Doug Henwood Talks

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0107/2402.html

Clinton Woos Black Vote, Targets Obama By: Ben Smith January 22, 2007 11:38 PM EST

When Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton went away for their last holiday
before the storm of the 2008 presidential election, they chose the
island of Anguilla, a tiny British possession a bit off the Caribbean
social circuit.

Aides to the Democratic senator from New York refused even to discuss
the reports of what country they were in, and nothing more of their
trip was ever revealed.

But there aren’t, really, vacations in Hillaryland. And the Clintons’
time in Anguilla was well spent. For although they weren’t hobnobbing
with the usual political suspects, they spent much of their vacation
with someone more important: Robert Johnson, the man known as the
“First Black Billionaire.”

Far from conceding African-American support to the most credible
candidate ever of African descent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the
Clintons are pushing aggressively for the help of their longtime
allies in the black business, political and entertainment elite.
Clinton’s supporters say she intends to make the Illinois senator
fight for every black endorsement and every black vote. It’s a
strategy that pushes Obama to decide just how black he can afford to
be: Will he pitch himself to African-American voters as the black
candidate, or hew to the post-racial line that’s helped make him
sensationally popular with white Democrats?

“He’s not built to be the black candidate,” said a Clinton adviser,
speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I don’t think he wants to
play to the Jesse Jackson wing of the party, and I’m not convinced
that he wins them overwhelmingly either. His youth and inexperience
play against him in that world — he’s the young whippersnapper who
didn’t pay his dues.”

Obama aides Tommy Vietor and Robert Gibbs did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.

Johnson — founder of Black Entertainment Television and owner of the
NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats — stands at the pinnacle of the black elite
and embodies its longstanding ties to the Clintons. He didn’t respond
to a request for an interview, but three people familiar with the
Clintons’ Anguilla trip confirmed that Johnson — an old Friend of
Bill — spent time with the Clintons on the island, where he owns a
home. And while Johnson isn’t a prominent public figure in American
politics, he’s a major behind-the-scenes power crucial to a central
front in Clinton’s campaign for president: a full-court press on the
African-American elite.

“She is conceding no ground, and I don’t anticipate or expect that
the African-American community would want her to,” said Minyon Moore,
a consultant to the Clinton campaign who’s directing her national
black outreach.

“I don’t see it as a hard battle for her,” Moore said of the contest
for the support of black leaders. “I see it as a reaffirmation of
people she already knows and support she already has.”

Moore’s own presence on the campaign appears to be part of that
story. A White House aide to Bill Clinton, she advised Obama last
year before returning to the Clinton camp. She described Obama
yesterday as “a very well-spoken young man.”

Another senior African-America operative, Bill Lynch, has also signed
on with Clinton.

“I tried to reach out to the Obama people, but I haven’t heard from
them, so I’m working for Hillary,” said Lynch, a senior figure in New
York’s black political establishment who’s worked for Clinton in the
past. “That’s where I was going to end up anyhow.”

“This is all about loyalty and the strength of relationships that the
Clintons have engendered over the years,” said Basil Smikle, another
black New York political consultant who used to work for Clinton, and
supports her candidacy. “It’s going to be hard to look them in the
face and say, ‘I can’t support you.’ “

Clinton, for her part, appears to have inherited her husband’s deep
African-American support. Toni Morrison called him the “first black
president,” and it was the unflinching support of many black
Democrats, perhaps more than anything else, that carried him through
impeachment. And despite the deafening buzz about Obama’s candidacy,
Sen. Clinton has held her own in the polls.

In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in mid-January, Clinton
received 53 percent of African-Americans’ support; Obama received 27
percent. The poll also found 85 percent of blacks view Clinton
favorably, while 12 percent view her unfavorably. Only 59 percent of
African-Americans said they had a favorable opinion of Obama, to 19
percent with an unfavorable opinion.

“Obama doesn’t have Hillary or Bill Clinton’s track record in our
community,” said Weldon Latham, a Washington lawyer and fund-raiser
close to the Clintons. “I’m looking to hear what Mr. Obama has to say
about how he’s going to make this country better for African- Americans, other than the obvious benefit of him being a role model.”

Obama has made moves both toward positioning himself as the black
candidate and away from that label. He appeared in New York recently
at a conference led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and appeared to claim
Jackson’s mantle.

“I would not be here the same way that many of the businesses would
not be here, had it not been for 1984, had it not been for 1988,”
Obama said, referring to black business owners at the event.

But Obama, who has repeatedly called on Americans to look past racial
politics, has an ambivalent relationship with the civil rights
movement, on which Jackson’s candidacy was based.

“He’s always given Rev. Jackson credit for knocking down doors and
raising ceilings. He doesn’t distance himself at all,” said Frank
Watkins, Jackson’s 1988 political director and an aide to Rep. Jesse
Jackson Jr., D-Ill. “He embraces the tradition but he’s not part of
the establishment.”

Indeed, outside Chicago, where he and Jackson both live and where
Obama’s wife, Michelle, grew up with Jackson’s children, Obama has
weak ties both to the civil rights generation of black leaders and to
the black political establishment. And Obama’s inner circle of
campaign staff is largely white, though a second round of campaign
hires carefully included two African-American advisers, including a
second pollster and an Obama law school classmate who will be a
policy adviser.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, meanwhile, has already emerged as a thorn in
Obama’s side. He told The Politico that none of the 2008 candidates
has addressed the civil rights agenda — including poverty and police
brutality — to his satisfaction, and that he will decide whether to
launch his own presidential campaign in April. He also resisted
Obama’s rhetorical tendency to paint himself as a new figure for a
new generation.

“He and I are contemporaries and he and I are laboring at the same
time in the same situation,” said Sharpton, who said he plans to meet
Obama, Clinton and another Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen.
Chris Dodd, D-Conn., in Washington Thursday.

The contest for the black elite could shape the way Obama emerges
before the national audience, and the way he plays in the first two
contests in the overwhelmingly white states of Iowa and New
Hampshire. And the example of Jackson offers little guidance. In
1984, most of the black establishment backed Walter Mondale.
Jackson’s racially animated campaign still won overwhelmingly among
African-American voters.

“The grassroots basically ran (the black leadership) over in ‘84, and
in ‘88 they all went with Jackson,” recalled Watkins. As for Obama,
Watkins said, the tension between ethnic pride and mass appeal “is
the line he has to walk.”

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