Dartblog

Always a non-controversial and calmly discussed issue on college campuses and otherwise, the movement, led by Ward Connerly to end racial preferences at the state level is gearing up for this election cycle. Here Earl Ofari Hutchinson analyzes the issue of affirmative action and racial quotas and the presidential candidates’ respective stands. Both men, he concludes, have wobbled mightily, but McCain may have been able to wobble to a much more felicitous place than Obama.

McCain has deftly shifted gears and urges a “yes” vote on Ward Connerly’s anti-affirmative action initiative on the Arizona ballot in November. McCain bets that this time pummeling affirmative action will do far more good than bad for his campaign. It’s a smart bet.

…The anti-affirmative action initiatives won by solid even crushing margins in all three states [California in 1996, in Washington in 1998 and in Michigan in 2006]. In the process, they galvanized public opinion, stirred subtle white resentment even anger against anything that smacked of racial preferences, and sent a big message that pushing affirmative action was a politically losing proposition. Michigan proved that. The two GOP candidates for governor and the Senate in the state opposed Connerly’s initiative. Both lost. But even more important the measure did not stir a mad dash by blacks, women, and Latinos to the barricades in Washington and Michigan to defeat the initiative. The lesson from the GOP candidate’s defeat and the relatively mild backlash to the initiative wasn’t lost on McCain.

This election cycle the initiative is on the ballot in Nebraska, Colorado, and Arizona.

Democrats think that Colorado could for the first time in recent presidential bouts be in play for Obama. They think the same thing about McCain’s home state of Arizona. That’s mostly due to the big jump in the number of Hispanic and younger voters in these states. The Connerly initiative is just the thing to counter that by creating a mini wedge issue in both states that energizes conservatives too rush the polls to back the initiative and stick around long enough to back McCain.

That’s one political plus, but it’s not the only one. McCain can have it both ways on the issue. He can insist that he still strongly backs equal opportunity and just as strongly opposes discrimination. He can then make the standard anti-affirmative action pitch that he backs the Connerly initiative precisely because it strikes a blow against discrimination, namely racial preferences. And after all, isn’t everyone, and that even includes more than a few blacks, Latinos and especially Asians, against anything that smacks of racial unfairness?

[Barack Obama] has repositioned himself as a centrist Democrat and now flatly says he’s against quotas… But Obama wobbled even more when he says that the affirmative action measures should not be applied without taking into individual needs, and they should be applied to poor whites. The caution and even shading on how he speaks of affirmative action is a far cry from the ringing endorsement he gave to affirmative action for women and minorities.

It’s no real surprise. McCain aims to make Connerly’s initiative a political win-win for him. Obama aims to make sure that it’s not a total lose-lose for him.