“White people work for Republicans! Not African Americans.”
That’s what Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told me back in 1991 when I was a young staffer for a Republican member of Congress.
If black people aren’t supposed to be working for Republicans, then, by that same logic, black people certainly aren’t supposed to be winning straw polls in the Republican presidential race.
But that is exactly what Herman Cain has done.
The former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza is surging in national polls. His surprising success reflects the appeal of his traditional conservative views on the economy — including his 9-9-9 tax reform plan — and the way that the tea party movement, whose supporters generally back Cain, has upended the Republican Party.
But Cain’s candidacy is also the ultimate extension of the Obama presidency: A contender for the highest office in the land can be taken seriously regardless of race.
Despite the viability of a candidate such as Cain, there is a great irony to his early success. We are heading into a 2012 election cycle in which Republican and tea party conservatives appear eager to support a candidate, who just happens to be black, based on his convictions and ideas. The Democrats, on the other hand, appear willing to recycle the race card to keep this country’s first black president in office.
Before 2004, I never believed that we would see an African American elected president during my lifetime. Neither major political party had nominated a black candidate, and a serious and viable individual had yet to emerge that would change this. I have worked in politics for more than 20 years, and I have seen Republican candidates reluctant to reach out to communities of color, always thinking it was fruitless. I have also seen Democrats who appeared to take the black vote for granted.
I changed my mind in September 2004 after watching an electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention by a little-known candidate seeking to become the junior senator from Illinois. I felt that suddenly the unthinkable had become possible — perhaps America was ready to move beyond its troubled history with race and elect a black man to the most powerful job in the world.
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama competed and won in states where the percentage of African American voters was in the single digits compared with whites, Latinos and other ethnic minorities. He attracted voters based on the content of his message, not the color of his skin. Obama’s election in 2008 did not usher in a post-racial America. But eventually it did usher in Cain as a credible candidate.
Politically, the two men could not be more different, but their mutual success is inextricably linked. In the nearly three years since Obama was elected, dissatisfied conservatives have rallied around the tea party movement — citizens alarmed by the rapid growth of government and the reach of the president’s health-care reform law. From organic gatherings and rallies, the tea party grew into a political force whose candidates promised to rein in the federal government.
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