June 29, 2007
Democrats Angle For Minority Support At Howard Forum
Though it's a safe bet that black and Latino voters will stick with the Democratic Party in 2008, there is a strong sentiment that the mostly white leadership has taken their support for granted -- a feeling the Rev. Al Sharpton capitalized on in his short-lived 2004 bid. And with post-Katrina dialogue on race and poverty largely disappeared from headlines, it's little wonder many voters of color feel their concerns are still being ignored.
Which makes yesterday's PBS-sponsored candidates forum such a significant event, no matter how debate-fatigued one might be at this point in the cycle. The debate was moderated by black and Latino journalists, and the audience, at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University, was largely black. The candidates were pressed on issues near and dear to minority communities, and will undoubtedly be held to their pledges should any one of them be voted into the White House.
That minority voters are unhappy with Democrats' performance in Congress on issues like Iraq as well was evident in the huge applause given to Mike Gravel at the start of the evening. Say what you will about the ornery long shot's chances: His presence in this slate is an inescapable reminder that not one of them, no matter how inevitable his or her nomination seems, gets a free ride to the ticket -- the reason being that many Democratic voters are plenty discontented with their own party.
On topics including AIDS, poverty, the war on drugs and Darfur the candidates were quite predictably in agreement. But as with the previous debates, some came out looking better than others. Highlights are below.
Sorry, John Edwards. The millionaire lawyer from humble beginnings has made poverty a central platform since losing the 2004 election as the vice presidential candidate. Yesterday should have been a night for him to shine, but Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama dominated the evening. Some might chalk up Clinton's popularity among blacks to her husband, the nation's famed "first black president," but domestic issues that are important to those voters, like education and health care, have been at the center of her policy concerns since before she was the first lady of Arkansas. She speaks to those issues fluently.
Obama doesn't get a free pass simply by being black -- otherwise he'd own the black vote already, and he is clearly competing for space there with Clinton. Plus, Clinton seemed to have the women in the audience in the bag last night, thanks in part to this particularly inspired zinger: "If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country." Probably the loudest applause of the night.
The benefits of being a little bit scripted. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is the first Latino presidential candidate and has one of the more impressive resumes of the Democratic hopefuls. But in order to break through to the first tier of candidates, he will have to perform better in the debates than he has thus far. That he faltered in the one forum singularly devoted to minority issues ought to be troubling to his camp.
When asked what he would do to combat the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in poor, minority communities, he shakily called for "bringing condoms, finding ways to increase needles, penetrating the minority community."
Clinton fared better when she noted, accurately, that HIV/AIDS is rising fastest among young, black women via heterosexual contact. Richardson seems to have either forgotten who his audience was or gone back a decade in time.
Mr. Honesty. "The Democratic Party hasn't done any appreciably better than the Republican Party in solving these problems," Gravel told the audience to applause. Many minority voters agree. GOP gains among minorities have probably been eroded by the government's poor response to Katrina and the deadlock over immigration reform. It will be up to the Democrats to prove that preoccupations with terrorism and Iraq won't eclipse the domestic issues at play in black and Latino communities.
The PBS Web site has video of the debate.
The Caucus, The Fix and The Swamp also have takes on the debate.
Posted at 2:27 PM
Posted to:
Barack Obama, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, WH 2008
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