Seth Masket did something important and admirable at Politico this week: He examined the historical premise for some advice being offered to President Biden by many voices and found it to be ill-founded:
“Joe Biden needs a ‘Sister Souljah Moment.’ At least, that’s according to the quickly congealing conventional wisdom in Washington. That is, Biden and Democrats are in dire danger of losing control of Congress next year, and the one thing that could save them would be by bashing someone to Biden’s left on matters of race.”
The allusion is to a speech famously made by Bill Clinton in the summer of 1992 (when he had already nailed down the Democratic presidential nomination) to a conference of the Jesse Jackson–chaired Rainbow Coalition criticizing the organization for holding a panel the previous day that included Sister Souljah. The rapper had recently made remarks related to the L.A. riots that some interpreted as promoting the killing of white people (a claim she denied).
Jackson (who had expressed pride in Souljah’s appearance at his conference) was sitting on the stage near Clinton as he spoke and understandably felt blindsided and exploited by what Clinton said. So it has gone down in legend as a “moment” when a Democratic politician pandered to swing voters (and perhaps to white racists) by conspicuously separating himself from Black political activists. And that, as Masket notes, is what some commentators want Biden to do to stem the political bleeding over controversies surrounding racial justice, including Black Lives Matter protests, the “defund the police” movement, and the alleged influence of critical race theory in public-school classrooms.
The principal trouble with the claim Biden can do wonders via a little measured race-baiting, Masket explains, is that it didn’t do Clinton much good in 1992. A lot of factors lifted him to victory that fall, but clearly it was the economy (stupid!) and the temporary withdrawal of Ross Perot from the race that were most important. There is little-to-no evidence that the Sister Souljah “moment” had any particular effect on the contest. Yet the legend persists:
“Is it possible that Clinton got some help on Election Day from his bashing of Souljah five months earlier? It’s possible, but unlikely. Campaign effects just generally don’t last that long. It was a very old story by then, and it’s hard to even discern much of an effect when the story was fresh. Polling that year shows that voters were more likely to trust Clinton on issues related to racial politics, but that was true prior to the Souljah moment, as well.
“So why is it important to interrogate this piece of political lore three decades later? Because clearly many opinion leaders take it as an article of faith that a Democratic president can make himself more popular by bashing advocates for racial justice. The evidence doesn’t really support this, but they make the argument anyway.”
I would go a step further than Masket in debunking the “Sister Souljah Moment” theory. I say this not because I have any insider information on what was going on in the Clinton campaign (or in the candidate’s mind) before he made that Rainbow Coalition speech. But I was an early Clinton supporter and later worked for the decidedly Clintonite Democratic Leadership Council, and I sure didn’t think the incident was mostly about race. Obviously, racists in the electorate probably perceived it that way, though few of them at that point in history were likely to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate. The broader perception at the time was captured by Tom Edsall’s on-site report on the speech for the Washington Post:
“Clinton’s frank remarks seemed designed to demonstrate his willingness to challenge core Democratic constituent groups and to begin to break his image in the public as a “political” person who would bend to pressure from major forces within his party …
“The power of the Perot campaign, and growing public animosity to both the Republican and the Democratic parties, has been interpreted in the Clinton campaign as a powerful message requiring the Arkansas governor to attempt to regain the status of an ‘outsider’ candidacy — a status first lost to former Massachusetts senator Paul E. Tsongas, then to former California governor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. and most recently to Perot.”
Indeed, the idea that Clinton was triangulating against Black folks generally on race was not borne out by the reaction from, well, Black folks, other than those very close to the justifiably insulted Jackson, as Steve Kornacki later observed:
“Clinton did not suffer any discernible fallout among black voters; in fact, many black political leaders — some nursing their own grudges against Jackson — used the occasion to throw their support behind Clinton.”
That could be in part because even if you think Clinton was pushing off the left, he wasn’t exactly moving right. In the same speech in which he chastised Sister Souljah for allegedly smiling upon the hypothetical killing of white people for the sins of their race, Clinton sounded some familiar populist themes that were entirely congenial to his audience:
“The speech included repeated attacks on the Bush administration, with a well received line about Vice President Quayle — ‘I’m tired of people on trust funds telling people on food stamps how to live’ — and praise for ‘the real story of Los Angeles — that most people who live in that city did not burn, loot or riot.’”
So what would a more nuanced understanding of the “Sister Souljah Moment” tell Joe Biden?
First of all, Biden is in a vastly different position than was Clinton in 1992. There is no Ross Perot on the horizon, appealing to a huge block of swing voters temporarily estranged from both parties. When Clinton rejected Jesse Jackson’s advice to run a base-mobilization campaign, there were plenty of reasons to fear that identification of Clinton with Democratic orthodoxy would be disastrous: At the time of the Sister Souljah speech, Clinton was running third in many polls behind Perot and George H.W. Bush. And when Perot did (temporarily) withdraw from the race right after the Democratic convention (I was involved in speech preparations for that convention and remember when the word came down: No more criticisms of Perot!), he basically confirmed that Clinton had succeeded in redeeming his pledge to become “a different kind of Democrat,” as the Los Angeles Times explained:
“’When we started … there was a climate there where we could win outright,’ Perot asserted. But now, he said, ‘the Democratic Party has revitalized itself. They’ve done a brilliant job, in my opinion, in coming back.’
:Perot did not elaborate on that point. But Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime Perot confidant and campaign adviser, later cited the Democratic Party’s platform as something that ‘Ross feels good about.’
“Meyerson added: ‘The Democrats seem to be listening to the people.'”
Biden, by contrast is operating in a highly polarized climate with few swing voters and no Perot-like centrist to challenge him. He has zero reason to gamble on separating himself rhetorically from his party.
Second of all, while Clinton was dealing with decades of perceived Democratic subservience to the party’s interest and constituency groups, Biden is dealing with a conservative media environment in which nothing he says will effectively contradict assertions that he wants to defund the police, open the prison doors, impose “woke” speech codes and racial quotas on colleges and workplaces, and usher in a socialist revolution. It’s all preposterous, but Biden has already tried and failed to challenge the smears with rhetorical signals. Some hypothetical equivalent to the supposed message Clinton sent in the “Sister Souljah Moment” would mostly be heard by those who feared, not hoped, he was separating himself from his party under pressure.
And third, even if Joe Biden thought he needed to “push off” the left (as though defeating Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primaries wasn’t enough “pushing off”), he should stay far away from racially inflammatory subjects. Biden would have never won the presidential nomination without the kind of staunch Black support that destroyed the potentially strong nomination campaigns of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, even though Biden’s history on racial issues was far more problematic than Clinton’s in 1992. Besides, now and in 1992, the idea that “the left” and “Black voters” are somehow synonymous is simply wrong.
If Biden feels the need to make it clear he’s still the moderately progressive Democrat who hates racism but is by no means a socialist or especially “woke,” he should just say so, as often as possible. No “pushing off” is necessary.
Sure enough, Rasmussen’s noon update today has W’s lead back down to 0.6, the lowest it’s been since the RNC.
I think the Rasmussen 3-day tracking poll will show Kerry making a big gain tonight. The reason is that Bush probably had an especially big day of pollinig on the 8th that took his rating from 48.4 to 49.6. This day’s polling is due to drop off tonight. The other reason could be that a good day for Kerry dropped off the 3-day track, but actually, looking at the figures it doesn’t seem like that.
It’s possible, that the Rasmussen poll shows Bush running stronger, but even if this is so, tonight’s figure for Bush will be below 49% and Kerry’s will be stronger than 45%.
Rasmussen article:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=20112
Scott wrote it just before the 2000 election. He seemed sooo sure of himself …… only to have history make him look like complete failure.
A bit off subject but–does anyone know how the Senate races are likey to come out? Is there a good site with summaries from all states? We’re going to send a Democrat from Washington. The Repubs have pulled their money our of their candidate’s Senatorial race.
Any chance of a Democrat or Democrat/independent majority?
pollchaser-
More info would be great. Thanks. I’m seeing what Dan Andrews is seeing.
dan andrews — what u saw is what i saw at realclear politics (a good source for a wide range of news, altho the people who run it are hopelessly conservative).
But even those gallup poll figures are significant. Note especially the two-point gain in RVs–closing a gap into a tie. That’s crucial momentum in a close race if it’s accurate, and suggests that 2d prez debate helped. I thought Kerry came off definitely stronger, but still failed on some key points where he could have scored a knockout. With the Republicans insisting on a win and the Democrats equivocal and the polls close, it looked like it might be a wash, which worried me. If that didn’t help Kerry, that’s a bad sign. But indications are that his support continues to solidify.
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I still think the machine agenda is the best predictor, but the polls and the campaign suggest that Bush is really struggling. Not only Noam Chomsky and Julianne Malveaux but TH Kerry have apparently suggested the possibility of an Osama surprise. Why can’t she be MORE CAREFUL for goodness sakes? No one defends me if I “speak my mind” and I’m not the wife of a major party
candidate in a closely contested election. Maybe there’s some strategic notion of bringing out the hostility to focus on her rather than the candidate, a function many felt Hillary performed for Bill (until Monicagate).
Get a load of this – today’s WaPost tracking poll has Bush up by six among LVs (51-45), but RACE IS TIED 47-47 among RVs (Kerry gaining). A LV-RV gap that large this close to the election just doesn’t seem right, esp. with interest and intensity running so high.
Jody,
I have immediate family members in Florida doing same, and they report similarly. They have been canvassing nonstop for a month.
The polls are simply missing a lot of voters.
Pollchaser, I hope that I am wrong and not you.
I thought the lastest Gallup showed Kerry 49 and Bush 48 among LVs and the race 48 to 48 among RVs?
I haven’t seen that Gallup poll, but Zogby (at the RealClearPolitics website) shows Kerry pulling into a slight edge lead. Given Zogby’s reliability I was wondering about comments.
I suspect that, now that Kerry won’t have a chance to talk more about Iraq and correct the nonsense about N Korea, Kerry will need to make VERY CLEAR what has happened in the economy. It was very dismaying that he — despite a still-better-than-Bush on substance AND style performance in the second debate — didn’t take more care with the job stats. He doesn’t need to exaggerate them at all, only ELABORATE them a little:
With nearly 1.6 million private sector jobs lost, all job growth has been in the public sector under Bush; and this is a Republican. I suspect most job growth in public sector related to Iraq war.
1.9 million jobs in ONLY year of job growth, after a loss of 3 million jobs, may sound like a large number, but AVERAGE job growth over 8 years of Clinton was higher. Clinton averaged nearly 3 million growth per year, while this past year doesn’t even keep pace with growth of working age population. Percentage of working age population has declined by 2% under Bush, equal to 4.5 million jobs short of keeping up with society’s requirements. This has eaten up almost all the job growth OVER the expansion of the labor market during the Clinton years. Bush has done with jobs as he has with the deficit, eviscerating Clinton’s surplus. IS THAT WHAT WE WANT FOUR MORE YEARS OF?
Then there’s the issue of the Bush blame game. First he blames a recession as held over from Clinton years. Under Clinton, economy was slowing down a number of times, and big crisis was suspected with SE Asia and Russia crises in 1998. These didn’t happen. After mild recession, Bush blames 9-11. Then the press for printing ‘march to war’ from fall 2002 to March 2003, as well as corporate sleaze scandals. His record after three years of recovery is terrible, but all the public gets is excuses as rosy scenarios.
If Kerry lays this out in the domestic debate, and avoids wordiness like in the abortion funding answer, and keeps up carefulness in substance and style, he should be able gain further.
But I still feel that the weathervane of the machine (as in my comments about press and Kerry campaign silence on the flipflop spin, until the issue forced in the 2d debate — too little too late, as with Dukakis) is the most reliable predictor of the next president. Note also the NY Times column — pooh poohed by Garry Trudeau — by a graphic designer about the Kerry/Edwards logo conveying weakness and confusion predictably. You mean the Democrats, with their millions, don’t have a sophisticated graphic designer? It fits in with the flipflop pattern, together with press derriere couvrance for the cognoscenti
Hey All,
In the good old days it was “It is the economy, stupid.” Now I think we need to remember “It is Zogby, stupid.” I do not mean that as an insult.
Similar to many of you I am an information freak. It is best to select a poll or three and stay with those and not try to reconcile all the contradictions.
As I mentioned yesterday I am working on GOTV. I did door-to-door yesterday in an upscale area. Here are the unscientific results:
Lean Kerry 7
Strong Kerry 16
Lean Bush 5
Strong Bush 11
Undecideds 13
Of particular note – I interviewed a fellow (young with a young family) recently returned from a fourteen month tour in Iraq. He was quiet, respectful and determined in his support for Kerry.
And for what it is worth I do not believe all the undecideds are really undecided. One of the folks I was with for GOTV suggested that Kerry supporters many hold their vote close for fear of neighborly reprisals.
Jody
While I agree with most of pdb’s comments about Rasmussen, he IS a Republican pollster, and he knows which side his bread is buttered on.
While he has consistently overrated Bush’s position, he has tended further that direction since the Republican convention, after which he caught hell from Republicans for NOT getting on board with the post convention juggernaut to name Bush emperor and the election over.
As for his current numbers, on holiday weekends phone polls get more conservative respondents than usual because liberals and moderates have more fun and don’t answer the phone as much.
It’s official:
kerry 52
bush 46
Bush JA 47
Gallup poll at 6 P.M.
More on Rasmussen.
Charlie Cook was on the Washington Post’s “Live chat today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15752-2004Oct7.html?nav=headlines
He said don’t take stock in any poll, incl Rasmussen (he called it out by name) that uses automated questioning and not real people.
There was an article that someone linked to over the weekend, it was Scott Rasmussen, writing on Worldnet Daily, on the eve of the 2000 election.
The whole article centered on Rasmussen’s frustration that the media was saying the race was still close. Rasmussen wrote that the sum of the evidence …incl. his tracking poll over time (Bush by 4%!) … clearly demonstrated that Bush was well up on Gore and that Bush was going to win easily.
Don’t put too much stock in Rasmussen.
I’ll post the link when I get home tonight.
Let me bring together some observations I’ve posted on a couple of other threads.
1 Rasmussen came to my attention in the Spring when Kerry first became the probable nominee, and Rasmussen was the only pollster who didn’t show a sudden major surge of support to Kerry over Bush; most other polls gave him a big lead, Ras still gave Bush a small one.
2) In the months since, Ras has generally had the smallest leads for either side, and the smallest movements in either direction. Which is why some of us were _attracted_ to Rasmussen when other polls were showing Bush up >10%. The relative stability of Ras’ results is more consistent than his favoring Bush.
3) At one point I did a google and dug up a column or interview that said that in 2000 Ras consistently showed enormous Bush leads, and that he subsequently revised his party-weighting methodology because his results had been so wrong. (Some republicans do admit error!)
This is all I know. Someone please tell me more.
Can you offer a comment on the Rasmussen daily tracking poll? Does it have a credible track record? It seems to be in line with the Wash Post tracking poll in that it shows Bush gaining strength and Kerry losing support, just as most other polls show the opposite. I’m just wondering about whether Rasmussen has a solid reputation. Thanks.
OT: Does anyone have any idea about the effectiveness of events such as this being prepared by the Republicans?
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As a Volunteer, you probably have plans to go door-to-door in the final days, and make sure your neighbors vote. We’re asking you to start a little earlier.
http://www.GeorgeWBush.com/Walk
On October 16 and 17, tens of thousands of Volunteers will gather in thousands of homes all across America and carry out the largest door-to-door contact program ever assembled – the Walk the Vote Weekend. Will your house be one of them?
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