CLAWSON -- Last Sunday, the pastor of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church invited Cleveland's U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the only Democratic presidential candidate campaigning in the state, to address his congregation after the service.
Hundreds packed into the modest-sized sanctuary. To my surprise, most of them were not die-hard Kucinich supporters. Some were, of course. There were also contingents of his fellow vegans and animal rights activists and health care reformers.
But by and large, they were just Democrats hungry to see a presidential candidate -- and very angry at their party for denying them the chance to participate fully.
Mike Whitty, a business professor at the University of Detroit, put it best. "We are dying out here, and right now, he's the only nurse on the battlefield in the Crimea," he said. That may be the only time Dennis Kucinich has been compared to Florence Nightingale, but the professor had a point. Thanks to a feud between the national party and the state Democrats, most of the contenders had taken their names off the ballot, except for Hillary Clinton, who slyly said she didn't need to bother the clerks.
Kucinich had, in fact, tried to take his name off, too, but filed the wrong paperwork. So in the end, he said he figured that he might as well campaign. His decision to do so catapulted him from his 1 percent in New Hampshire to 4 percent in Michigan and in Oakland County, where I saw him speak and take questions Sunday.
His audience applauded him vigorously, though mostly, it seems, for showing up (on Tuesday, the area would vote: Clinton: 44,349; Uncommitted: 37,805; Kucinich, 3,653).
The congressman gave a fairly moderate stump speech, took questions filtered through a moderator. He did his best to sound presidential, though the only person who asked what he would do in the White House was a 12-year-old girl.
But before he came and after he left, some of the audience turned to me for answers.
They didn't understand why they couldn't vote for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) or John Edwards or why their state's delegates had been taken away. They didn't know whether to be more mad at the Democratic National Committee or their own bumbling leaders.
Two days later, African-Americans in Detroit showed what they thought. Polls had shown Clinton and Obama dividing the African-American vote pretty evenly. But on primary day, seven out of ten voted uncommitted. Only one in four voted for Hillary Clinton.
This may mean nothing in the fall. The folks in St. Andrew's Church had nothing but contempt for George W. Bush and the Republicans. But they were virtually all white.
African-American voters I talked to -- hardly a scientific sample -- seemed far more sullen. If Barack Obama is not the nominee, they weren't all that sure how eager they were going to be in November.
What is clear is that any Democrat will need a united and enthusiastic black electorate if he or she is to have any chance of winning Michigan, Ohio, or the nation on Nov. 4. If she manages to beat Obama (not to speak of Kucinich) for the nomination, Clinton may well have a great deal of repair work to do.
Contact Jack Lessenberry at Bucca@aol.com or write to him at 189 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 48202.
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