Tuesday, February 05, 2008

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

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sure, I reckon that all sounds logical, so if it helps you sleep at night...Im all for it. Im not sleeping that well, but it aint cause of this campaign.

For all your Statistic tossing the bottom line still remains

They are pretty much even.

For the record...I know this didn't figure into your expert calculations, but it is actually possible, that as a Black Homeowner, struggling through surgeries with inadequate health insurance and two school age children, that I might be affected by whomever is president.

But of course the only reason I support him is because im a Black man...so I can't possibly have thought this through intelligently.

But hey...so long as Hillary "wins" and you can sleep at night,

you crunch those numbers.

Anonymous said...

Anglachel~
I agree with you completely. You should read this from a TPM reader:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177248.php
Any candidate black or white who can't win core Democratic voters will not win. Period.
Clinton and Obama are not even. Clinton has more delegates, more super delegates, and those delegates from MI and FL which will eventually be seated. The media puts this image in our head because they want to drag out this race for as long as possible.

the ink,
You are 100% free to vote for whomever you want at the polls. Anglachel never said that blacks weren't deciding their choice intelligently. I understand that black voters are - and should - be extremely proud of how far Obama has come in this election but there are OBVIOUS race issues going on here and Obama cannot unite the Democratic party by solely winning among blacks, independents, and wealthy young white folks. Be honest to yourself about why you are choosing Obama over Clinton and whether the reason(s) are based more on his policies or about the way he makes you feel? You don't need to tell me or anyone why. Regardless of your reason(s), I respect your decision but statistics are statistics. You can go to NYTimes yourself and do your own calculations for why certain demographics in each state consistently support Obama and Clinton.
Anglachel in no way meant to insult you. Her observations are great and as a minority I've never found her comments to be insulting to anyone besides Obama supporters who aren't willing to see things from a different point of view. She has been correct on her predictions more often than the news networks and pundits.

StephenAG said...

Well, I echo what ccp eloquently said. Obama is not winning core Democrat voters. They are not even, regardless of what the meedja or the Boys Blogging Network has to say.

As a Black man who reads Ang's stuff all the time (go Bay Area!), I reject the racist inference. I also have serious health issues and have to deal with it with piss poor insurance. I also have two school-age children (one with a form of autism) and two in college that will lose my employer-based healthcare once they get out. I also am affected by whomever is president. That's why I voted for Hillary Clinton. She has proven that she will fight tooth and nail for the things that are important to me and many others - like healthcare. I trust her with my vote. As for Barack, I only trust him to get elected; he would however be blown away in the GE. His piss poor record and lack of significant accomplishment would stand a chance against McCain. 527's would slice him and dice him so bad it would probably demoralize him; watching Repubs and independents leave him for McCain would be so crushing.

Don't leave your vitriol at Ang's feet. Go yuk it up at the Great Orange Kool-Aid counter. Peace out.

Anonymous said...

Excellent analysis.

Regarding electability, there's also the huge elephants in the room. Race and gender.

Democrats don't like to consider that race is an issue. They're more comfortable with condoning sexism, but even then when push comes to shove, the Dem boys will likely come to mama instead of voting for the old white Republican.

Which leaves the key demographics for the frontrunners. Barack does well among Blacks. Do we think that a majority of AAs will, seriously, vote for the old white guy over the woman? Some will, of course, and some will stay home, but mostly AAs DO like the Clintons.

Which brings us to women. The reason that Hillary doing well among women is because there really are a significant number of women (particularly older women) who will vote for a female candidate in November. The Dem primary could very well do for Clinton what the IA caucuses did for Barack. That is, actually winning the nomination may be just enough to convince Republican and Independent women that they could be instrumental in electing the first woman President. These votes could be the tipping point come November.

I'm sure Barack could pull in the AA Independent and Republican blocks, but I'm not sure that they are a big enough group to offset the bigotry that exists in some sectors of the Republican base.

Celandine said...

I *so* hope you're right!