Not Analogous

Barack Obama is to race as Hillary Clinton is to gender. It could be one of those old SAT analogies. Right?

It is now assumed that Obama naturally, inevitably, gets the black vote. But not long ago, many griped that he wasn't even black and Clinton, who is, after all, married to the "first black president" was leading by twenty points in the South Carolina polls. (Obama went on to win by twenty.)

Now that Barack has worked the Obamagic on black voters, it is taken for granted that they are his base. The dialogue even veers in an untoward direction à la, Well, of course he won those states. Jesse Jackson took South Carolina, too, Bill Clinton smarmily remarked. (Black votes only count as three-fifths anyway, right?)


BARACK Obama has not "transcended" race so much as hacked through its thorny territory with a machete. (See Dreams From My Father.) Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, embodies so many of the tribulations and contradictions faced by American women, but doesn't seem to have reconciled them.

Last week, Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro poured herself a tall glass of Haterade, telling an interviewer, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position...He happens to be very lucky to be who he is." Which degenerates into an argument over which is worse, racism or sexism. Which we all know is a terrible idea.

And fellow white ladies: come on now. Let's not have this debate with black people. They didn't want to vote for Obama because they thought a black man couldn't possibly win, and they feared that, if he somehow did win, he'd be assassinated. What old white lady is voting against Hillary in a selfless attempt to keep her alive?


CLINTON can forcefully brag that she'd be the first woman in the White House, but Obama can't play that angle. He has to be careful not to seem too chocolatey. (Just chocolatey enough to give us that sweet taste of self-satisfaction if we elect him.) Which isn't only a matter of racism. It's partly simple demographics: women are obviously a gigantic portion of the electorate compared to African Americans. Appealing to women carries fewer risks.

Channeling Ferraro, a columnist for the London Times recently wrote, "What makes Mr. Obama's candidacy so exciting is not his oratory or his good looks. It is his race."

Bullshit. Could Colin Powell pack arenas? (That's who I left off my list of People Who Are Not Black If Barack Obama Is Not Black: Colin Powell, son of Jamaican immigrant parents. Well, he helped sell an unjust war, so I guess we're even.) Yes, Obama's appeal is partly to do with his personal story, but his story is not about melanin alone.


"THAT'S pride, not prejudice," CNN political analyst Bill "Elf Gramps" Schneider is fond of saying when women's votes tally up for Clinton and black votes go for Obama. When 74% of white Mississippians vote against Obama in a Democratic primary, you might say there's a teeny bit of prejudice at play. But for the most part, Schneider is probably right.

The rub is that candidates then have to make their voter contingencies proud. Obama is comfortable in his identity and that self-assurance is hard-won. He has earned those "inspirational" qualities that detractors like to mock. He's role model material, and not just for black Americans.

Clinton's role model status is iffy. Gloria Steinem complains that women aren't showing her enough sisterhood, but maybe that's because she hasn't earned their admiration. It sure mucks up the feminist argument for her career to be coattailing on that of her husband.