Pennsylvania Fallout
It will take some time before the dust settles and we get a clear picture of what the accepted spin will be about the Pennsylvania primary. Here are some things to consider, though.
- The primary process is not even close to being over. Although some people hoped that this primary would be enough of a blow to Clinton that she would drop out after PA, that very clearly did not happen. Her 10 point victory is enough to keep her viable.
- Her victory will infuse her campaign with new funds, the lifeblood of our wonderful primary process. Clinton reported just a couple of hours ago that she has collected 2.5 million so far since the networks called the victory a few hours before that. She will probably avoid the previously impending financial crisis and she might be able to get some health care for her campaign staff.
- The ten point spread between Clinton and Obama in Pennsylvania very closely mirrors the ten point spread in Ohio 6 weeks ago. Demographically, the electorates in the two states are also close to identical in terms of race, gender, and education. If anything, Pennsylvania was even more tailored to fit Clinton’s style because it has a lot more older, rural, and blue collar voters. But these two similar states with similar results show that nothing has really changed in the past 6 weeks. Clinton mostly met expectations in Pennsylvania, although many Obama supporters allowed themselves to hope for an upset or an unexpectedly small Clinton victory.
- The New York Times’ editorial board is reprimanding Clinton in tomorrow’s paper for her incredibly negative campaign in the keystone state. Clinton’s hometown paper writes that “Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning… She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her.”
- Obama has already moved on to Indiana, where he gave his speech for the night. Indiana and North Carolina vote on May 6th, two weeks after Pennsylvania. Indiana will probably be highly competitive and North Carolina will probably go solidly for Obama (making up for the minimal delegate deficit from PA).
I still maintain that there is almost no chance that Clinton will get the nomination. She cannot “win” it at this point, although it is conceivable that she could sway enough of the undemocratic superdelegates to support her, usurping Obama who will undoubtedly finish out the primaries with a significant lead in both the elected delegates and the popular vote. She would have to be overwhelmingly persuasive in her appeals to the 300 or so remaining superdelegates who haven’t yet committed, and she doesn’t hasn’t exactly been holding back for the past two months. It is very unlikely that this group of individuals will all of a sudden move to support Clinton en masse at this point, especially against the clear will of the voters in the Democratic Party.
One other thing is for certain, and that is that this long Democratic primary process is good for McCain. If the Democrats had any collective sense, they would resolve this as quickly as possible before they blow the fantastic opprotunity that is the 2008 presidential election, especially against a boring establishment candidate who represents a third term of an unpopular president and who doesn’t even excite his own party.
I disagree w/you about the long Democratic primary being good for McCain.
In November, he will still be the candidate supporting the war in Iraq and claiming that the bad economy is psychological. He will still represent the potential for a third term for George W. Bush.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are registering more voters and vetting each other for a general election.
That’s not such a bad place to be right now.
I disagree with ME (comment above not voices in my head). There was a chart I saw showing how long the Primary season ran and how that person faired in the Fall election. In 1 of I think it was 5 or 6 times, the long Primary winner won the general election. I want this over with now because I’m not willing to risk another 4 years of Bush.
The math does not work in favor of Hillary. The superdelegates should get some cajones and tell her to get out NOW!!
Or they should get some serious “cajones” and acknowledge that Obama is a fatally flawed candidate and … wait for it…. do what’s best for the party and get behind the candidate who has the best chance of holding onto the keyest of key demographic groups.
White, blue-collar workers?
Yes. African American and upper-income white liberals will be “outraged!” if superdelegate give the nomination to Hillary, but are they really going to not vote? I think that as the real world ramifications of a McCain presidency become more and more apparent, they would more or less fall in line. The utterly tiresome young Obamorons might stay home, but they’re clearly less important than the blue collar types that seem likely to defect to McCain.
For reasons depressing and painstakingly true, I agree but hope to god you’re wrong.
I do not buy the Clintonian fearmongering that blue collar workers will defect or stay home if Obama is nominated. There are only a few reasons that actually support this, but they pretty much all fall.
- A lot of this class of people voted for Clinton because she has made the experience argument. But that argument is about how her experience will allow her to bring about change. People won’t jump from the Democratic ship because there is a less experienced changer on the ticket to vote for an experienced non-changer (McCain) instead.
- Quite a few of these people are afraid of Obama out of sheer ignorance. A frightening number of them still think that Obama is a Muslim or that he is unpatriotic, or whatever. This number of ignorant people will decline, though, during the national general election.
- Some people are racist, and I don’t know what to do with them. I guess there’s nothing Obama can do to make them vote, but I don’t like the idea of that one group of immovable people deciding the nominee. Besides, we don’t usually like to talk about the impossibly racist people in public.
- If we can give blue-collar workers any credit at all as far as the issues go, they will realize that Obama and Clinton are nearly identical on the issues, and those issues matter a lot to this group of people. It is their children dying in Iraq, their homes being foreclosed, and their families going without health care. For middle class families like mine, none of those issues really affect us directly, so it is very academic. I could understand more crossover among the suburbian middle class vote. However, the blue-collar people are hurting as a result of Bush policies, and there is no way that they will support Bush III in November when it actually comes down to it.
The Democrats will come back together in the end, even the blue-collar voters that jkkuwitzky doesn’t want to give very much credit (do you think they will hold on to their bitterness more than the other groups, really?).
By the way, there are major and undeniable disadvantages to a possible Clinton nomination, even if we move beyond the initial scandal of the “coup” (as it certainly would be seen, even if it is technically within the rules of the party).
The first major issue is that Clinton would lose large numbers of the first-time voters and the young people. This group of people has been mobilized like never before because of the person of Obama, not because of any special loyalty to the Democratic party or firm stance on the issues. Overall, this group wants to vote for Obama because they like him, and they will have no motivation to vote for Clinton. Most of the groups that Clinton wins are pretty solidly loyal Democratic (blue-collars) and consistent voters (old people always vote), so they are unlikely to stay home or defect. On the other hand, without Obama’s personal characteristics that so many find appealing (even messianic), large numbers of these people will stay home in critical states.
The second major issue is that Clinton would mobilize Republican voters who are indifferent towards McCain. McCain is not exciting his party overall, and many of the subgroups in the tent are still bitter about his nomination. However, Clinton’s negative numbers among Republicans are ridiculously high. That doesn’t even do the phenomenon justice – Republicans hate Hillary Clinton. They despise her. And if she is on the ticket, millions of them will show up to vote against her although they might not have shown up to vote for McCain.
In my opinion none of you know what you’re talking about. I don’t either. One or more of us may end up being right in the end, but it probably won’t be for the right reasons.
I’ve said it before on this blog, but in 1991, and most of 1992 every wise political observer thought it would be IMPOSSIBLE for some draft-dodging, 60s radical to defeat a wildly popular WWII hero war president. And you know what? If it were the same kind of match-up NOW, everyone would STILL be saying the same crap. People look at politics like it’s a science, but every election is fundamentally unique. It’s all a chatter fest for a tiny group of people; its actual connection to reality is tenuous.
Sage JH, what then is your suggestion that we do?
Continue as usual, but take moments to despise yourselves.
I always do.
Just for the sake of conversation, who do you all think the “other side” wants to see on the ticket opposite McCain in November?
Both have some very exploitable flaws.
Who, in your opinion, does the GOP see as an easier road to the WH for McCain?
Lets tone down the hyperbolic language a little. “Fearmongering”? Please. So making a case that you opponent might not hold some demographics now qualifies an fearmongering? Lets take a moment to remember who inaugurated the “I can get their voters but they can’t get mine” argument. Definitely Obama, back when the conventional wisdom allowed such a claim.
As I’ve said before (again and again), working class voters problem with Obama is not substantive. Its cultural. Race, class, geography, worldview, education, and style combine to form an intangible perception that tends to manifest itself in places like the “Who would you like to have a beer with” question. People do not vote strictly on their economic interest. I wish they did. My job would be much easier.
I think there is a fundamental difference between the “Obama is a Muslim” and the “Obama is unpatriotic” memes. The Muslim thing is provably false, though the hardest of hardcore morons will continue to believe it. You can’t prove that Obama is patriotic, because patriotism is not an actual thing. I may believe that patriotism is fealty to the noblest of American ideals, but many people see it as veneration of flags, militarism, and national aggression. As long as there is any kind of public debate about Obama’s patriotism, he is losing.
It seems like you are working under the assumption that these blue collar/working class folks are voters that can reliably be counted on to vote Democrat in presidential elections. The only Dem to win these voters since 1980 was Bill Clinton (thus the Reagan Democrat monicker). These people voted for Bush (twice!) for entirely superficial reasons. Gore and Kerry administrations would have been much better for the actual economic interests of these people, but Gore was stiff and Kerry was French and that was that. So if you’re accusing me of not having great faith in their reasonability and reliability, then I guess I am guilty as charged.
You might have a point about Hillary mobilizing Republicans being a problem if you got an extra vote for REALLY hating a candidate. The Republican base is going to turn out. Remember how everyone talked about how demoralized Republican voters were heading into the 06 midterms? Well they still turned out, pretty much at the same level as they did in the halcyon days of 04. The GOP noise machine is going to turn Obama into an unpatriotic uber-liberal black radical elitist Muslim with extreme views on abortion, wants to surrender in the glorious War on Terror, and return tax rates to their Great Society heights. It won’t stick with swing voters, but it will motivate the right wing loonfest and get them to the polls. Democrats are going to have to win the major swing groups (Reagan Democrats in PA, OH, WI, MN, MI, WV, KY, VA, AR, and IN; they will probably be most concerned with the economy and health care and suburban moderates in OH, PA, CO, and most importantly VA; these seem likely to be tax sensitive voters most concerned with the Iraq issue). I think Clinton has a better chance at these voters (especially the Reagan Dems). You can make an argument either way. That argument will decide who the nominee is.
Concerning the inevitable disenchantment that would follow a Hillary win via the superdelegates, the responsibility for mitigating that rests almost entirely on Obama and the most vocal of his supporters at the local level (the same responsibility will fall on Hillary and her supporters should he be the nominee). I don’t doubt that Obama and his political supporters would make nice and use their positions of authority to urge voters to support the ticket. The local Obama leaders (especially young supporters with an online voice, like you) would have to play a role in pulling as much of the band back together as possible. Some will defect and some will stay home.
The consensus for quite a while was that Republicans wanted Hillary, but that has changed drastically post Rev Wright and Bittergate. I’d say (just from anecdotal conversations) its about even among the DC GOP consultant crowd. They think that McCain’s only credible campaign message (experienced patriotic tortured war hero who will protect you) lines up better on paper against Obama, but some of them are believers in the theory of Hillaryhate riling up the base. All of this follows a lovely evening of political discussion with some of the smartest consultants in DC and many many cocktails, so I am not responsible for misspellings or obvious grammatical errors. It seems I’ve written something of a book here, so I’ll stop.
But this is, of course, just my opinion and spending most every waking hour for the last 18 months studying the broader political conditions and this campaign in general couldn’t possibly give me any credibility.
I resign until after Indiana and North Carolina.