I have to give credit where credit is due. When Howard Dean walked into a self-generated controversy over the Confederate Flag, I thought his campaign, which has struggled in winning support from African Americans, would have even more trouble courting black voters. If today’s Roll Call is any indication, Dean has done just the opposite, winning support from leading African-American lawmakers in Congress at just the right time.
Up until very recently, African Americans were the one Dem constituency that the Dean campaign was having trouble connecting with. In fact, he started off further back than most of his Dem rivals, by virtue of coming from Vermont (home to the second-smallest African-American population in the country), having no personal experience with the civil rights movement, and suggesting that he was prepared to move away from race-based affirmative action policies.
Dean made things slightly worse for himself early on, arguing that he has “a special relationship with the African-American community” because he had “two African-American roommates in college.”
In early October, while Dean was leading in several national polls, he was garnering only 7 percent support among African-American voters in the race for the Dem nomination (Clark was in first place with 15 percent).
Then, with the controversy surrounding his comments to the Des Moines Register, in which he said he wants to be the candidate “for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” Dean risked permanently alienating the African-American community.
To his campaign’s credit, Dean’s consistent (and persistent) outreach to the Congressional Black Caucus appears to be paying off. This week, Dean won the endorsement of CBC Vice Chairwoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who campaigned with Dean in Houston on Tuesday. Just as importantly, Dean is poised to also get the endorsement of CBC Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in the next couple of days.
These endorsements are a pretty big deal for a candidate whose rallies have been overwhelmingly white for many months now. As Democratic strategist Donna Brazile told Roll Call, “Dean’s appeal to Democratic base voters, as well as potential swing voters, has moved members of the CBC to support his candidacy.” She added that the endorsements “will give Dean instant credibility with black voters and help his campaign build inroads for the primaries.”
If you’re looking for the turning point for Dean and the African-American community, I’d argue that it wasn’t Dean’s handling of the Confederate Flag fiasco; it was his endorsement from Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.).
In fact, in a Roll Call op-ed published today, Jackson not only defends Dean’s reference to the Confederate Flag, he suggests it was a wise political strategy.
“Historically, the Confederate flag is a symbol of the Democratic Party,” Jackson wrote. “Today, however, Republicans can fly and wave it, but Democrats can’t talk about it – and current Democrats don’t know how to handle it. As a result, the symbol Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean used got in the way of his substance, but his substance was on point — and the point was Southern whites and blacks together must focus on their common economic needs: jobs, good schools, affordable health care. Howard Dean has a new Democratic Southern strategy. Democrats know the divide in the South is race. Republicans have exploited it. Democrats have evaded it.”
I think Jackson is mistaken about Dean’s “Southern strategy,” and Dean was really using the Confederate Flag line to defend his ties to the National Rifle Association, but that’s beside the point. Jackson’s support, like that of Sheila Jackson Lee and Elijah Cummings shows that Dean has turned an important corner. After months of awkward outreach and poorly-worded appeals, the Dean campaign seems to have finally connected with African-American leaders in a way that should help his campaign enormously. It’s about time.