The Media Fiction of Obama’s White Voters Problem
But Hillary Clinton’s African American voter problem is pretty stark. The take away from this article is this stunning graph:
The must read deconstruction of this data is done by the incomparable Al Giordano who blogs over at The Field.
Electability for a Dem is not just being able to win over working class white voters. The Dem coalition is much less homogeneous than the R one is and electability is going to mean bringing along the majority of the usual Dem coalition partners AND this year it means bringing along the newer voters energized by the opportunity to reset the political landscape. If you are a superdelegate listening to Hillary and her crew make the electability argument, you also know that HRC may not be able to count on the most reliable constituency that the Dems have in the general and the current Clinton campaign may be enough to have many stay home or not vote the top of the ticket come November. Certainly, I don’t think that they can send Bill back out to churches to put his legendary preaching skills on display as a way to reconnect folks.
Never in my life have I ever seen anything like this in terms of African American support for a Dem candidate and I am surprised that this is not the story, given how reliable a vote this community has been for the Dems. The electability business cuts both ways and the nonstop focus on working class white voters is a disservice to all of the other constituencies that a Dem must keep while trying to capture independents.
Tags: 2008 Presidential
Question for today: Bill and Hill got caught not reporting $24 million of his income! Who really wants these people, and why?
Great post. It cannot be said enough: Counting on these white, male, blue-collared voters in November is crazy. But, then again, writing off the African American vote in the primary and then counting them in your electability argument is equally nuts.
But wait! If Obama doesn’t have a White-voter problem, what the hell are the talking heads gonna talk about for the next 5 months?!?
Dammit, they need to sell soap and penis pills!
Hillary doesn’t necessarily have a “black voters problem” – she has an “I’m not Obama problem”. Her perceived flaws in that area would not exist if Obama was not running.
I’m not trying to play the “promote Hillary so McCain can stomp her” game, but saying her favorables have declined since Obama entered the race reflects on him, not her.
Did you even look at that graph, RickJ? Hillary’s high favorable rating persisted for 6 or 7 months after the official announcements and was certainly high all the way back to 2005. You don’t lose that kind of support just because you are not somebody else. You lose that kind of support because you are now gaining a toxic rep.
And there were not many groups polled that had as high a favorable view of HRC, either.