Richard Whalen

Hillary Clinton pulled an upset in New Hampshire, confounding nearly all the polls that showed Barack Obama motoring to a big victory on the heels of his Iowa win. And that raises some questions about what the American electorate is all about.

There is a long way to go and Obama still has his chance to be the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party and, at that, the first African-American standard bearer. He has that chance because he belongs to a generation of African-Americans who are part of a social and cultural (and biracial) elite class for whom everything is possible.

“(Obama) is being consumed as the embodiment of color-blindness,” says Angela Davis, professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “It’s the notion that we have moved beyond racism by not taking race into account. That’s what makes him conceivable as a presidential candidate. He’s become the model of diversity in this period, and what's interesting about his campaign is that it has not sought to invoke engagements with race other than those that have already existed.”

These razor-sharp insights by a black radical intellectual deflate much of the chattering about “change” that has been so much a part of Obama's appeal.

Writing in The Nation, Gary Younge, a black Briton and New York correspondent for the Guardian, declares that Obama has soared to the heights “less because (he) is ‘acting white’ than because he is making every effort not to act ‘too black’ … Indeed, the main thing that the new leaders (such as Obama) have in common is that they don’t scare white people. Or at least not too many and not too much … Race is, among other things, a performance.” And, above all, Obama is a masterful performer.

Americans lie to pollsters about everything, including race. In 1982, the press noticed “the Bradley effect,” which showed California’s black gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley ahead in the polls, until the votes were cast and counted. Bradley received about five points less than predicted and lost. Seven years later, the press noticed “the Wilder effect” in Virginia. Gov. Douglas Wilder was predicted to be an easy winner but barely squeaked in.

We are still pretending to be more liberal and high-minded than we really are, but perhaps that disparity is smaller now. I hope so. A report by the Pew Research Center, after studying the results for five black candidates in statewide races during the 2006 midterm elections, found the polls and the results were highly accurate, and concluded, “Fewer people are making judgments about candidates based solely or even mostly on race itself.”

Will there be an "Obama Effect" in 2008?

The only way to determine whether there is an “Obama effect” will be to nominate him, see what happens in the general election campaign, and compare the polls to the votes he wins on Election Day.