Hillary Ahead In Popular Vote
The always-sober Michael Barone has an analysis.
*Update*: Joe Gandelman has an extensive media roundup on the same theme. I still think it’s Obama’s to lose, but…
The always-sober Michael Barone has an analysis.
*Update*: Joe Gandelman has an extensive media roundup on the same theme. I still think it’s Obama’s to lose, but…
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Of course she is ahead, counting the primary election votes in both Florida and Michigan despite the weird Democratic Party rules. And most significantly, all of America knows she has won the popular vote in all the large states except for Obama’s home state of Illinois.
The Obama campaign can crow all they want about delegates and mathemtical inevitability. But there is growing evidence of unease among the unpledged super-delegates, and I suspect, among not a few pledged ones as well, concerning Obama’s electability in November.
And if even supposedly committed delegates change their mind and choose another candidate? This not being Joe Stalin’s USSR, there’s no GPU that will come to their home that very night and send them to either to a Gulag or a midnight visit to an execution chamber.
And why shouldn’t they feel uneasy?
He attracts most of the black vote and Clinton gets most of the white vote. But Blacks are now a smaller minority in this country than Latinos.
He attracts white leftists, university students and entertainment industry elitists. But Clinton attracks working class whites, women, Roman Catholics, Jews, small town/rural folks; all of whom constitute the those very groups that put the Democrats in power with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, and kept them there three three more terms plus Harry S Truman’s full term from the 1948 election.
Above all, Clinton and McCain both tend to be centrists. And centrists — not the wingnuts — are the ones who attract the independent voters who not infrequently decide the election.
The two months since Obama’s campaign peaked in February have seen a general meltdown in that man’s magic show. I do not think the voters in November will see him as presidential timber. If he heads the democratic ticket, he will get the same treatment as Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s.
And right now, I think those are the thoughts percolating through the minds of the delegates to the Democratic Party National Convention for 2008. Obama, for all the glib talk, for all the media coronations that have been awarded him, would accomplish nothing more than to give a President John McCain an opportunity to add about three more right of center justices to the United States Supreme Court.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Something not being mentioned is what sort of coattails Senator FillInTheBank will have, and how that will affect downticket races. Now maybe you and I don’t care about those, but the superdelegates do: many of them are running in those races. They won’t admit it; but when they decide who to fill in the blank, one consideration will have to be "Will Senator FillInTheBlank gain me votes, or lose them?"
This race is now about one thing: superdelegates, and how Senator Clinton will persuade them that what’s in her best interest is in their best interests. Popular votes and delegate counts are now merely tools in that campaign.
Good analysis, gents. It reminds me of the Dean phenomenom in 04. As I recall, the man was on the cover of both Time and Newsweek, and had all the energy, money and excitement as the only man who opposed the Iraq War– until the Dem establishment in Iowa clamped down on him and aborted his presidential quest.
Obama, I think, is a much more talented candidate than Howard Dean. But, now that he is finally being vetted, not feted, we see a similar dynamic.
HankB
Point of order:
"Above all, Clinton and McCain both tend to be centrists."
Clinton tends to say whatever it takes to appeal to whatever audience she thinks she is addressing. The Clinton machine has ALWAYS been steered (what seems to be exclusively) by polls; therefore when addressing the larger audience she seems to be center leaning. She laughs, she cries, she shoots, she drinks, she swears like a sailor, she crawls on her belly like a reptile. (Okay, maybe I cribbed some of that from an old song).
In the past while I remember talk about how much too right-wing or left-wing a candidate was in the general election, I don’t remember ever this much focus on which of two candidates were "electable." Neither seems to be capable of articulating a set of positions that appeal broadly; this is more than any election cycle I can remember a battle of personalities and cults. Based on the current rhetoric, the Democratic party is more concerned about getting power, and less about what is good for the country.
I would like to see some analysis related to what naming Clinton heir apparent over Obama in the next election will do to the Democratic party. There is a very good chance that the quest for power will end up with some deep fissures in traditional and strongly Democratic party factions.
Calling Michael Barone’s analysis "always sober" is like calling Goebbels’ propaganda "always purposeful."
No offense to Michael, but hardly the most honest journalist in America.
benfrankln’s last blog post..Some resolution about being a decent person
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