[Op Ed] Race and Loathing in South Carolina Presidential Primaries

Race and politics play a large role in the Democratic race with the African American vote the coveted prize–the state’s African American population is 27.8%. As a result, gaffes can prove costly. For example, Hillary Clinton made a huge faux pas at a January forum in her poor characterization of Reconstruction–the post-Civil War period in which a number of freed blacks gained a measure of political power, including Robert Smalls, a former slave who rose to become a South Carolina state legislator and U.S. representative and helped to create our nation’s first public school system. Her gaffe, in part, made the case for such prominent figures as hip-hop artist Killer Mike and highly-acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates to align with Sanders.

Clinton’s campaign was hurt by race-related blunders eight years ago when she desperately attempted to paint then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as a political dilettante with a naïve narrative. Leading the charge was former President Bill Clinton, who engaged in a series of red-faced attacks designed to question the qualifications of the nation’s first black presidential front-runner. At one point, the former president’s criticism regarding Obama’s record on opposing the Iraq War as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen” infuriated black voters in South Carolina.

To add fuel to the fire, when Obama won the state by a landslide, a bitter Bill Clinton alluded that his campaign played the race card and that the outcome was inevitable because Rev. Jackson had won the state in 1984 and 1988. This was a blow for the Southern politician who had once been endearingly referred to as the nation’s “first black president” and won the state primary with overwhelming black support in 1992. The former president has since been forgiven.

Today, Hillary Clinton, a former Obama cabinet member, has engaged in an Obama love-fest in ads and speeches, invoking the president’s record and legacy as a means of distinguishing herself from Sanders. She insists that a Hillary Clinton administration would build upon the accomplishments of the nation’s first black president and has even gone to great lengths to paint Sanders as a progressive who has betrayed Obama with his criticism of a number of the administration’s initiatives.

In a recent CNN town hall, Clinton defended Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, and knocked Sanders free college tuition plan as a vehicle that would endanger HBCUs relying on such payments. The Vermont senator countered, now pushing for an expansion in funding for black colleges and universities–a new addition to his proposal.

Both candidates have made appeals by attacking institutional and societal racism. For example, Sanders called Republican “birthers” who have questioned that President Obama was born in the United States “racists” while Clinton took the opportunity to publicly display empathy for a black student who told her she had recently decided to wear her hair natural and had been looked at differently. Both have continued the pandering to blacks in radio ads, seeking to portray themselves as inheritors of the mantle of the civil rights movement while routinely sniping at the credibility of one another in this area.

The Clinton—Sanders contest is as much about race as it is about the generational gap and political divide among African American voters. According to the latest WSJ/NBC news poll, Clinton leads 68% to 21% among African American voters–roughly 50% of the turnout in South Carolina–but her support wanes among African American under 45: 52% to 35%.

Clinton, 68, attracted Clyburn, Atlanta Congressman John Lewis and members of the Congressional Black Caucus as well as recently gained the endorsement of the mothers of prominent victims of race-related violence Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin, among others. As for Sanders, the self-professed 74-year-old democratic socialist, he has Lee, Coates, actor-singer Harry Belafonte, former NAACP CEO and Silicon Valley diversity advocate Ben Jealous and activist professor Cornell West in his corner.

The GOP primary and the upcoming Democratic contest reveals that the more diverse South Carolina serves as a true pre-Super Tuesday barometer than more homogeneous states like Iowa and New Hampshire. It also demonstrates the racial complexity that will be a part of future primaries and the general election. The battles in the Palmetto State communicate loud and clear that this is a different election. Will the GOP truly become the inclusive party Rubio promotes or take on the Trump campaign’s angry, polarizing mien? Will Democrats take the black vote for granted or realize that it is not monolithic? And black voters must embrace the fact that they can play a significant role, collectively and individually, in the outcome of primaries as well as who will ultimately occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.