When Obama is defeated

In today’s Washington Post Randall Kennedy, a professor from Harvard University contemplates the racial implications of an Obama defeat in Novemeber (are they preparing everyone?) in “The Big ‘What If’“;

Never before have my emotions been so exercised by a political campaign. For one thing, never before has a candidate so fully challenged the many inhibitions that have prevented people of all races, including African Americans, from seriously envisioning presidential power in the hands of someone other than a white American. With intelligence, verve and elegance, Obama has opened the public mind to the idea of a black president and made that idea broadly attractive.

The senator’s progressive politics, cosmopolitan ethos and pragmatic style have turned me into an enthusiastic supporter, and I savor the prospect of his triumph.

The key word in those entire paragraphs, to me, is “progressive”. Kennedy goes on to describe the anger and rage and disappointment he and other Black Americans will suffer when Obama is defeated…all of it due to their perceptions of racism in this country. But the truth is that Obama will be defeated by the very thing that got him the Democrat nomination…his politics.

Kennedy briefly touches on that;

Black America, of course, is diverse. Some black conservatives — columnist Thomas Sowell or Ken Blackwell, former secretary of state of Ohio — will undoubtedly be delighted by an Obama defeat; he is, after all, their ideological foe. But there are also black leftists who oppose him. Writing in the Progressive magazine, Prof. Adolph Reed of the University of Pennsylvania urges voters to reject Obama (as well as McCain) because he is a “vacuous opportunist” who, like Bill Clinton, conservatizes the leftward end of the American political spectrum. A close variant is the camp of blacks who will be relieved by an Obama defeat because they fear that his victory would misleadingly suggest that America is no longer in need of large-scale racial reform. Still others, who believe that Obama has hurt himself by seeking the political center and declining to be more forceful in voicing a progressive alternative to the Republican ticket, would feel somber vindication.

Why can’t White Americans vote against Obama based on their own perceptions of his politics? I’d vote in heartbeat for Michael Steele (in fact, I did vote for him in the 2006 Senate race in Maryland). I voted for H. Carl McCall as Comptroller of New York State because he’d kept both governors Cuomo and Pataki from raiding the state employees pension fund. He did a good job as Comptroller, however, I didn’t support him in his bid for Governor because of his politics – just like Obama’s politics will sink him.

Given that Kennedy is a Harvard professor and that his one resume` item on the WaPo column is a book entitled “Sellout; The Politics of Racial Betrayal”, I have to think that Kennedy is telling us that we need to put aside our politics and vote for Obama based purely on his melanin levels.

I have a feeling that Kennedy would oppose Michael Steele for the same reasons I oppose Barack Obama, though.

Category: Politics