winning the oppression sweepstakes
by Jason Bradley
Published: January 28, 2008
With a decisive win in South Carolina under his belt, Sen. Barack Obama is poised to set his sights on bigger prizes: Florida and the 22 states of Super Tuesday.
But Mr. Obama is already winning a different prize: the Oppression Sweepstakes.
At least that’s how African-American historian Michael Jelani Cobb describes the upsurge of attacks between Obama and Sen. Hilary Clinton in the recent weeks.
In a recent interview with CNN, Cobb explains that the Sweepstakes kicks in when two historically disempowered groups - in this case African-Americans and women - find themselves competing for the same prize.
“Groups that are excluded are often concerned with other excluded groups getting ahead of them as opposed to keeping their eyes on the main issues,” Cobb says. “You wind up with a lot of squabbling among the disempowered for the Oppression Sweepstakes.”
Between the overwhelming support Obama received from black voters and his campaign’s egregious advertising spending, most analysts wrote off South Carolina to Mr. Obama eons ago.
But no one expected such a decisive victory.
Obama claimed just over 55 percent of the vote, while Sens. Clinton and Edwards garnered only 27 and 18 percent respectively.
But more important than a mere victory - a must-win for the Obama campaign according to politicos and pundits everywhere - Mr. Obama was shown to have mustered up the mettle to survive the onslaught of attacks being hurled at him from all directions.
In a race that turned ugly weeks ago, Mr. Obama showed his ability to withstand the political smackdown and remain a composed leader - at least to some voters.
While Mr. Obama’s appeals to a largely black audience, which included such jocularities as basing whether or not Bill Clinton is a true “brother” by his dancing abilities, Obama failed to capture the same landslide of votes from non-black voters.
In fact, while Obama claimed 78 percent of the black vote, he only netted 24 percent of the white vote. Sens. Clinton and Edwards faired much better at gathering white support with 36 and 40 percent respectively.
In a contest where Bill Clinton has been referred to as the “first black president” and where kudos for passing civil rights laws are seemingly shared equally between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, it is no wonder that voters of every color and sex are torn between the candidates.
Both Clinton and Obama represent the first viable opportunities for a woman and an African-American to become the President of the United States.
But their incessant in-fighting may well be their downfall.
By pulling such harsh punches this early in the campaign, the camps may have lost sight of what is important: winning the Presidential race.
And don’t think this observation is lost within the G.O.P. camps.
The Republicans have openly declared that they love the in-fighting the Democrats have brandished lately. By showing cracks in the Donkey-machine, by bleeding a bit too much, the Democrats have allowed political opportunities to open up for the otherwise also-ran Republicans.
So, while Mr. Obama seems to have a hand up on the Oppression Sweepstakes, the Democrats’ game of Russian Roulette may be the decisive blow to their chances of a White House victory.
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