The conventional wisdom that the Dems are more united than the GOP this presidential cycle was threatened by last week's New Hampshire results. Barack Obama's Iowa coalition of women, students, and college-educated upper-income progressives cracked wide open in New Hampshire, as a solid bloc of female voters departed to Hillary's camp, along with die-hard party loyalists. That conventional wisdom, and the unity that sustained it, could be on a path to take more damage as the primary season heads south, and west.
In South Carolina, a potential rift is developing in the party base as African-American voters there are torn between their loyalties to a Clinton candidacy, and the possibility of electing the first African-American president in history. This rift is shown in the recent antagonism in the black community over the Clintons' rather tasteless remarks on both the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the validity of the Obama candidacy.
“Dr King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.”
(Not sure of the logic here: vote for Hillary over the black guy, because she's...already the president? All that inspiring oratory means nothing, unless he actually does something and...runs for president?)
"Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."
The resentment these remarks have ginned up in the black community are reflected in the remarks Thursday from Rep. James Clyburn—the dean of black politics in South Carolina.
Mr. Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement and a power in state Democratic politics, put himself on the sidelines more than a year ago to help secure an early primary for South Carolina, saying he wanted to encourage all candidates to take part. But he said recent remarks by the Clintons that he saw as distorting civil rights history could change his mind.
“We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics,” said Mr. Clyburn, who was shaped by his searing experiences as a youth in the segregated South and his own activism in those days. “It is one thing to run a campaign and be respectful of everyone’s motives and actions, and it is something else to denigrate those. That bothered me a great deal.”
Comments like these were repeated by African-American party stalwarts like Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., and former Gore campaign chairwoman Donna Brazile.
So there is already clear evidence of a trend where a majority of female Democratic voters could go with Hillary, and a majority of black Democratic voters split the other way and go with Barack. Already, not a pretty picture, as far as the party's coalition is concerned. If another key component of the party's core was put into play, like, say, working-class Hispanics, it could spell real trouble. Oh wait...
The media surged forward, surrounding Sen. Hillary Clinton and Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, as they walked along 22nd Street in eastern Las Vegas in a neighborhood dominated by Hispanics and heavily populated with Culinary Union workers.
An intense look on his face, an emphatic tone in his voice, Kihuen sought to reassure the presidential hopeful the union that had created him as a politician was not a potent, monolithic force that could destroy her chances here.
“I cannot emphasize to you enough, Senator, how the Hispanic workers in the Culinary are loyal to you,” Kihuen whispered. “They are loyal to the Culinary, but they will vote for you.”
So even in Nevada, even where Obama has sewn up the endorsement of the powerful Culinary union, we have one of its most prominent elected officials—Ruben Kihuen, the youngest State Assemblyman in Nevada history—telling her that Latino support is so strong for Hillary, Latino members of the Culinary will vote against their union.
More from Ryan Lizza on how Hispanic Democrats may play in the primary season:
When I asked Bendixen about the source of Clinton’s strength in the Hispanic community, he mentioned her support for health care, and Hispanic voters’ affinity for the Clinton era. “It’s one group where going back to the past really works,” he said. “All you need to say in focus groups is ‘Let’s go back to the nineties.’ ”
But he was also frank about the fact that the Clintons, long beloved in the black community, are now dependent on a less edifying political dynamic: “The Hispanic voter—and I want to say this very carefully—has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.”
Ouch.
So, coming out of New Hampshire, where women began to break away as a bloc for Hillary, we head into Nevada, where Hispanics may also begin to break away as a bloc for Hillary, and then head into South Carolina, where blacks may begin to break away as a bloc for Obama. And after the flaming wreckage from this looming intraparty civil war—cleaved along ugly racial and gender lines—is extinguished on Super Tuesday, we face the Republicans.
I hope the resentment by that point isn't crippling to our November chances. Judging by the current state of affairs, that's a legitimate threat.
