After watching the "Moment" speech last night, if only for a minute, it's hard to imagine anyone not thinking that Barack Obama had at least an insiders edge to become the next President. As a supporter and contributor to Obama, I was overjoyed to soak up the media and listen to the pundits... and what I'm seeing and here is that there are several big obsticles, some huge, some not so huge, which stand between Obama and the White House... and because I haven't seen any diaries or posts on here about these issues yet, I thought I'd bring them to light to discuss.
Obama's First Hurdle
Michael Whouley
On the Clinton payroll is one Michael Whouley, probably the most revered organizer in the Democratic Party. Several weeks ago, the press learned that Whouley would not be setting foot in Iowa—that he’d focus exclusively on New Hampshire. This prompted two theories: One was that the Clintons were so confident in Iowa they didn’t need to bother the party’s best operative. The other was that they were so pessimistic that they opted to focus every ounce of Whouley’s efforts on building a firewall instead.
Mr. Whouley is a highly regarded operative who knows how to mobilize a state and get the vote to count.... he's done this before but I'm not sure he ever faced an Obama
From Wiki:
Whouley was a key strategist for Bill Clinton, serving as his field director during the 1992 election. Following Clinton's inauguration, Whouley became a lobbyist on behalf of pro-NAFTA interests. During the 1996 election, Whouley served as director of Vice Presidential operations.
Whouley was a key strategist for both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Whouley helped jump start both Gore's and Kerry's comeback in the presidential primaries after they came close to being overtaken by Bill Bradley and Howard Dean respectively.
Whouley is regarded as one of the Democratic Party's best field strategists and as a result has earned the nickname "The Wizard". Despite this, he is fairly reclusive and very rarely does media interviews. He avoids reporters as much as possible.
This will be a challenge for the campaign and the Momentum to overcome. Whouley has been lose in Iowa for weeks focusing on nothing else and if Obama can beat Whouley and Clinton, then I'd say the Obama Wave has really reached a pitched wave.
Obama Second and Biggest Hurdle
Possibly the only other obsticle standing between Obama and the White House is a double whammy.... Hispanic Voters
In a poll from the Pew Hispanic Center released earlier this month, Clinton led among Latino Democrats with 59 percent, compared to 15 percent for Obama and four percent for John Edwards. In polls taken last week in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas by ImpreMedia, the largest Hispanic news company in the United States, Clinton led Obama by an astounding average of 55 to six percent among Hispanic Democrats.
The Hispanic Community has displayed a pattern in the last many years of either rejecting Black Democrats or Voting for the Republican. So this is an obsticle that will need to be overcome twice, especially if Huckabee is the Nominee, as he seems to be the only candidate on the Republican side who wouldn't rattle the sword of Immigration. And after the Republicans consider this statistic below, they may think twice about it when faced with the potential of an Obama Campaign.
In his 1993 New York mayoral race against black Democratic incumbent David Dinkins, Republican Rudolph Giuliani received 37 percent of the Hispanic vote and only five percent of the black vote. Conflicts between Latinos and blacks also figured in the 2001 Houston mayoral runoff between black Democrat Lee Brown and Republican and Cuban-American Orlando Sanchez. Brown won the run-off, but the conservative Sanchez took 72 percent of the Latino vote.
The Socioligical root of this discord stems according to researches from a racism present amongst Hispanics to Blacks in General
While this conflict passes largely unnoticed in the popular press, African American and Latino sociologists have been conducting extensive surveys in Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Philadelphia. These surveys have generally found that Latinos display more prejudice toward African Americans than African Americans do toward Latinos or than whites display toward African Americans. In the words of University of Houston sociologist Tatcho Mindiola, Jr. and two associates, "in general African Americans have more positive views of Hispanics than vice versa."
... Only 54 percent of U.S.-born Latinos and 46 percent of immigrant Latinos approved of their children dating an African American. 41 percent of U.S.-born Latinos thought blacks had "too much power." Half thought that "most government programs that are designated for minorities favor African Americans."
Duke University's Paula McClain, working with nine other sociologists, found similar attitudes among Latinos living in Durham, North Carolina. According to McClain et al., "Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks." For instance, 58.9 percent of Latino immigrants, but only 9.3 percent of whites, reported feeling that "few or almost no blacks are hard-working."
In addition, there is the language barrier. Barack's infectious charisma and lyrically rousing speeches, which give his message of Hope wings to fly upon, do not translate into Spanish Languaged Programming well. Instead they see a Black man talking, with volume lowered of his own tones, and a translator overlaid.
To his credit, Obama has reached out to the Hispanic Community and did receive key endorsements in Iowa from this voting block. On Dec. 29th:
in Iowa this week. Mundo Latino, Sioux City's only Hispanic weekly, endorsed Senator Obama -- the first-ever political endorsement from Mundo Latino -- because, they write, “We believe that Barack Obama most sympathizes with the perspectives and concerns of our readers and the Latino community as a whole. We believe he has the qualities needed to implement his ideas and truly bring about change.”
Here is the voice of an Obama supporter who wrote an enlightening comment regarding Obama's positioning for the Hispanic Community
I would only add to your brilliant endorsement that Obama has an incredible Community College policy that will open the doors to many more adults and youth. Community colleges are the main entry point to learning English for immigrant youth and adults, and an expansion of programs, with a focus on serving the communities with after-school and late evening and weekend courses, will help all adults and youth seeking education and training, but especially immigrants. Education is our stepping stone to equality and to serve our adopted country to the best of our ability.
Possibly the largest potential move to reshape the Obama Campaign could come after Barack has defeated Hillary and Edwards, by naming Bill Richardson his VP choice. In my prior blog about this, the vote was a resounding 46% No.
Considering the difficulty in winning the General election, a consideration of Richardson and the voting trust of the Hispanic Community he would help to build (not to mention the Experience Factor etc) could only help to strengthen Obama's Candidacy.
This is at the end of the day about Winning and hopefully the Obama Team has strategies in place to overcome both Obstacles before them on this day after a Hard fought and Wonderful Victory.