Forget about the Bradley Effect; here's a scoop on the Obama Effect:
By Dave Lindorff
I’m ready to call this election. It’s going to be a big win for Barack Obama.
I know this because of a story I heard from an employee of a major
polling organization. He tells of a poll worker who was interviewing
homeowners in a small town in central Pennsylvania, part of that “real”
American hailed by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
The man knocked on the door, and when the woman of the house answered,
told her he was a pollster and wanted to know how her household planned
to vote in November.
The woman turned and yelled into the house, “Honey, how are we voting this year?”
From inside the house, a male voice yelled back, “I guess we’re voting for the nigger.”
The woman turned to the stunned pollster and, without a hint of embarrassment, said, “I guess we’re voting for Obama.”
Simply put, Obama has won the racist vote, a core Republican constituency since the late 1960s.
Indeed, it is likely that instead of the famed “Bradley Effect”
(named after the Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, who famously lost a
race for California governor which the polls said he would win
handily), according to which some white voters supposedly tell poll
takers they are voting for the black candidate in a race for fear of
appearing racist, while in fact they plan on voting for the white
candidate, the opposite is going to occur. That is, there are probably
many white racist voters like the one in this small Pennsylvania town,
whether in some northern suburb or village, or in Southern states like
Virginia, North Carolina or Georgia, who are fed up with the Bush
years, want a change, and are planning to vote for Obama, but would not
want their friends to know they were voting for a black man. Call it
the “Obama Effect.”
If I’m right that this anecdote is reflective of a broader
phenomenon, look for just the opposite of what we saw happen in the
2004 election, when the exit polls and the networks were calling the
election for John Kerry, and in fact key states like Ohio, supposedly
solidly in the Democratic column, went for Bush. (Sure there was voting
machine chicanery, but there were also problems with the exit polls.)
This year, if there are substantial numbers of white voters who vote
for Obama but sheepishly tell exit pollsters that they voted for
McCain, we may hear that races are close, or that states are going for
McCain that will ultimately, when the actual votes are counted, go for
Obama.
In a broader sense, even based upon the pre-election poll numbers
we are seeing, with Obama ahead in Virginia and North Carolina and
within the margin of error in Indiana, Georgia, North Dakota and
Montana, what seems to be happening in this election is the collapse of
the long-successful Republican strategy of using “social issues” and
fear-mongering, particularly fear of African-Americans and immigrants,
to convince white working class Americans to vote for a party whose
interests were and are clearly against their own. Republican campaign
ads and candidate speeches are larded with code words that seek to
appeal to those fears: “pals around with terrorists,” “don’t know who
he really is,” “anti-American preacher,” “wife not proud to be an
American,” “community activist,” “socialist,” “not really born in
America.” But they’re not working. Neither is the old Republican
nostrum of cutting taxes for the rich on the pretense that it will lead
to jobs for the poor. When McCain charges, as he has been doing
frantically of late, that Obama has been outed by “Joe” (sic) the
Plumber as a “socialist” and that he will be taxing the rich "to spread
the wealth around,” most people today are probably thinking, “Hey, that
idea of spreading some rich folks’ money around sounds pretty good to
me!”
That is to say, Obama’s populist rhetoric, whether it is sincere or
not, and particularly his promise to cut taxes for most Americans while
raising taxes on the wealthy and on the large corporations, and to make
college and health care affordable to all, is winning over a large
number of Americans, including many who for decades have been
responsive to Republican fear- and race-mongering and to Republican
"free-market" ideology.
There are many people on the left who argue that Obama and the
Democrats are a sham, and that they won’t really tackle taxing the rich
and corporations in any serious way, or offering real help to
struggling working class Americans. They may well be right. Certainly
the flood of campaign contributions from Fortune 1000 corporations
suggests that corporate America will have a big seat at the White House
table in an Obama administration, as they do already in the Democratic
Congress. At the same time though, the rhetoric of this campaign is
setting up a major expectation among millions of ordinary voters for
real progressive action on economic issues. This hope, given continued
organized political pressure after November 4, could lead to real
action.
I would argue that when the real “Joe’s” and “Jane’s” of America,
the ones who have been suckered in for years by cynical Republican
fear-mongering and race-baiting campaigns finally turn away and vote
for hope—even if that hope is being over-sold--it creates the chance
for a real movement for progressive change in the country.
At any rate, it certainly looks like my theory will be put to the test come Inauguration Day.
