What Obama Means By Unity
LAST, JONATHAN V.
What Obama Means By Unity A liberal majority. BY JONATHAN V. LAST Sometime before Barack Obama’s strong showing on Super Tuesday, the Washington Post observed that the senator had been...
...But, as Real Clear Politics’s Jay Cost discovered, a regression analysis of the voting in Nevada and South Carolina showed almost a straight-line correlation between the racial make-up of an area and the percentage of white votes Obama received: The more uniformly white an area was, the better Obama did among white voters...
...And you can afford to be courteous...
...I did not travel around this state . . . to see a white South Carolina, and a black South Carolina...
...It was a comforting thought in the wake of an election where more than 80 percent of African Americans voted for the African-American candidate...
...We can’t have hundreds of thousands of people coming over to the United States without us having any idea who they are...
...Yet a few weeks later, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Obama released a statement that was decidedly less unifying...
...During his South Carolina victory speech, the crowd kept chanting that “race doesn’t matter...
...Very politely of course...
...And you can say, “Yes, sir...
...They don’t receive nearly as much attention: Perhaps because an examination of them shows Obama to be a somewhat conventional political fi gure...
...It was a striking moment of Obama acting as a unifying presence...
...That we can disagree without being disagreeable...
...Then there’s his stance on immigration...
...it’s about equality...
...When his decidedly pro-abortion crowd began to jeer them, Obama defended the protestors, saying that their demonstration was honorable and within the great American political tradition...
...Whether or not the Post was being arch, they had it about right...
...He says he wants to begin such reform by securing the border with Mexico, which he justifi es by saying that we need to know who is coming into America...
...Yes, ma’am...
...And they want to see that we can—that we don’t have to agree on everything to work on something...
...Not in spin and PR, but in straight talk...
...But on both of these themes, Obama’s behavior is very different from his rhetoric...
...He embodies the hope of our nation...
...But he has two secondary themes: “straight talk” and “unity...
...But it does show that race matters to many Obama voters...
...And you do so not just because you think that you’re always going to persuade them, but because people out in America, outside of Washington, are listening...
...hope” and “change” are the two dominant messages he preaches on the stump...
...Nothing in his fullthroated defense of abortion-ondemand went so far as to hope that abortion could be safe, legal, and rare...
...I saw South Carolina...
...Obama’s definition of unity sounds a lot like power politics...
...But at least he wants to practice it politely...
...But the uncomfortable truth is that race mattered very much for Obama in the early going...
...But if you’re going to be in the way of change, get out of the way—we’re pushing you aside...
...That’s how we can attract some Republicans...
...Obama is for comprehensive immigration reform...
...Not only did African Americans vote in overwhelming numbers for Obama in what looked, at least on the surface, like racial solidarity...
...Obama rarely speaks about policy specifi cs...
...As the voiceover in one of his ads explains, “Only Barack Obama can bring a fractured people together...
...You can talk to people who don’t agree with you...
...He promises to tell voters not what they want to hear, but the hard truths that they need to hear...
...There is a real divide between those who think that America is doing okay, and can do better, and those who think that America has been hijacked and must be taken back from some nebulous other...
...He wants to unite 51 percent of America...
...Yet he dismisses the impact illegal immigrants have on low-wage workers...
...He also talks about bringing together the people who have “lost faith in this country...
...And if you follow him around enough, very occasionally he lets that notion slip...
...During the course of his standard stump speech, Obama promises to deliver “a politics that [isn’t] grounded in ideology, but in practicality...
...And “No, sir...
...When he talks about unity, Obama means uniting the people who agree with him...
...No, ma’am...
...He frequently says that after he’s elected president, Americans will be able to “take our country back...
...Start with the straight talk...
...He said that Roe “is about more than a woman’s right to choose...
...That’s how we can attract independents [to the] change agenda...
...At the Los Angeles debate, for instance, he said “there is no doubt that we have to get control of our borders...
...That’s how we build a working majority for change...
...BY JONATHAN V. LAST Sometime before Barack Obama’s strong showing on Super Tuesday, the Washington Post observed that the senator had been campaigning across this great land on a “platform of hope and change...
...And he portrays himself as the great uniter of the Republic...
...But Obama has no interest in bridging this chasm...
...When asked about this, he said: “I think to suggest somehow that the problem that we’re seeing in inner-city unemployment, for example, is attributable to immigrants, I think, is a case of scapegoating that I do not believe in, I do not subscribe to...
...as the area became more racially mixed, Obama’s percentage of the white vote dropped...
...That’s how we win elections...
...Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...He called abortion a “fundamental right” and boasted that he has always been a strong supporter of “reproductive justice...
...During one campaign stop in New Hampshire, Obama was heckled by anti-abortion protestors...
...This phenomenon could mean any number of things and ultimately may be unimportant to the outcome of the election...
...One night in New Hampshire, Obama embarked on a long discourse that hinted at what his idea of unity entails: [I]n my own life, I’ve discovered that if you really know what you stand for, if you know what you believe in, if you know who you are fi ghting for, if you know what you care about and cannot be compromised— then you can afford to reach out across the aisle...
...And Obama fed that sentiment, saying, “The assumption that African Americans cannot support the white candidate . . . we are here tonight to say that that is not the America that we believe in...
...On the question of “unity,” Obama’s behavior is even more uneven...
...Immigration reform may or may not be a good idea on balance, but to refuse to recognize the pressures illegal immigration puts on low-end wages is to shy away from a very hard truth...
...For a Democratic party that has been dominated lately by anger and rancor, that’s a change worth hoping for...
...The more closely you listen to Obama, the more obvious it becomes that while he’s very much for civility, his commitment to unity is suspect...
Vol. 13 • February 2008 • No. 22
