Barack Obama is the Superior Choice
for African-American Voters

Theodore Cross

For the first time in the history of our country, a black man has a credible chance of becoming president of the United States. After the long nightmare years of slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, and enduring race discrimination, one would expect that, in the upcoming presidential primary contest, Illinois Senator Barack Obama would be the overwhelming choice of black American voters.

Not so! National polls show that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are drawing about equal shares of the black vote.

The standard explanation is that Hillary Clinton is the inherited winner of solid numbers of black voters because of the tremendous popularity of her husband among African Americans. We all remember how President Bill Clinton campaigned in black neighborhoods and churches, showed compassion and deep concerns for poor blacks, and sought out the opinions, advice, and even the forgiveness of black leaders. His remarkable ability to relate to African Americans, a quality missing among almost all white politicians, earned President Clinton both loyalty and affection among many millions of African Americans. In fact, he was so admired in the African-American community that in 1998 Princeton professor and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison called him “our first black president.”

But Bill Clinton’s success in winning the affection of African Americans is only part of the story. Senator Hillary Clinton in her own right has turned out to be an appealing candidate for black voters. In her so-called Team Hillary, she has assembled highly effective organizations of dedicated supporters in black communities throughout the nation. Her campaign’s legal counsel is the widely admired African-American lawyer Cheryl Mills, the former White House deputy counsel who defended Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. In key states where the black vote is large, and possibly critical in primary ...