Yesterday I diaried about the Obama campaign's D-Punjab memo. Today I want to talk about what I think the political effect of this will be.
The majority on DKos seem to think that this was a politically unsound attack by Obama and that it didn't serve his campaign well. However, a vocal minority believes that the attack was on target and will stick. (And, to paraphrase what some have said, that the only people who will be pissed off will be a few rich Indian-Americans, and who cares about them.) I offer my opinion beneath the fold.
First, I think this will drop from attention in a few days. I don't see it as something getting mass attention. So I don't think the average person on the street will change their vote one way or the other because of this directly. In that sense, I don't see this attack "sticking" to Hillary in a way that will turn votes against her.
I do believe, though, that this is the type of tactic that is noticed by a more select group of people of influence (business leaders, labor leaders, community leaders), and how those people react can have an important effect on the campaign. What's more, many of these leaders are still deciding who to endorse, who to donate to, etc. Thus how they react is important. So what can we expect?
Well, first, there is the Indian-American community itself. They may be small, but they are not tiny, numbering almost 1% of the population. They are also the best educated and wealthiest group of any national origin in the U.S. They thus have a fair amount of money to give to politics, if they wish, and I assume that this kind of comment would spread far and fast among the politically influential people in this community. I don't see Obama getting much support there unless he disavows the memo, as a prominent Indian-American group has already requested he do.
Second, there is the broader Asian-American community. Again, the average person on the street won't hear about this, but the most politically active and influential will. And this is a community that has dealt a lot in the past with racial slurs about their supposed illegitimate participation in U.S. politics. I imagine a lot of influential Asian Americans are quite upset by this "D-Punjab" comment.
Third, there is Silicon Valley. The leaders of U.S. tech firms won't appreciate the D-Punjab memo, for obvious reasons. Now, some Kossacks will probably say "screw Silicon Valley." But if Obama is trying to promote himself as the candidate of youth, innovation, change, etc., it will be hard to do so without support from the U.S. tech industry.
I also think a lot of people in Hollywood will find this kind of campaigning distasteful. Most politically active producers, directors, actors have a strong creed of openness to diverse cultures, global exchange, etc. (Indeed, that's what attracts them to a candidate like Obama to begin with.) However, Hollywood was already tilting back to Hillary (e.g., Spielberg's endorsement) and I expect this might hasten that.
Again, I imagine that some people are saying "Screw Silicon Valley, Screw Hollywood, these are the people that are selling our jobs." However, consider for a moment what kind of candidate Obama is, and what kind of coalition he would need to put together to win. Obama is popular among the well educated, independents, intellectuals, free-thinkers, i.e., the same kind of folks that have supported Gary Hart and Bill Bradley. Now Hart and Bradley both lost, but Obama has something else--a sizeable portion of the Black vote--that they didn't have, and, in a multi-candidate race, that could put him over the top. But he has to keep that same segment of the vote that Hart and Bradley got, and expand from there. And I believe these kind of "D-Punjab" comments will really hurt his chances of keeping that segment of the vote. This is a sector that values multiculturalism, openness, globalization, and unfettered innovation much more than it values protectionism and trade restrictions. And without this section of the vote, Obama can't win.
Let's look at the other side. How could this help the Obama campaign, and hurt Hillary? Well, the main intent is to stick Hillary with a pro-outsourcing, anti-U.S. worker label. As indicated earlier, I don't think that this D-Punjab comment will get much extended play in the press or that the average worker will ever hear about it. What then about union leaders? Can this help Obama get some traction among them?
Well, I really doubt it. First, many of the largest and most militant unions, and the ones that might have members supportive of Obama, have large numbers of immigrants, and their leaders may find language that demeans an immigrant group to be offensive. Secondly, and more importantly, union leaders are smart enough to know that there is virtually no daylight between Obama and Clinton on issues related to trade and outsourcing. Both Obama and Clinton are instinctively sympathetic to free trade, though both, to my knowledge, are also supportive of some restrictions on trade. (I know that Clinton has recently opposed the South Korea trade deal. I don't know what Obama's position is on that.) If Obama wants to peel labor support away from Clinton, he has to try to speak to the policy interests of U.S. workers, and that something he has shied away from (preferring, for example, more general speeches about a new type of politics, rather than speaking to specific groups of workers about how he will defend their interests.) If anything, Clinton has done better at this than Obama, and Edwards has done well too. I don't think Obama will get any traction in these attacks in winning labor support, and it could actually have a negative effect among some pro-immigrant union leaders.
The bottom line is that Obama cannot win this election by pretending to be Edwards. Edwards is doing a pretty good job of being Edwards -- and he's not doing that great in the polls himself. Obama can only win by campaigning on his strengths, and this kind of "D-Punjab" remark goes directly against Obama's strength -- his appeal to a new kind of politics based on openness, innovation, free-thinking, support for diversity, etc.
Finally, I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill. This will be a long campaign, and I don't expect this to be a major event in it. However, I do believe that it represents a small but significant setback for Obama at an important time in the campaign, as it potentially weakens his support among the segments of the population that should form his natural base.