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Roland S. Martin: Dems need more than hard-working whites

Roland S. Martin  —  5/11/2008 7:13 am

Excuse me if a look of bewilderment continues to cross my face when a surrogate of Sen. Hillary Clinton starts off on the we-need-hard-working-white-workers-to-win-in-November mantra. In fact, the candidate herself now has made that the primary -- and latest -- argument to the superdelegates in order to convince them that she's the best person to beat Sen. John McCain in November.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she told USA Today. Then she cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting (her)."

Now, I know I'm not one of those hard-working white Americans she's talking about, but the reality is that hard-working white Americans alone will not put Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama in the White House.

African-Americans alone won't do it.

Young people alone won't do it.

Seniors alone won't do it.

College-educated people alone won't do it.

Women alone won't do it.

In fact, Democrats alone won't do it. You also must take a good portion of independents.

No Democrats can win the White House unless they are able to pull from all the various constituencies in the country, and it's downright silly for the Clinton campaign to continue to assert that when it's all said and done, hard-working white people's votes are the only votes that matter.

Sure, they'll contend that's not what they are saying. But it sure sounds that way (and no, I don't agree with what's being said on blogs that this is playing the race card).

Is Clinton suggesting that the whites who voted for Obama in Iowa, New Hampshire (where she beat him by about 8,000 votes), Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington state, Minnesota and so many other states were phantom voters? Were they not hard-working white voters? Were they only the "eggheads and African-Americans" whom Paul Begala referred to on CNN on election night?

Look, I get spin. And I get that Clinton must figure out some kind of argument that makes sense for the superdelegates to go her way and ignore Obama's lead among pledged delegates, the popular vote and states won. But she is ramming home this notion that hard-working white Americans somehow are the bedrock of the Democratic Party, but that's just not true.

Clinton wants to make the argument that her white working-class support in Ohio and Pennsylvania -- states the Democrats need to win in November -- shows she's the best choice. But one major failure in Clinton's argument is the assumption that all of the traditional Democratic constituencies will continue to offer her broad support if she's the nominee. And considering her high negatives, she can't afford any erosion. Obama could make the case that she has failed miserably in the primaries in garnering young voters and African-Americans and, without them, she loses.

Not only that, the Democratic Party has a chance to expand the map beyond the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. If you look at the presidential map, Democrats have a solid shot at winning Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire. Of those states, Obama won four of the seven and had narrow losses in New Mexico and New Hampshire.

Small states? Sure. Winnable? Absolutely. Their electoral votes count as much as the big states'.

If the Democratic Party is serious about winning, it is going to have to put on ice this notion that white working-class voters, or any other constituency, are the be-all and end-all in November. Winning the White House, no matter the candidate, is about building a true broad coalition, and how else to judge that than who has done it in the primaries? If it's Obama, he's the nominee. If it's Clinton, she's the nominee.

That should be on the mind of every superdelegate, not the debate over which ethnic group reigns supreme at the ballot box.

Roland S. Martin is a CNN contributor and a talk show host for WVON/AM in Chicago.

Roland S. Martin  —  5/11/2008 7:13 am