Here’s the elegantly simple explanation from consultant and former NAACP operative Walter Fields about the apparently massive swing in black support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama: “The black electorate is coming to the conclusion that he is black.”
For the record, even some of Hillary Clinton’s top African-American supporters have been saying much the same thing for a while, even when polls supposedly demonstrated their candidate was enjoying a 3-1 advantage among black voters.
Fields also guessed that things would continue to move in the same direction, particularly if there were any repeats of the recent nasty exchange between the two camps. “Because at the end of the day,” he said, “there is a cultural connection.”
Interestingly, the “is he black enough” storyline still seems to have legs. Go figure.
— Jason Horowitz
