Redstate

"Prepare the Native American voting bloc for the sacrifice!"

By Moe Lane Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Black Eagle | Native Americans | Obamabus — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Yeah, I'm anthropomorphizing: I currently see Obamabus as being this vaguely humanoid yellow school bus, drawn in a vaguely Aztec style (or maybe I'm thinking Mayan). The important thing has to be that the left hand/front tire needs to holding a bowl with the word "Hope" on it and the right hand/front tire needs to have a knife with the word "Change." And, oh yeah, make sure that the Obamaseal is right in the middle of what we should probably call its "chest."

Or something like that.

Anyway, the latest victims of Obamabus are, ironically enough, Native American groups. Apparently the Senator has learned the fine old Washingtonian tradition of making a deal with Native tribes, then casually breaking it at the first sign of inconvenience:

(Read on, after the fold)

Before the Illinois senator became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he made a pledge to Kalyn Free, founder of the Indigenous Democratic Network, that he would appear at a tribally focused town hall-style meeting. Initial logistics of the agreement called on him to speak at a reservation or Indian-owned venue somewhere in the Southwest before the Democratic National Convention in August if he became his party's candidate.

Obama's verbal promise was seen as key among influential Indian political activists, and it played a factor for some Native individuals who threw their support behind his candidacy. The promise even partially influenced the decision of at least one of the four Native superdelegates who will attend the DNC to cast their votes for him. All four Native superdelegates, including Free, have verbally pledged their support to the senator from Illinois.

[snip]

The Obama campaign has told Free that the senator can only provide two weeks' notice regarding when and where he would be able to participate in an Indian-focused event.

Free, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, has requested a larger window of time - even as short as four weeks - but, to date, the campaign has not been willing to budge. Campaign officials have said that the candidate's time is pressed in the weeks leading up to the convention.

[bolding mine]

(Via Green Country Values) I originally had something mocking written in place of this paragraph, but I decided it would be needlessly cruel. The problem here for the Native American tribes is that they are a collection of independent, well, tribes, so collecting them all in one place takes time - and most of them aren't what you'd call wealthy. So they can't really put something together on two weeks' notice.

They also mostly live in areas that aren't going to be going Blue this November. I hate to break it to them - no, really; my own (garbled) family history suggests that I have a trace of Huron blood - but right now there is precisely one minority group that concerns the Obama campaign. No, not African-Americans; their support is so secure right now that Senator Obama isn't concerned about them at all. The minority voting bloc that worries Obama most is the Latino one. Today's Time poll (the 43%-38% one) has a very interesting cross-tab in it:

The bright spot for Obama is with Latino voters, a group he overwhelmingly lost to Clinton in the primaries, but now leads 51% to 34% over McCain.

As our own Adam C noted privately, with 15% undecided/other this is actually good news for McCain: it means that he's likely to at least hit Bush's 40% in the actual election. As Obama's previous strategy for a broad-spectrum, cross-bloc candidacy died with the Jeremiah Wright controversy, he now has to scramble to put something together that will get him 270 EVs. Women in general, disaffected Clinton supporters, and Latinos are numerous enough or wealthy enough to be worth the trouble to woo; Native Americans, alas, are not. Hence... the date with Obamabus. Barack "Black Eagle" Obama, or no.

But if it makes Native Americans feel any better, they've already got plenty of company, and will undoubtedly get plenty more before this election is over...