obama’s victory is a racial backlash that is not visible in today’s polls but is waiting to surge on Election Day — coaxed to the surface (to the extent coaxing is needed) with the help of coded appeals from McCain and his conservative allies. Racial issues tend to hover in the background in much of the public analysis of the Obama-McCain horserace — often mentioned but not usually as the dominant factor. By contrast, it is increasingly the subject of obsessive interest in the nonstop, not-for-attribution conversation that takes place between reporters, political analysts and campaign sources in the heat of an election. As a result, much of the news coverage and commentary that the media will produce over the next month will flow from the assumption that racial antagonisms are an unexploded bomb in this contest. By this logic, if Obama does not head into Nov. 4 with a lead of at least several points in the polls, there is a good chance he’ll be swamped by prejudice that will flourish in the privacy of the voting booth. “If Obama loses a close race,” James Carville told our colleague David Paul Kuhn, “it is almost inevitable that [racism] will be a very big part of the interpretation of the race.” On the principle that someone who had bet against the conventional wisdom at every turn in this presidential race would have made a lot of money, Politico dispatched reporters to examine survey data and talk to voters in an effort to gauge the potential of a racial surge against Obama. See Also McCain forced to defend N.C. McCain: 'Who is Barack Obama?' Ayers script hopes to gain from Obama This reporting did not debunk the conventional wisdom. But it did find reason for at least a measure of skepticism on a couple of fronts: The Bradley effect This is the phenomenon, named after former Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley, by which black candidates are thought to perform better in polls than they do on Election Day. (Bradley lost a race for governor in 1982 that polls said he was supposed to win. Similarly, Douglas Wilder barely won his race for Virginia governor in 1989, despite a big lead in polls). Kuhn’s reporting, based on extensive conversations with several of the nation’s top pollsters and political consultants, shows a complex picture. The pollsters say the days of voters lying in large numbers to pollsters to disguise their racial concerns are largely over. The only way the phenomenon of voters misleading pollsters will matter is if the race is very tight, they say. “I have a concern that going into Election Day, in a dead heat, there could be some drop-off in support of Obama, of one or two points, because some voters are conflicted about race in this election,” said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi. Buoyed by concerns about the financial crisis, Obama is building a big lead nationally and in key states – a lead that if it holds is probably big enough to compensate for any racial backlash, the pollsters say. See story here: Do voters lie about racial concerns? African-American turnout There are signs that Obama is benefiting from a massive surge in voter registration and early voting among African-Americans — one that might be equal or greater than any white backlash. The surge is happening in Georgia and North Carolina, in particular. As Ben Smith reports in another piece, these efforts are being promoted with an under-reported campaign of Obama advertising aimed at the African-American vote. As an Obama spokesman dryly told Smith, “If you didn’t notice it, then you probably weren’t the target.” See story here: How Obama quietly targets blacks The economy Politico reporter Josh Kraushaar traveled to Scranton, Pa., where many of the older, lower-middle class white voters who are supposedly susceptible to racially coded appeals live. He found deep anxiety about the troubled economy but relatively little discussion about race. It may take setbacks on Wall Street to reveal progress in racial attitudes on Main Street. See story here: It’s not the racial issues, stupid A word of warning about all of this. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right. Politico’s reporting found plenty of reasons to suppose that racial divisions could yet be a potent force next month. A Democratic state legislator in a key Midwest swing state told us it is clear many older white voters, especially union members and those in rural reaches, will never vote for a black man. Lorene Coates, a Democratic legislator in North Carolina, said voters tell her the same thing all the time. “We’re a Southern state, [and] there are people who will not vote for a black man.” Lisa Boscola, a Democratic state senator in Pennsylvania, said voters usually aren’t that blunt. She said they raise other concerns: experience, trustworthiness. “They’re trying to find an excuse,” she said. The very murkiness of the race question is itself powerful evidence of changing times. Racial polarization used to be the great constant in American politics. In this election, instead, race is the great imponderable. As long as that is the case, said Wilder, his friend Obama would be wise not to cut things close. “Racism has not gone away, not will it ever leave,” said Wilder. This means Obama had better build an insurmountable edge “to offset the possibilities of racism or oversampling or people saying one thing and meaning another.” Read original article here