More on the Bradley Effect...
Obama Gets Encouragement and Warning From Wilder
bloomberg.com
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Doug Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, has both encouragement and a warning for Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
The encouragement is that Obama is approaching the race issue the right way, and the nation is ready to elect a black president. The warning is that it may not be as ready as polls suggest.
``Let's not kid ourselves again, the issue of race will not disappear; but I don't think it will predominate,'' the former Virginia governor said in an interview at his office in Richmond, where he is now mayor. At the same time, he said, even if Obama is the nominee and heads into the fall with an apparent lead, the election ``will be closer than any polls will suggest.''
Wilder, 77, is an authority in the matter. In 1989, he won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the overwhelmingly white onetime cradle of the Confederacy. Polls taken just before Election Day had put him ahead of his Republican competitor by as much as 10 percentage points; he won by less than half a percentage point. |
