You Gotta Believe
By: Keli Goff
Who would have ever believed it?
Six years ago after 9/11 if I had told you that the future president of the United States just might be a man whose middle name is Hussein and whose father was a Muslim, you probably would have assumed that I also believed the Tooth Fairy was a viable candidate for elected office.
But last night there we were, a nation captivated by the possibility that Barack Hussein Obama could in fact become our president.
Did I mention the fact that he also happens to be black?
William Bennett the well-known conservative pundit who agrees with Obama on very little policy wise still seemed to relish his victory. Bennett noted that the people of Iowa should feel great about sending such a powerful message with Obama’s resounding win. As CNN contributor Roland Martin later observed, Iowans overwhelmingly supported a candidate who is a member of a race that comprises less than 3% of the total Iowa population.
Just think about that for a second. One of the whitest states in America (as one CNN correspondent noted, the only place whiter is the North Pole) voted for a Hawaiian raised-half-African-black man for the most powerful office in the land. With his victory there, Obama finally put to rest the inevitable question that had hung like an unspoken cloud above his candidacy—namely that America’s “not ready for a black president.” This argument has been one of the greatest advantages of the Clinton campaign, particularly in their efforts to round up support among black voters in South Carolina. That rationale for a Clinton candidacy has now officially been put to rest. If Iowa is ready then so is America.
Just a couple of days ago I sat during a television interview and was asked to assess the validity of the final voter poll taken by Iowa’s Des Moines Register newspaper. The poll, which showed Obama winning by approximately 7 points, was challenged by Obama’s opponents along with some political observers, as inaccurate. They argued that the poll weighted Independents and first time caucus-goers, particularly younger voters, far too heavily, giving Obama a statistically inaccurate bump. I pointed out that the poll was not necessarily inaccurate because Obama did have a tremendous lead among younger voters—many of whom had not felt inspired by the democratic process until he came along. While many pundits and political writers were focused on the polls that showed Sen. Clinton with a 2-to-1 lead over Obama nationally, those of us who follow young voter trends were intrigued by other numbers, including a poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics that showed that Sen. Obama had a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over Sen. Clinton among four-year college students. This advantage had the potential to reverberate in Iowa, and did, playing a major role in Obama’s victory there.
According to the Des Moines Register heading into the caucus among voters under 35, Obama had more than three times the support of John Edwards and five times the support of Sen. Clinton. During one stump speech on a college campus, Obama jokingly chastised students by saying, “Don’t make me look bad. I don’t want to wind up on Jan 3. with people saying, ‘See, he was wasting all that time with young people.’”
They didn’t make him look bad or let him down. According to early polls as reported by CNN, young, first time caucus goers showed up in droves and showed up for Obama. Fifty-seven percent of those under 30 supported him, nearly 20 points higher than the number that went for Kerry or even Howard Dean four years ago.
Howard Fineman of Newsweek referred to the evening as the “passing of a torch,” generationally speaking. While David Gergen, an adviser to four presidents and a Sr. Analyst for CNN, noted that Obama’s victory speech conveyed shades of Martin Luther King, but more importantly gave Americans a sense that the change Obama speaks of so eloquently is unifying Americans across a racial divide, and if he can accomplish that then he can also possibly heal the partisan divide as well.
As Obama himself said during a speech on the campaign trail to some applause and laughter, “I’m a black guy running for president named Barack Obama. You gotta have hope.”
Clearly this message of hope connected with voters of all ages and all colors. As Obama said in the closing moments of his speech, “We are the United States of America and in this election, in this moment, we are ready to believe again.”
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I caught a bit of Chris Matthews on C-Span before the Iowa caucuses, and I was charmed by his forthcoming response to Obama’s campaign. He said that his Boomer generation really had to deal with race and racism in ways that the youngest members of Gen X and all of Y do not. He said that, as a kid, it was big deal if there was a “Black kid” in the class, and that was something his generation would go home and tell their Greatest Generation parents. Young people today don’t do that. Race is certainly used to describe a “Black kid” or “White kid” or whatever, but there is a very different value attached to race by younger Americans. Matthews said he, like a lot of white Americans, is standing on one side of the racial divide, the side that is honestly struggling with internalized racism and trying to emerge better citizens, and looking across the racial divide at the stalwarts of ol’ school prejudice and racism, into the faces of their white counterparts there, and urging them to cross over and join them on the path to healing. I thought that was a powerful revelation, and I think Matthews articulated the thoughts of many others with backgrounds similar to his.
Having said that, I really don’t think all that many white folk are in a dilemma over Obama’s race. I think there are more older white Americans standing with Matthews than there are on the other side. Maybe we, Black folk, should drop the issue of color. After all, why are we so shocked that a bright, articulate, empowered, graceful Senator from the African American community is inspiring so many Americans’ hope for substantive improvement through innovation and change? Clearly, the average American is there with Matthews – and they’re over it. We should get over it, too.