What to make of the votes?

Obama lost in a big way tonight because he lost the constituencies that matter - women voters nationwide and white voters in red states.

Obama wins AA votes and he wins white votes in states with low minority presence and low density populations. In California, we finally have a large enough Asian voting block to see that he is losing them big time. He is losing Hispanic votes. And he loses most white votes.

There is a clear class split in the votes as well. Hillary does best with middle income voters and those who are not college educated. As I explained in my post "Who pays for a party's mistakes?" the people who vote for Obama are those who are going to be least affected by a Republican win or by the failure of Democratic policies. People like Markos, Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall. People like the young, white male bloggers who always seem to have an excuse to explain away some stupid anti-Democratic gaffe by The Golden One, or who try to assure us that the nebulous and half-assed "policy" positions Barry puts forward are really veeeery clever ploys to keep the Republicans off balance. The people voting for Hillary are those who are one paycheck away from disaster, or who can make ends meet, but have nothing left over for college, retirement, or even a nice vacation to Disneyland.

Obama also cannot win a solid majority within his own party. Over and over, he has failed to attract a majority of Democrats who are not Black. He pulls a collection of Independents and, like his mentor Joe Lieberman seems to think this makes up for not having the solid backing of the party. Even in states where he wins, he often doesn't win the party.

Obama's supporters scream and squall about how much more electable he is than Hillary, how much lower his negatives, how much he is energizing the party, etc. Given that polls conducted by Gallup and other organizations are consistently showing her with positives in the 70s and 80s among Democrats and over 50% with the public at large, these claims simply cannot be taken seriously any more. Given that she has cleaned his clock in California, New York, Massachsetts, New Jersey, Michigan and Florida, it is getting difficult to argue that she is not as or more competitive in the big races than Golden Boy Barry.

Professional Clinton concern trolls like Josh Marshall wring their hands and publically fret over how muchy Hillary will be a drag on down-ticket votes should she somehow manage to eke out the nomination (no doubt through underhanded means...). I am looking at the county by county voting maps on the New York Times, paying close attention to the suburban and rural areas in the red states. Obama can't even win majorities in these counties in a Democratic primary unless they are majority AA counties. Hillary wins them handily. Just how is someone who can't even win his own party's support in these areas supposed to add strength to these ballots?

Hillary has won despite every major media outlet trashing her, in the face of enormous amounts of vitriol from the left and right blogosphere endlessly repeating bullshit and hurling groundless accusations, and finally by corrupt polling operations, like Zogby, simply manipulating poll results to try to throw the elections. Obama has been showered with money, praise, adulation and a free pass on his sleazy campaign by the media.

Hillary wins white and hispanic votes. She wins women. She wins Democrats. She wins middle income voters. She wins the suburbs. She wins in red states. And, when she doesn't win, she still does strongly with both her own constituency and usually with Obama's as well. His threat to take his supporters and go home if we don't coronate him is both toothless and petulant as she is obviously more acceptable to a wider group of people than he is.

As I said back in September, Hillary is *so* going to win...

Anglachel