For several weeks, though the Rev. Wright and "bitter" stories, that I doubted they would have much impact among Democratic Primary voters (who I think mostly have made their decisions weeks or months ago), and that I wanted to see exit polling from Pennsylvania to see if those stories had any impact among Democratic Primary voters:
They didn't, as most of these figures are close echoes of the exit polling for other recent Democratic Primaries in midwestern states, and are eerily similar to Ohio's exit polling:
Clinton has now won white men in 12 states and Obama has done the same in 10 states.
Obama did win more than nine in 10 black voters, continuing his unbroken support of African-Americans. And Clinton continued her trend of winning white women in all but a couple of contests.
There are other breakdowns, among education level and income, which were also roughly as expected and as we've seen before.
To me, the great determining (and unanswered) question of the 2008 general election is who wins white voters, especially white male voters. If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee (which I still think is a near certainty), can he convince white voters who haven't supported him in Democratic primaries in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania to support him in a general election? Or, to put it another way, which factor will have a stronger correlation to candidate support in November - demographic factors like race, gender, income, etc. or partisan/issue factors?
UPDATE: Here's another more explicit and detailed comparision between OH and PA exit polls.
And both Clinton and Obama can now make the case to superdelegates that they lead in the much-ballyhooed popular vote.
It's worth remembering that the primary vote and the general election are two different kind of beasts. There have been plenty of times when I would certainly have voted in a primary against the person who ended up with the nomination but still voted for the party nominee. Just as I'm going to vote for the nominee this time around, no matter who wins it.
So I think it's something of a leap of faith to say that someone who didn't carry a state in the primary must be presumed unable to carry it in the general election.
"So I think it's something of a leap of faith to say that someone who didn't carry a state in the primary must be presumed unable to carry it in the general election."
I don't think anyone (other than Clinton) is saying that Obama cannot win a close state in November because he didn't win its Primary. I think people are saying that not winning a state in the Primary will make it more challenging for Obama to win an otherwise close state in November, for obvious reasons.
To think of it from another angle: In what demographics does Barack Obama appear likely to run stronger than John Kerry did in 2004? Young voters? Anywhere else?
And, conversely, in what demographics does Obama appear likely to run weaker than John Kerry did in 2004? I think it's safe to guess small but significant dropoffs in Catholics, Jews, Hispanics, veterans, seniors, and whites.
And those areas in which John McCain appears likely to lose portions of George W. Bush's 2004 coaltion - evangelicals, mostly - are the areas which Obama seems least likely to able to take advantage. If you apply that calculation to a state like PA or OH, it's hard to envision Obama running more strongly against McCain in those states than Clinton.
The counter argument that Obama will win an overwhelming share of Democratic voters is undoubtedly correct. But I think all projections leading to an Obama victory in November in states like Pennsylvania are dependent upon huge increases in self-identified Democratic voters, which we've seen to some degree this winter and spring, persisting into November - and that party ID will correlate more strongly to candidate preference than demographics, and that there are enough new Democrats to outweigh the losses in demographic groups, especially among independents.
It's an interesting discussion, and as I wrote above, whichever theory turns out to be correct will decide the 2008 Presidential election.
I think that there is one large new demographic which Obama can easily carry -- Americans who are sick sick sick of GWB, can't wait to be rid of him, and are not about to sign up for George the Third. But to do that, he has to show the people just how similar on damn near everything GWB and John McBush actually are, and the length of his primary battle is keeping him from being able to do that effective.
It should be the easiest thing in the world to show point after point after point where GWB and McBush are in complete agreement, and the places where they're not are small potatoes in contrast.
Current polls have McCain in a dead heat with either candidate -- that is, even as both Obama and HRC are getting beat up and McCain is not, it's a tie. Give him the same months in the hotseat that Obama and HRC have experienced, get him into the camera lens a bit to remind America who he is underneath, and then we'll see what happens to that equilibrium point.
I don't like Democratic odds as much as I did a month ago, and I think it's because HRC is still trying to click together those ruby slippers and waiting for the magic wand to arrive, and thinks that her doing so is in the best interest of the party. (It's a pretty common complaint by the angrier Obamans that "she doesn't care about the good of the party" -- I don't think that's right, I just think she thinks that her interests and the party interests are 100% identical.)
But I still very much like the Democratic odds, as long as they finally get down to letting the American people that GWB wasn't some fluke or rogue but a personification of the GOP's attitude toward government in unusually raw form, and as such the inevitable destination of the Reagan Revolution.
"But to do that, he has to show the people just how similar on damn near everything GWB and John McBush actually are, and the length of his primary battle is keeping him from being able to do that effective."
And is this how he is going to "show the people?"
I noticed he took his big media opportunity last night to repeat this line of attack, to further boos and jeers and further explanation that McCain doesn't understand that there are hardships, because of a quote so dramatically ripped from context in order to paint the exact opposite of what was said.
Meet "the new kind of politics," same as the old kind.
--
Glock21 Op/Ed
"Current polls have McCain in a dead heat with either candidate -- that is, even as both Obama and HRC are getting beat up and McCain is not, it's a tie."
All things considered, neither Obama nor Clinton are being attacked from the middle yet. Nobody is hitting their records and policies on guns, taxes, abortion, trade, crime, immigration or any one of a hundred other issues, because for the most part their issue positions are nearly identical.
Their only real difference is biography and resume, which is why they're attacking each other for that, and why it seems (is?) so personal and "bitter."
But there are plenty of other, more valid and more powerful criticisms to be made of each, if McCain's campaign is competent enough to draw the distinctions.
If I were a Democrat, I wouldn't take solace in looking at polls indicating McCain is tied with Obama or Clinton. I would be worried that my candidates and the media have spent the past three months attacking John McCain, he's not responded, and he's not falling in the polls.
And Democratic fixations on George W. Bush aren't going to help, IMHO. I think Americans are tired of hearing about him, seeing him on the news, listening to him and listening to rants about him. The 2008 election, as is every election after a two-term Presidency, is about change, not about endlessly bitching about the guy everyone is tired of already. Republicans learned in 1996 that a campaign message cannot be "the other/previous guy sucks." Have Democrats learned that same lesson from 2004?
A set of cherry-picked conservative-favorite rah-rah rallying issues -- it's telling that you think that's "from the middle."
Obama voted against medical treatment for babies that survive abortion attempts - does that qualify as "in the middle"?
"A set of cherry-picked conservative-favorite rah-rah rallying issues -- it's telling that you think that's "from the middle.""
Well, when you look at the Clinton/Obama positions on those issues, they are vulnerable to attack from the middle, and they've not yet faced such an attack. I'll even add another one, tailor-made for McCain: both Obama and Clinton have extensive records of pork-barrel spending, something else that that majority of Americans don't care for.
Of course, McCain is vulnerable to attacks from the middle, too, particularly on the War.
"Obama voted against medical treatment for babies that survive abortion attempts - does that qualify as "in the middle"?"
That's a great example of a huge potential Obama vulnerability which has been unmentioned during the Democratic primaries.
Of course, McCain has to be competent enough and willing to draw the distinction, and I'm not sure that he is. So it may not matter.
I looked back for a poll on the relative importance of the issues which actually singled abortion out as a line item, and it was CNN in January. Here are the 11 categories ranked in order of importance: the economy, Iraq, terrorism, health care, gas prices, Iran, illegal immigration, taxes, abortion, global warming, race relations.
So by all means the GOP should try to knock itself out, try to make Obama's stance on abortion (number 9 of 11) a major campaign issue -- meanwhile, Obama'll be talking about the stuff the middle cares more about.
Yes, the abortion issue matters to the degree it matters not because there has been any serious shift in what this country thinks about abortion since 1973 -- only one out of six Americans want abortion to be illegal in all cases -- but because it raises GOP turnout among evangelical conservative single-issue voters who think Democrats are sinners and murderers. Of course, given McCain's support of fetal stem cell research, he might not get the best mileage on that issue.
And those other issues you think they're so vulnerable on: guns (not listed in polls), taxes (8 of 11), immigration (7 or 11). If you want to take "trade" to mean "economy", polls show it's a hot issue (1 out of 11) that works against the GOP.
Your "middle" is not American's middle.
"So by all means the GOP should try to knock itself out, try to make Obama's stance on abortion (number 9 of 11) a major campaign issue -- meanwhile, Obama'll be talking about the stuff the middle cares more about."
You seem to be under the impression that if someone lists the economy as their most important issue, it means that they're incapable of evaluating a candidate based on any other issue.
By all means, I'm not trying to convince you not to support Obama. Clearly, you're dedicated to the man. But your dedication does not mean that he's invulnerable to criticism, despite your sensitivity to the same. Have we really gotten to the point that discussion of Obama's potential weaknesses is now off-limits, too? Is it possible to have a discussion of Obama's potenial weaknesses without your insisting that he has none?
"Your "middle" is not American's middle."
And my point is that neither is Obama's. The vast majority of Americans don't support denying medical care to infants accidentally born alive during an abortion. The vast majority of Americans do not support outlawing firearms.
Your insisting that Obama is invulnerable on these issues and others doesn't make it so.
Of course, as I've said, McCain may be too incompetent or unwilling to make such distinctions. But, apparently unlike you, I'm capable of admitting that my party's nominee actually has vulnerabilities.
So by all means the GOP should try to knock itself out, try to make Obama's stance on abortion (number 9 of 11) a major campaign issue -- meanwhile, Obama'll be talking about the stuff the middle cares more about.
I don't care how people respond to an abstract issue poll - there are a great many people who will have serious reservations about voting for a guy that thinks babies should be left in storage closets to die if they were fortunate enough to survive a botched abortion.
Sometimes I think half the fun of posting here is just to see what you folks read into what I write.
Please point, for example, to any post in which I've said Obama is "invulnerable to criticism." What I'm saying is that real, genuine single-issue voters are rare -- but if most of the issues you think the race is going to be decided on either break toward the Democrats, as the economy does, or sit in the basement of the rankings of importance, then the cumulative effect of those issues just isn't going to work the magic you hope it will. That's not saying that issue-based attacks on Obama will bounce off him like bullets off Superman, just that unless it's one heck of a chunk of Kryptonite, it's not going to put him out of the game when compared to an economy that's swirling down the toilet, four-dollar-a-gallon gas, rising health care costs, and a war 63% of America considers a mistake.
I think people aren't going to go for the bait-and-switch issues like abortion to the degree they may have in past elections, though the GOP is by its very nature going to do everything they can to say, "No, don't look at the economy, don't look at Iraq, don't look at gas prices, look at -- oh, I know, look at abortion!"
We'll see. You seem to be convinced that the election is over because people hate George Bush, and by extension all Republicans, even if one has disagreed with Bush so much that they're nicknamed "The Maverick."
You also seem to think that Obama, who cannot win a majority of white Democrats despite outspending an opponent three-to-one over a period of six weeks, is going to win a majority of white independents because those voters will listen only to issues which break favorably for Obama and which are framed properly for Obama.
I think it's going to be far more interesting than that, but only if McCain shows up. <shrugs>
What the hell, I'll try one more time, and see if you turn it into hamburger again.
I do not -- repeat, do not -- think that Obama is invulnerable or that no issues harm him. I *do* however believe that there are more issues that help him, and those issues are generally more important to the "middle" voter you've invoked.
California chose Hillary over Obama. But does anybody actually expect a red California in November? Age and racial demographics are like that too -- the way they vote in the primaries doesn't tell you much about how they're going to vote in November, because it's a completely different kind of race.
It's a bit like saying "Because you chose Budweiser over Miller, you must think Miller is terrible and would, in a choice between Miller and lemon juice, therefore be expected to choose the latter." The difference between Obama and HRC isn't incredibly dramatic. That's why they're in the same party. But the difference between either of them and John McBush *is* dramatic enough that the Obama/HRC difference pales into comparative insignificance, and trying to extrapolate from the primary to the general isn't going to carry a lot of weight.
I don't know what to expect the Democrats who still have not been able to pick a candidate strong enough to win their primary. The general election will be won by someone by as little as 1 or 2 percentage points. While I would agree the economy is a big issue I wonder what all those Democrats who are Catholic and cling to their guns think about Obama's "bitter" comment (especially when Obama will be a rubber stamp for Schumer and Pelosi). Those comments don't really mean a lot in a democrat primary when both candidates are the same on those issues but in the general they will have a real choice with someone who is more independent.
Keep trying Anon maybe someone will believe McCain is the same as Bush.
"The difference between Obama and HRC isn't incredibly dramatic. That's why they're in the same party. But the difference between either of them and John McBush *is* dramatic enough that the Obama/HRC difference pales into comparative insignificance, and trying to extrapolate from the primary to the general isn't going to carry a lot of weight."
Well, as I wrote above, that's the great unanswered question of the 2008 election - whether demographics or partisanship will correlate more closely to candidate support in November.