You know that gesture where you take your open, right hand, palm down, and push it, sharply, straight back, about two inches above the top of your skull?
Usually, you do that when you want to admit that something has just gone “right over your head.”
I just did that while watching the national election returns.
Believing that the media were telling me all that I needed to know to be politically well-informed, I went into Election Day “knowing” that there were three important elections taking place on November 3. They were the governor’s race in Virginia, the governor’s race in New Jersey, and, in New York State, they told us to focus on something that came to be known as “N Y-23,” the congressional race wherein Sarah Palin endorsed a little-known and really strange-looking Independent named Doug Hoffman, over the party-endorsed Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava.
There wasn't much talk about the mayor’s race in Atlanta, so most of us paid virtually no attention to the fact that Mary Norwood, a conservative Democrat and former Republican, was poised to become the first white mayor in predominantly black Atlanta in 36 years.
There was that election in New York City, where the incumbent, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had changed the city’s term-limit laws so that he could qualify for a third run at the office. This race wasn't deemed newsworthy because everyone on earth assumed that Bloomberg, and his $100 million campaign expenditure, was going to win…period. There was almost no discussion, in national media, about Bloomberg's unfortunate opponent--the City's Comptroller, an African American named William Thompson.
Reading the "crawls" at the bottom of the TV screen on Tuesday night, I saw Seth ahead with 75 percent of the vote; Butkovitz leading with 72 percent; McDonnell trouncing Deeds in Virginia; and Christie, not unexpectedly, whipping the deep-pocketed Corzine in New Jersey(Ho, hum). All of a sudden, however, it was being reported that the invincible, all-powerful, more-money-than-God, Michael Bloomberg was only ahead of his opponent – some person named Thompson – by one point. In my mind, that seemed to be impossible. As the evening wore on, however, Thompson wouldn’t “go away.”
Thompson did wind up losing, by a narrow margin, to the man who outspent him by 14-to-1. In reviewing that race, however, I realized that our friend, President Obama, was, arguably, the single biggest reason for that loss.
For some strange reason, Obama, whose 2008 campaign certainly benefited by wide support from other African-American political leaders – including Bill Thompson – made a conscientious effort not to swing the full support of the White House, or the party he now controls, to Bill Thompson’s campaign. If he had done so – and, here, I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb – Thompson would have beaten Bloomberg in one of the greatest political upsets since… Barack Obama’s own campaign for president.
Hey, Barack Obama didn’t have to aggressively support Thompson simply because he was, and is, black; he should have done so because Thompson was, and is, a Democrat.
Was the president just “too busy” saving Afghanistan, Iraq and the Health Care Reform bill to help Bill Thompson, as his “Stepford” supporters will surely say?
He didn't seem "too busy" to campaign aggressively with and for Corzine, on several occasions. Nor was he “too busy” to pop down to Virginia to support Creigh Deeds – even after Deeds had gone out of his way to explain to the entire world that he did not consider himself an “Obama Democrat."
When he did travel to New York City, the president didn't go to support Thompson; but, rather, to appear at a fundraiser for “fat cats” who eagerly paid $30,400 per couple to generate cash for the DNC and for local Democrats (Thompson not included).
While in New York, the first black president showed no real “love” for Mr. Thompson. In fact, Thompson was reduced to tracking Obama down at a healthcare rally to beg for a few minutes of his precious time. News outlets reported that, during a brief backstage meeting, Obama reminded Mr. Thompson, who, with no support from the White House, had, by that time, managed to reduce Bloomberg’s 16-point lead in the polls to 8 percent, to just “keep working hard.”
Indeed, it wasn’t until the New York Times denounced the arms-length treatment of the Democratic mayoral candidate that Obama finally “endorsed” Thompson. In a headline describing the Obama/Thompson relationship, the Times said: “Obama Pays Scant Attention to City Candidate.” In the body of the story, the Times reporter said: “The President has all but ignored the Democrat running on a message of change, and has embraced the incumbent running on the Republican ballot.”
Shortly thereafter, on October 9, Mr. Thompson received his “endorsement," but it was done in a way to minimize its impact. October 9 happened to be a Friday, a horrible day for generating news coverage, as everyone knows. It was also the day that the Obama administration joined in announcing the President's Nobel Peace Prize.
The Times presented it this way: “An Obama Endorsement, Sort of, for Thompson.” The story described the announcement as “an unusually lukewarm expression of political support from the White House," pointing out that the White House didn’t even bother to mention Thompson’s name in the announcement, nor did the statement actually include a quote from Barack Obama. Instead, the endorsement was attributed to a White House spokesperson.
When the Democratic Party was trying to beat back the same Bloomberg the first time he ran in 2001, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe got personally involved. Four years ago, DNC Chair Howard Dean and Democratic Senators John Kerry and John Edwards were dispatched to "the Apple” to fight the fight against Bloomberg.
What, you might be asking yourself, did Thompson do to deserve such cold treatment?
Was it his early endorsement of Barack Osama’s own campaign while he was New York City’s sitting Comptroller? Was it that he then went on to volunteer in Pennsylvania for the Obama campaign? Was it the fact that, in speaking engagements, he reminded New York voters that if Obama could be elected President in 2008, it was certainly reasonable to believe that Bill Thompson could be elected New York City’s mayor in 2009.
Maybe Thompson should have taken a more Bloomberg-like posture with the new President. Maybe, instead of being so supportive, he should have referred to Obama, as Bloomberg did early in the Presidential campaign, as “inexperienced at running things” and “too willing to make political compromises.”
No matter, the opportunity has now been lost and, at the risk of sounding like a “party pooper” to all of my friends who are busily engaged in celebrating the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama's election, I want to go on the record, once again, as saying that, “So far, I’m not feeling it.”
It seems that the White House that was absolutely desperate to appear victorious in any major election on November 3 would have gained significant credibility in unseating Bloomberg. It would, unquestionably, have been a huge feather in the president’s cap. Maybe he just didn’t want that kind of feather.
Here’s the problem: I voted for Barack Obama, but the treatment of Bill Thompson’s viable candidacy and the president's continuing pattern of disinterest in addressing black-specific issues is making me wish there had been a credible, third candidate on the ballot.
More and more, every day, I’m feeling like I’ve been “had.”
How about you? Or is this all just one more thing that’s going right over our collective black heads?
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