John Ziegler, the documentarian who commissioned the “How Obama Got elected” video documentary and corresponding Zogby poll showing Obama voters as “media-influenced” but less than knowledgeable about key issues, tried to commission another Zogby poll featuring McCain voters this time. According to Politico, however, Zogby said no:
Pollster John Zogby has rejected a conservative commentator’s offer to sponsor a poll to test the knowledge of people who voted for John McCain.
The commentator was proposing to mirror a poll of Obama voters that caused a political uproar when it suggested that Obama supporters didn’t know what they were voting for.
Why? Zogby just doesn’t want to:
“I am happy to do a poll of both Obama voters and McCain voters, with questions that I formulated and sponsored either by an objective third party or by someone on the left, in tandem with a John Ziegler on the right — but poll questions that have my signature,” Zogby said.
“I believe there was value in the poll we did,” Zogby added. “I also believe it was not our finest hour. This slipped through the cracks. It came out critical only of Obama voters.”
“Only critical of Obama voters?” That’s probably because only Obama voters were interviewed. Duh. Predictably, Ziegler’s pissed:
Ziegler told Politico: “I’m outraged. I find this amazing. There was nothing wrong with the original poll. I’m the exact same person I was last week. The left-wing blogosphere basically demanded this.”
Reuters and the L.A. Times are still reporting, as that did last night, that Penny Pritzker will be Barack Obama’s Secretary of Commerce. They both claim CNN as a source, and they both “break” the story of Janet Napolitano being tapped for Homeland Security. But the Chicago Tribune says nuh-uh:
Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker has told Barack Obama’s team she does not want to serve as Commerce Secretary, said a senior Obama official.
“Penny Pritzker ultimately has decided she does not want to do the Commerce thing,” the senior official said.
The official also said reports that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano will be Secretary of Homeland Security are premature.
“I expect Napolitano will end up in the cabinet. But whether she ends up where the speculation is (has her), I don’t know,” the official said.
Which only proves that whenever the press doesn’t bother to do it’s homework, they just make stuff up and copy.
The Congressional Black Caucus can expect no favors from the post-racial president elect of a racially divided country hellbent on pretending it isn’t. In fact, some are arguing that the fact of Obama’s election renders the organization that Obama never had much use for anyway, now obsolete. The public jockeying for position now happening within the caucus while some members pretend that such maneuvering indicates that the nation has moved beyond race, creates a unique situation whereby the mere fact of their existence argues against their position. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune writes that the CBC has a rather strained relationship with Obama, and in fact, at a news conference announcing new leadership, they didn’t even mention his name.
The all-Democratic, 43-member group has had a somewhat uneasy relationship with the president-elect, who for four years when he represented Illinois in the Senate rarely participated in caucus activities. Some black lawmakers wished he had been more involved.
Of course, this could all be a rather theatrical attempt on behalf of Obama and the caucus to appear to have an arm’s distance relationship in order to reassure white Americans who might be uncomfortable with a too cozy alliance. However, in October more than half the CBC initially voted against the bailout bill Obama supported, and during the primary contest, he did not enjoy the sort of monolithic support from the CBC afforded him by black voters:
Many caucus members endorsed Obama’s Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, before Obama’s campaign gained momentum. Some, including Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., switched their support to Obama under pressure from their constituents. Obama ended up winning 95 percent of the black vote — a higher percentage than caucus members can always claim.
Andra Gillespie of Emory University put it bluntly:
“Obama doesn’t enjoy a close personal relationship with members of the Congressional Black Caucus,” she said.
Caucus members have always been less likely to bow to the historic nature of Obama’s election; many of them made history too, and many did it years ago. Thus, when pundits and other fools try to chalk everything up to a generational divide, they miss the point. Longtime members of Congress are far more likely to want to play traditional “quid pro quo” politics, than the type of “consensus by symbolism” tactics newer black politicians like Obama seem to embrace.
William Jelani Cobb, a Spelman College history professor who’s writing a book on Obama, contended that the caucus has “tried to minimize the extent to which Obama’s emergence has changed the nature of their position.”
“A good bit of the old politics, the old positioning, was as brokerage. They have people who can be the brokers, the middle person, between the Democratic Party — largely the white Democratic Party — and the black voting base,” Cobb said. “Obama is the first president who doesn’t need them for that.”
Cobb misses the point that, in a way, Obama’s refusal to “respect his elders” is a large source of the tension between him and many black politicians. Seen by them as not having “paid his dues,” yet climbing up the ladder on their backs, some folks are understandably resentful. The dismissive attitude he has displayed on occasion doesn’t help. It was at a CBC meeting in June that Obama told Hillary Clinton supporters to “get over it.” Jake Tapper reported at the time:
According to Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Obama then said, “However, I need to make a decision in the next few months as to how I manage that since I’m running against John McCain, which takes a lot of time. If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it.”
Not everyone was offended, but Maxine Waters was. Waters, who has been in politics for over thirty years, and has been in Congress since 1991, took exception to being told to get over it, and said so. Responding to Waters’ assertion that there was a lot of healing to be done after the grueling campaign, Obama’s answer didn’t help:
“I agree,” Obama said. “There’s healing on both sides.”
Obama then said two sources at the meeting said that he’d held his tongue many times during the campaign against Clinton in the interest of party unity and sensitivity. Clinton and her allies had suggested he was a Muslim, had said he wasn’t qualified to be president.
Regardless of who is right or wrong, Obama’s apparent cluelessness about respect does not bode well for his future relationship with the Congressional Black Caucus, or black people in general. His election is historic, but in a very real sense, not much moreso than the nature of the candidacies of many of his former collegues in the CBC. Most black Americans who have achieved success have broken through barriers to do so, and the trend does not end with Obama. One need only look at his own appointment of Eric Holder as America’s first black attorney general to make that point. Until Obama acknowledges and embraces the fact that triumphs of his black brothers and sisters in politics, sports, medicine, business and plain old American life have laid the foundation that has allowed him to pretend to be “post-racial” to their common advantage, he’ll never transcend anything. And statements like this one by Arthur Davis, quoted in the Star Tribune article, will always ring false:
Artur Davis, a centrist Democrat and caucus member from Alabama who is close to Obama, said he doesn’t sense tension. He said black lawmakers simply understand that Obama is a new breed of politician who transcends race.
“I think that’s something that’s understood by the majority of the caucus,” Davis said. “Barack Obama is not a black president of the United States. He’s a president of the United States who happens to be black.”
And be a goddamned insult, to boot. Either he’s black or he’s not. If not, he has no right to claim the mantle of the first black president, post-racial or anything else. If he is, he owes a debt of gratitude to the very people he tries so hard to keep at bay until it’s convenient not to. And sooner or later, he’s going to have to pay up.
John Ziegler, the documentarian who commissioned the “How Obama Got elected” video documentary and corresponding Zogby poll showing Obama voters as “media-influenced” but less than knowledgeable about key issues, tried to commission another Zogby poll featuring McCain voters this time. According to Politico, however, Zogby said no:
