What role did race play with white Democrats?

As the primaries end, a round table of experts -- Tom Schaller, Ruy Teixeira and Sean Wilentz -- weighs the influence of white racism on the Clinton vs. Obama contest.

Editor's note: Listen to an audio version of this round table here.

By Mark Schone

Read more: Racial Issues, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, African-Americans, Mississippi, News, Ohio, Barack Obama, 2008 election

June 3, 2008 |

The Democratic primary season ends Tuesday with contests in South Dakota and Montana. Barack Obama will finish the epic, five-month slog with more delegates than Hillary Clinton and, most likely, the Democratic nomination. Ever since Clinton's surprise victory in the long-ago New Hampshire primary, however, there have been questions about the role of race in the voting behavior of white Democrats and what that might mean for Obama's prospects come November. Specifically, observers have pointed to electoral results that show that less-educated whites and white residents of certain geographic regions preferred Clinton to Obama at higher levels than better-educated whites and whites nationally. Exit polls also seemed to support the idea that race had played some part in Clinton's heavy margins among white voters in states like Kentucky.

Salon decided to convene a round table and ask one uncomfortable, unavoidable, and inexhaustible question: What role did race play in the voting behavior of white Democrats in 2008? Three experts in the interaction of race, class and voting behavior agreed to participate. Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton University and contributing editor at the New Republic, is the author, most recently, of "The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008." He has been a prominent supporter of Clinton's presidential campaign. Ruy Teixeira is a fellow at the Century Foundation, the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution. He is the author of the book "Why the White Working Class Still Matters" and coauthor of the recent paper "The Decline of the White Working Class and the Rise of a Mass Upper Middle Class." Frequent Salon contributor Tom Schaller is an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and the author of "Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South." The conversation was moderated by Salon news editor Mark Schone.

Salon: Let's start by asking each of you in turn what you think the role of race was or how important it was in decision-making by white voters. Tom Schaller: I guess I'd start by saying that you'd have to be crazy to suggest that race didn't matter in this primary, both for black voters and for white voters. But since we're focusing on white voters only, I think it's very clear from the results that there are differences in at least the support for and appreciation for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Whether that is motivated by race, racial antipathy toward Obama, or whether it's motivated by a historical connection to the Clintons, or Bill Clinton, or Hillary Clinton specifically, it's a little difficult to disentangle. But I think the pattern is relatively clear, particularly with some white voters, particularly with non-college- educated white voters, downscale voters, whatever label you want to use.

The unfortunate, from a small d, democratic standpoint, the unfortunate lesson that we learned from this 2008 primary, is that no matter who wins, no matter what the result is or what the impact is in the general election contest against John McCain, the notion that racism is something that has been relegated to the Republican Party as an identity problem or as an intraparty problem is simply a fiction. And that, whatever the magnitude of it is, there is still a significant racial undercurrent within Democratic Party politics, and I think it is something that Barack Obama, presuming that he is the nominee, is going to have to deal with.

Ruy Teixeira: Actually, I'd say the short answer to the question of how much race was involved in a pure sense in terms of decision making in the Democratic primary process and how much it will play going forward is that we don't know. We do know it was a factor, but we just don't know how much of one because I think the data don't permit us to make that kind of judgment. It's essentially impossible to disentangle the extent to which people voted for Hillary Clinton because of Obama's race or because they liked the general way Hillary approached politics and economics or because they were more culturally comfortable with her or because they knew about the Clintons or they were generally more familiar with Hillary. These are all things that probably correlate pretty well with the demographics of the people who wind up heavily favoring Hillary, including these white working-class voters. Especially if we couch it as racial bias, that what kept these voters, these white voters from voting for Obama was racial bias, we have to be careful in inferring too much. And as I think Tom was implying, it's a question of magnitude. There is clearly an effect of some magnitude here, but how great is that effect? And we just don't know. Sean Wilentz: I think very differently. Race has primarily played a factor to help Barack Obama. Not only with the African-American vote, which is fairly clear, I mean it's obviously clear, but with some white voters as well. I think that the idea that Hillary Clinton has suddenly gained a lot of support from racists, which we call "low information" voters, things like that, is just a myth. I mean, in fact, if you look over the exit polls, she's done much better in the votes since March, in fact, most of that support can be accounted for over the last three months, for greater support among upper and middle income white voters. It's not [these] mythic Appalachian, racist whites. That's a very small percentage of her pickup over Obama over the past three months. So I just don't buy it. I think certainly there's an element of that there, but I think that it's very, very small. Salon: So what does it mean then, when a white voter tells a pollster that race was "important" in choosing one candidate over another? How many answers are contained in that answer? Teixeira: I think if we clarify what the question actually was it helps clarify how much it might mean. The question was, was it one of several factors, the most important factor or not a factor, right? The larger group was the people who said it was one of several important factors and basically they lumped the most important factor folks in with the several important factors, so that can be a little deceptive. So what does it mean when somebody says it's one of several factors they considered? Does that mean they otherwise would have voted for Obama but they're racist [and] they voted for Hillary? I think there are a lot more benign interpretations and positive answers to that question. It's certainly the case that whites who responded who said it was one of several factors were likely to favor Hillary over Obama, but I think you have to be careful about the interpretation you make about that relationship. Wilentz: You also have to disentangle white voters who voted for Barack because he is black. Schaller: But I would also add to Sean's point, which I think is a fair point, that Hillary's increase came at the cut point in the campaign when it became clear Obama was going to be competitive, if it's true that her increases were among more middle- and upper-class whites, in other words, she chipped into the white-collar whites that Obama was banking on, or was doing better among earlier in the process, you can't even disentangle that. Sean might say, I don't want to speak for him, but he might say, that's because she was speaking more about economic populism and that was resonating with them. Or they just liked the way she was comporting herself in the campaign after she had her tough month in February. The other way to interpret that, and I'm not suggesting this is the way that I interpreted that, the white vote became more uniform for her and it wasn't just downscale whites -- however we want to define them. It became a more uniformly white vote titled toward Hillary and a more uniformly black vote tilted toward Obama. And even that, you might not be able to say that's a racial factor, but these things are happening around the time of the Jeremiah Wright issue and perhaps, I think it's at least fair to suggest or entertain the notion that Barack Obama's support among more upscale, college-educated whites was pretty solid initially, because he was viewed as this post-racial candidate, but when he was no longer viewed that way, people who were normally post-racial in their thinking maybe became, at least had a second thought about how they looked at him.

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