It was perhaps the most striking statistic to emerge from the exit-poll data dump after Tuesday’s Kentucky primary. Of the 21 percent of Bluegrass State voters who said race factored into their pick, nearly nine out of ten chose Hillary Clinton. In other words, more than 50,000 Kentucky Democrats admitted that the relative melanin content of Barack Obama’s epidermis was a reason they decided not to vote for him. Predictably, this “revelation” led to endless hours of Beltway analysis and the dismissive claim, in pro-Obama circles, that losing Kentucky (and, by extension, elsewhere in Appalachia) was okay because lots of folks who live there are sort of, like, racist.
That always struck me as a little reductive–and now, it seems, at least one expert agrees. In an interview yesterday with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, self-described “redneck” Virginia Sen. Jim Webb–the author of 2005’s “Born Fighting,” a book about how his Scots-Irish ancestors shaped America–bristled at the suggestion that racism accounts for Obama’s paltry performance in Appalachia. “When I hear people say this is racism, it gets my back up a little bit,” said Webb. “This isn’t Selma, 1965.” Turns out Webb has an alternate explanation: affirmative action. “We shouldn’t be surprised at the way they are voting right now,” he said. “This is the result of how affirmative action, which was basically a justifiable concept when it applied to African-Americans, expanded to every single ethnic group in America that was not white. And these were the people who had not received benefits and were not getting anything out of it.” Webb’s point, I think, is not that white, working-class Appalachians are getting revenge on Obama. It’s that to them he seems (true or not) like an upstart, a rookie, a newbie who has risen mostly on the strength of his style rather than his substance, and may have even been boosted in part because he’s African-American. Broadly speaking, that sort of thing doesn’t tend to bother Obama’s key constituencies–blacks, ambitious young people, meritocratic metropolitan elites and even high-information voters who’ve familiarized themselves with his (rather in-depth) policy proposals. But it does bother underprivileged whites. Which is why they identify with Clinton–who emphasizes experience, hard work and concrete “specifics”–instead. In that sense, I think Webb is absolutely correct.
Incidentally, I put Webb’s odds last week of joining an Obama ticket at “strong.” One of the main reasons: his connection to the “working-class, Obama-wary, Scots-Irish Appalachian ethnic group that propelled Clinton to primary victories in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia.” Yesterday’s astute post-Kentucky analysis proves my point–and, for Obama, makes having him as an ambassador to Appalachia look all the more attractive. On MSNBC, Webb stressed that his party’s near-nominee could overcome the hurdles of affirmative action in the fall. “If this cultural group could get at the same table with black America, you could really change American politics because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government,” he said. “The fact that they would line up and vote this way is not so much a comment on Barack. I think Barack Obama is saying a lot of good things that will appeal to [them] in time.” Note the phrase “change American politics.” Asked if a Webb-Obama ticket would do the trick, spokesperson Jessica Smith told ABC News, “I’m not going to answer that question.” But according to the AP and the Atlantic, Obama’s veep search has already begun–meaning she may have to soon enough.
