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Michelle Obama Admits What Hubby Won’t---A Loss in Iowa Will Sink Him
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama couldn’t sprint fast
enough to publicly correct his wife when she candidly said that “Iowa
will make the difference. If Barack doesn’t win Iowa, then it's just a
dream.” An Obama campaign spokesperson said that Iowa’s only one state
and a win or loss there won’t derail his self-proclaimed American Dream
campaign. He’s dead wrong, and Michelle’s right. But Obama acts like he
doesn’t know she got it right. He’s spent a lot of money in the state,
and has more field offices there than Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.
But he has skipped several key Democratic forums and events in Iowa.
Obama has spent some time chit chatting with farmers and local
townspeople at coffee shops and diners in Iowa's back country towns.
He’s talked about affordable health care, farm support programs, and the
war in stump speeches in the state. However, his no-shows on the big
ticket events have raised red flags about his prospects in Iowa and
tells why Michelle has the jitters about them.
Iowa is crucial to Obama. It has little to do with it being the first
state out the presidential primary box and that a win there gives a
candidate’s campaign a rocket launch upward. Iowa is a bell weather of
how effective a candidate is in connecting with mid-America voters. It’s
a state small and folksy enough where voters can look a candidate in the
eye and tell if they’re honest and sincere and can speak plainly on the
issues. A candidate that flunks that litmus test is dead in the water. A
candidate that passes it will front stroke ahead of the pack.
Democratic Presidential contender Howard Dean found that out in 2004.
He had tons of money, lots of media hype, and supposedly represented the
Democrat’s populist hope. He bumbled and stumbled with the regular folk
in Iowa. This marked him as a high brow, arrogant loser. By contrast,
Dean’s rival, John Kerry came into Iowa floundering in the polls. But he
convinced the folk that he was a regular guy and could talk their talk
on the issues. The rest of course with Kerry is history.
The ability to connect with a dairy farmer, a waitress, or a tractor
driver helped Kerry and the inability to do that hurt Dean. That won’t
be enough for Obama. He’s got an added obstacle that Dean and Kerry
didn’t have. He’s the first black presidential candidate running in one
of the whitest, most rural, and conservative centrist states in the
nation. He’s got to do more than speak the language of mid-America. He’s
got to convince the voters that he’s not a black presidential candidate,
but a color neutral presidential candidate. The slightest hint that
Obama will tilt toward minorities on the big ticket issues will thicken
the clouds of suspicion about him.
He’ll also have to overcome polling day conversion. That’s the
penchant of more than a few white voters to fib to pollsters and
interviewers in a tight race involving a black and white candidate and
say they will vote for the candidate solely on their competency and
qualifications, not color. Then on Election Day turn right around in the
privacy of the voting booth and vote on color. The conversion phenomena
did in Harvey Gantt and Harold Ford in senate races in North Carolina
and Tennessee, and Tom Bradley in the race for governor in California,
and almost did in Doug Wilder in the governor’s race in Virginia. In
pre-election polls, they had comfortable leads over their white
opponents and were projected to win their races handily.
Obama has a companion problem with polling day conversion. Nearly all
white voters say that they have no problem voting for an
African-American for president. In the next breath they say that
qualifications rank at or near the top of the list in determining their
candidate choice. Obama has consistently ranked well beneath Hillary and
Edwards on the qualification scale. That’s not exactly racial code speak
for saying that Obama as a black candidate doesn’t have the right stuff.
Yet it does raise another huge red flag that he’s got a long way to go
to overcome voter suspicion about his qualifications. A suspicion that
Hillary’s husband, Bill, fueled when he said that he was more
experienced than Obama at a comparable stage of the presidential contest
game.
A second place finish will not totally dash Obama’s dream but it will
do little to dispel the doubts of the mass of heartland American voters
that he’s still a political question mark. It will cast deep doubt on
whether he can pull one or two Southern or Western states out of the GOP
orbit. He’ll need substantial white male centrist voters to do that.
That feat is mandatory this time around for a Democrat to cinch the
White House. There is almost no chance Obama can pull that off.
Michelle didn’t need a crystal ball to predict that Iowa is the
political and psychological break point state for Obama. She got it
right. The question is is her hubby listening?
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