Brooks: "South Carolina’s Black Vote Can Decide The Future Of Obama’s Purple Revolution"

Webster Brooks, the moderate head of the U.S. Iran-Peace Project who supports Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid, emailed this commentary to Booker Rising:

In one week, the future of Barack Obama’s presidential hopes and his Purple Revolution will be decided by South Carolina’s Black voters who make up 47 percent of the state’s electorate. Obama must not only win the South Carolina primary but carry the state’s black vote by a five to one margin to ignite the national black vote for the February 5, Super Tuesday showdown featuring elections in twenty states.

With his narrow defeat in New Hampshire, Barack Obama lost the chance to knock Hillary Clinton out of the race early. Now, his only chance to win the nomination encompasses a long bloody primary with Clinton that goes all the way to the Democratic Party convention in Denver and a bruising delegate fight. To survive the long primary war and win the nomination, Obama must consolidate 80 percent of the Black vote, maintain his majority of independent voters and hope that John McCain clinches the Republican nomination early.

The fractious issue of race, long deferred in the Democratic primaries has finally surfaced with a vengeance, largely spurred on incendiary comments about Obama by the “honorary Black president” come-to-Harlem Bill Clinton. While race may emerge as the most compelling factor driving South Carolina’s Black vote, African-American support for Obama will require jettisoning the Democratic Party’s Civil Rights establishment to join Obama’s Purple Revolution — a coalition of moderate Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans.

Like all insurgent movements, Obama’s Purple Revolution must storm the fortress of the Democratic Party establishment led by the Clintons. Although Obama is running against Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton has sundered the traditional role of former presidents assuming all the dignity of a roving attack dog stalking Obama and pouting to the press. Since Bill Clinton’s election as president in 1992, the Clintons have exercised dominion over the national Democratic Party machine. Bill and Hillary Clinton have raised more money for the Democratic Party, its candidates and causes than anyone. They have controlled the Democratic National Committee, and presided over a vast patronage network that rewards friends and punishes adversaries with malice and regularity.

Within the Democratic Party’s special interests universe, the Clintons have exercised dominion over the Democratic Party’s women’s caucus, Hollywood ’s limousine liberals, New York ’s Democratic Party financial district moguls and most especially the Black Civil Rights establishment.

So formidable is the Clinton ’s grip on the Democratic Party that should Obama edge out Hillary Clinton in delegates awarded through the party primaries and caucuses, he may still lose the nomination due to the extraordinary number of non-primary super-delegates voting at the Democratic Party National Convention; yet another stronghold of the Clintons. Super-delegates include 235 Democratic House members, 49 U.S. senators, 28 governors and other party luminaries that comprise 16 percent of the total convention delegates.

On the road to South Carolina the presidential campaign now moves into Phase Two, as both candidates engage in a mad scramble, crisscrossing America in search of 2,025 delegates needed to secure the party's nomination. Delegates will be awarded by proportional representation, with a minimum 15 percent threshold of a state’s total vote required in order to receive convention delegates. Thus, winning and losing states becomes relative as long as the delegate counts remain fairly close. While “fighting” John Edwards has vowed to run all the way to the convention, his support is likely to diminish as the race increasingly becomes a fight between the Clinton establishment and Obama’s ascendant Purple Revolution. If Edwards stays in the race and captures the requisite 15 percent of the vote in key states, which camp his delegates side with could be another critical unknown in a race that remains very much up for grabs.

Barack Obama is offering the Democratic Party and the American electorate an opportunity to turn the page on the bitter era of partisanship and political rancor that has paralyzed Washington. Although America’s electorate is tilting towards the Democrats, if the Republicans nominate John McCain the Democratic Party will be confronted by an opponent with broad appeal to America’s vital center. If Republicans nominate Mitt Romney and Democrats crown Hillary Clinton as their nominee, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will surely enter the presidential race as a formidable independent threat. Having lost the last two presidential elections with candidates that lacked sufficient appeal to the center, Democrats can nominate the polarizing Hillary Clinton at their own peril.

As for Black America, the majority of African-American voters can join Obama’s Purple Revolution or opt for the politics of the past. On January 26, Black voters have a date with destiny. Let freedom ring at the ballot boxes of South Carolina.