The Breakthrough

In her non-fiction book The Breakthrough: Politics & Race in the Age of Obama (2009), American journalist and author Gwen Ifill explores the role played by race in the 2008 US presidential election, seeking to predict how race will continue to be a factor in future elections. In advance of its publication, The Breakthrough sparked controversy when presidential candidate John McCain objected to Ifill's role as a moderator for the vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, accusing her of bias. However, the book is not a piece of hagiography devoted to President Barack Obama. In fact, Ifill focuses as much on Obama's life and career as she does on three other politicians of color: former Newark mayor and current US Senator Cory Booker, former governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick, and former US Congressman Artur Davis from Alabama.

As so much has already been written about the rise of Barack Obama, Ifill focuses on Obama’s campaign strategy. While she rejects the notion that Obama's decisive win in the 2008 presidential election is a sign that America is now a "post-racial" society, she agrees that chief strategist David Axelrod's "race-neutral" approach to Obama's campaign was a key element of his electoral success. While exciting African Americans and getting them to the ballot box was of the utmost importance for Obama, the campaign had to face the reality that African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the nation's population. As a result, candidates like Obama must walk a tightrope, "putting whites at ease without alienating blacks."

Deval Patrick is another prominent politician who, like Obama, was a client of David Axelrod. After growing up in poverty on Chicago's South Side and "without as much as a dogcatcher's election under his belt," the Harvard-educated lawyer won 56 percent of the vote in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial race, becoming the first black governor of a state where only 7 percent of the residents are African-American. Ifill summarizes Patrick's strategy saying he won by "appealing to black voters with the same arguments used to convince white ones."



Ifill also explores the importance for candidates like Obama and Patrick of belonging to what many people—including Obama himself—refer to as "the Joshua generation." Named after the Biblical Joshua, who built on the revolutionary successes of Moses and other forebears to conquer Canaan in the name of the Jews, members of the Joshua Generation are the children of the civil rights movement. Born in the 1960s and 1970s, these individuals are allotted far more access to politics than their parents were, tending to ascend to political positions not through activism but through more traditional avenues such as law or business. They rise "from the suites, not the streets." This, however, can create tension between the old guard of civil rights leaders and the new class of black politicians.

Ifill saw this tension play out in Artur Davis's Democratic primary campaign in 2002 in Alabama's 7th Congressional district. Davis launched a primary challenge against the five-time incumbent, Rep. Earl F. Hilliard, igniting fierce resistance from civil rights activist Al Sharpton and placing Davis in opposition to what one interviewee refers to as "the civil rights gerontocracy." Even Obama—a friend of Davis—spoke out against Davis's primary challenge, fearing a divide within the black electorate. Ifill interviews Sharpton on the matter, and his response is reflective of the sort of competitiveness common to older politicians. He tells her that younger politicians need to stop thinking "they can take a shot at civil rights leadership and we ain't gonna shoot back." That campaign became ugly when Hilliard questioned whether Davis was "black enough" to represent Alabama's 7th Congressional district, which has a significant majority of African American voters. Davis's response was indicative of the more race-neutral approach taken by politicians of Davis's generation, telling rally attendees, "Everybody that is our color is not our kind." The fact that Davis won the primary challenge and effectively fended off his own primary challenge by the son of a prominent civil rights leader, suggests that Davis's approach is working for young black politicians.

Cory Booker also faced fierce and extremely ugly opposition from a generation of older black politicians and their supporters in 2002 when the then-councilman challenged longtime incumbent Sharpe James in the Newark, New Jersey mayoral race. During the campaign, James called Booker "a Republican who took money from the KKK and the Taliban who's collaborating with the Jews to take over Newark," a ludicrous claim that is also baldly anti-Semitic. Booker was also frequently subject to the accusation that he is "not black enough," an insult that arises repeatedly throughout the book. It's one frequently heard by Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders who said during a debate, "You told me to go to school, to get my education. You told me to pay my bills in full and on time. You told me to give back to my community. Exactly where did I lose my blackness?" The room, Ifill says, went completely silent.



In its review of The Breakthrough, Publishers Weekly writes, "Listeners will be rewarded by a well-researched, well-narrated take on the implications of President Obama's election on the strongholds of African-American political power."