Democrats set to woo the NAACP

Applause-meters at the ready, political reporters will be eagerly gauging whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama sparks the most enthusiastic response Thursday as they and other Democratic presidential candidates speak at the annual NAACP convention.

The pressure will be on Obama, whose bid to become the nation's first African-American president obviously will have resonance with the audience in Detroit. But while Obama has periodically excelled on the campaign trail when he's on his own, he has yet to clearly steal the spotlight at mass gatherings of White House contenders.

The Clinton name, of course, remains hugely popular within the black community. And Hillary can be counted on to be well-prepared when her turn comes Thursday, if her performance at the recent forum at Washington's Howard University was any indication. There, her comment that if AIDS "was the leading cause of death of white women between the age of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country" sparked the night's loudest clapping from a crowd well aware of the high death rates from the disease among younger blacks. It will be interesting to see if she's got a similarly pithy line to deliver.

Also interesting to watch will be how the lone Republican presidential candidate who accepted an invite to speak at the convention, Tom Tancredo, is received. His strongly conservative voting record as a House member from Colorado is not one most NAACP members would support. But Tancredo can be expected to dwell on his signature issue --- cracking down on illegal immigration --- and that is a message with many adherents in the black community (see this column by Earl Ofari Hutchinson).

Tancredo's speech will continue a streak of solo appearances by GOP presidential long shots at events dominated by the Democratic candidates.

At a meeting in Orlando of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials late last month, Duncan Hunter dropped by amid a gaggle of Democrats. Last week, Mike Huckabee provided the sole Republican perspective at a meeting in Philadelphia of the National Education Association that the Democrats flocked to.

It's doubtful these GOP forays win many converts, but Huckabee did get credit from the Philadelphia Daily News for "one beautifully crafted line" that went over well with the crowd of teachers. Here it is: "If indeed an uneducated population is a form of terror we cannot possibly tolerate, then today I would like to propose that we would unleash weapons of mass instruction."

The NAACP's Wednesday's session, by the way, suffered a snag when the group and Bill Clinton apparently got their signals crossed and the former president did not appear, as had been advertised, as the keynote speaker at a youth forum. Filling in for him was the rapper Master P.

-- Don Frederick

Photo: Sen. Barack Obama; Credit: Brian Snyder/REUTERS