We can all point to game-changing candidates in past presidential elections: Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, et cetera, et cetera. Only one of these aspirants became president. Yet a rough sense exists that their candidacies still mattered somehow. Evelyn Simien's book hones these intuitions and folds them into a framework that leaves readers with a deeper appreciation for historic firsts like these and their implications for mass political behavior.
Simien's major contribution is her formulation of symbolic empowerment. Her concept suggests that historic firsts matter because they mobilize new segments of the polity. These are the kind of potential voters that any sober analyst would describe as being on the periphery of politics looking in, if they are looking at politics at all. Symbolic empowerment transforms this bleak situation for the better.
According to Simien, symbolic empowerment occurs when “historic first” candidates enter the electoral arena. By way of a priming mechanism, their public visibility raises the salience of identities shared by the candidate with segments of the mass public, such as race, ethnicity, and gender. This communion allows relevant individuals to “bask in the glory of” a political aspirant's achievements, producing newfound enthusiasm to participate in politics. Symbolic empowerment ensues, Simien explains, when shared identity (or ingroup pride) boosts the premium that individuals assign to voting and other political behaviors.
With conceptualization and theory settled, the author then walks us through four historic firsts, availing herself of qualitative and quantitative evidence to support her claims. Throughout, her analyses are guided by an intersectional lens, magnifying the interplay between a confluence of identities—e.g., Black, female, and poor—and symbolic empowerment.
Simien's first case is Shirley Chisholm, a 1972 presidential hopeful who was female and African American. Conventional wisdom suggests Chisholm ran a quixotic campaign that sunk with few traces of major political impacts. Not so, claims the author. Using archival and qualitative evidence, Simien re-interprets Chisholm's chimerical run as groundbreaking because it galvanized individuals on the sidelines of politics, such as poor Black mothers on welfare. Indeed, whereas class, race, and gender often conspire against political activity, Chisholm breathed new life into these categories by actuating symbolic empowerment.
Next, Simien analyzes Jesse Jackson's two failed bids for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. But look closer, she argues, and you will find gems of insight. The author unearths one of these jewels in the 1984/1988 National Black Election Studies. Net of several covariates, she establishes that Black individuals who favored Jackson were more likely to donate money, attend a political meeting, and proselytize politically, thus indicating symbolic empowerment. She then presents what appear to be gender nuances in these main results, with Black women displaying more consistent and vigorous political activity than Black men.
Then there is Hillary Clinton's run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Simien argues that Clinton's support varied by race and gender because her opponent, Barack Obama, was Black and male. When race and gender are made salient, as they were here, Simien predicts Black women will prioritize their race as a way to beat back racial subordination. Yet, despite sharing in gender, Simien suggests White females will tepidly support Clinton because their privileged racial status overshadows their unequal position as women. Finally, Simien expects gender affinity to boost Latina support for Clinton because Latinas did not feel pressure to prioritize their ethnicity above gender, thus permitting the latter's ascendance. Using the 2008 American National Election Study, Simien finds evidence backing her claims: greater pro-Clinton affect did not increase Black or White women's intention to vote for Clinton, but it did among Latinas.
The author closes her empirical efforts by examining Barack Obama's 2008 presidential candidacy. She centers on Black females because accumulated research suggests their support for Democratic candidates and voter turnout rates are higher than among Black men. Simien's showcase analysis uses the 2008 American National Election Study, revealing gendered patterns in Black political behavior. Most importantly, Black females casting a vote in the ‘08 Democratic primary were more likely to report donating money, wearing a campaign button, posting a lawn sign or bumper sticker, attending a rally, and engaging in political talk—all reflections of symbolic empowerment. Black men casting a primary vote were less likely to do any of these.
In this rear-view mirror of evidence, one might see symbolic empowerment fast approaching, poised to eclipse current thinking about historic firsts. But a few blind spots in Simien's account bear on how effectively scholars will maneuver her concept.
The first is symbolic empowerment's scope. The author studies four historic firsts varying by gender, race, and time. Yet all these are instances of symbolic empowerment transpiring. Without analyzing cases that failed to symbolically empower, it is hard to say with more certainty how prevalent this phenomenon is. Indeed, for every Shirley Chisholm, there are surely other candidates who also shared identities with segments of the mass public, yet failed to mobilize them.
Second, symbolic empowerment's duration beyond the specific historic first that triggered it is unclear. The book's evidence is primarily based on cross-sectional analyses of survey data. Thus, for example, Simien shows that Jesse Jackson ignited symbolic empowerment in 1984, but she cannot illuminate whether memories of his candidacy matter in today's politics. To do so would require greater attention to citizens’ political psychology and political socialization, as well as consideration of cohort effects.
Nonetheless, these are all crinkles rather than rips in some of this book's pages. Its main virtue is its re-thinking of the received wisdom about historic firsts. By providing new conceptual footing, Simien positions scholars to make fuller sense of iconoclastic candidates.
