Poll: White Democrats’ Racism Could Cost Obama White House

A new AP-Yahoo News poll finds that white Democrats’ resistance to voting for a black man for President could cost Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama the White House:

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them “lazy,” “violent” or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.

We’ve noted repeatedly here that one of the emerging trends has been that GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has more solid Republican party base support than Obama has Democratic party base support. This poll adds yet another twist: it documents the racial aspect to the campaign — and underscores how it’s likely Obama could lose the election unless he heads into the November vote some 6 or 7 points ahead in polls.

One reason: some analysts have long argued that, on Election Day, independents will mostly break for McCain. They suggest feelings about race could play a role. Add to those voters the Democrats who don’t like blacks and Obama will need a cushion. The AP goes on:

Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He’s an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation’s oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can’t win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.

Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.

“There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s only a few bigots,” said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.

And it raises a further, often unmentionable question:

Is it likely that, in the end, Obama will wind up the 21st-century-equivalent of Al Smith, the New York Governor who ran against Herbert Hoover in 1928 and lost in a landslide due to soon-to-explode prosperity and anti-Catholic bigotry? By mid-century a Catholic named Sen. John F. Kennedy, Jr. was elected President, but it was too early for Smith in 1928. In terms of bigotry’s impact on voting, will 2008 be more like 1928 or 1960?

For more blog comment on this poll go HERE.