Joining John Edwards, Barack Obama has announced he will not participate in the Democratic candidates debate co-hosted by Fox and the Congressional Black Caucus. While Obama had also withdrawn from Fox's planned debate in Nevada, the CBC's sponsorship made Obama's decision far riskier. Obama has been fighting persistent rumors that he is being rejected by the Black community due to his unconventional background and African (as opposed to African-American) father. To my mind, that's BS, and the reason that Black voters aren't automatically flocking to Obama is because they are intelligent people who will vote for who they think is the best candidate, not whoever can wave the right color swatch.
That notwithstanding, it definitely has been hurting Obama that he hasn't been able to solidify his support in the Black community, and the CBC debate must have been an awfully tempting venue to try and get his message out to them. He will still participate in another CBC debate co-hosted by CNN.
The Netroots, unsurprisingly, is quite pleased. Praises sing from DKos, Steve Benen, MyDD, and FireDogLake. In fact, I haven't seen a single liberal blog condemning him. But I'll admit that these are mostly White (or non-African-American) sources--I'm curious if Black Democrats feel differently--their opinion is the crucial one here, I feel. BlackProf--one stop shopping for Black political/legal commentary--hasn't written anything on it yet. Pam Spaulding, however, is quite pleased with Obama as well, lending credance to the notion that the CBC is out of line with mainline Black Democrats.
What I find most ludicrous are all the comments on the site you linked for the news item in which the commenters declare that the Democrats are "afraid" to debate conservatives. Those commenters appear to have missed the fact that this was a Democrat-only debate to help voters choose a candidate in the primaries. If that's the average reading ability among Fox News viewers, Obama quite frankly may have gone over their heads.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do find it odd for Obama to have refused the debate. For people highly interested in news and politics, this may be unbelievable, but Obama needs to continue to build his recognition, so any outlet with a very large audience is theoretically worth his while. On the other hand, I'd also be interested in FNC's conducting a call-in polls of its viewers to find out how many are planning to vote for the Democratic candidate in 2008 (not based on a particular candidate's winning, but just generally assuming that they'll vote for the Democrat whoever it ends up being) -- if the percentage is in the single digits, it's a waste of Obama's time.