LP’s Indiana correspondent is having a busy night in Bloomington! Here’s Terry’s latest dispatch on the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries.
The Democratic Party primaries may appear to continue the status quo in the campaign, with Hillary Clinton winning Indiana as expected, and Barack Obama winning North Carolina as expected. But the magnitude of Obama’s win in North Carolina (58-42%) and the narrowness of Hillary Clinton’s win in Indiana (52-48%) indicate that the long Democrat contest is all but over for Hilary Clinton.
As one Republican strategist unkindly put it on CNN as the early figures came in, “This is the last trip to send the family pet to the vet.”
However you slice and dice the figures, it is now apparent that Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and that the super delegates will now be close to declaring for Obama, killing off the Clinton’s hope of a palace coup at the Denver Convention.
On the popular vote through the primaries overall, and including the disputed Florida primary (although not Michigan, where Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot paper), Obama has a 49% to 47% margin over Hillary Clinton.
What it means for the Democrats’ chances in November depends on how you read three factors. The first is the extent to which the Clinton campaign’s bruising campaign against Obama has damaged him as a Presidential candidate, and whether they will put aside differences and work towards trying to see Obama win in 2008, or sit back and snipe with an eye to the 2012 campaign should John McCain beat Obama.
The second point is that the nature of the contest itself has energised the Democrat base significantly, and this may matter in states that would be otherwise solidly Republican, such as Indiana and North Carolina, as they have now had far more exposure to Barack Obama and his policies than they would have had if the primary contest had been settled earlier.
The last point, and the toughest one, is how to now hold together the very different voting blocs that have emerged. Obama’s core bloc of the tertiary educated and African-Americans can carry the Democrat nomination but not the U.S. Presidency. They need to bring in Hillary Clinton’s core bloc of older, rural, blue collar and high school educated voters. In particular, the big challenge will be to win over the women of Hillary’s generation and older who saw this as the great opportunity of their lifetime to see the first U.S. woman president.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign was not saved by the cornpoke politics of the last two weeks, with its mix of veiled threats about Obama, its know-nothing populist policies (nuke Iran, put OPEC before the WTO, the ‘gas tax holiday’ that couldn’t be), and the attempt to transform herself into something less than she actually is (a kind of Bush-lite). If the Clintons can finally drop their swords and think about working with Barack Obama, they would be a great asset. Bill Clinton remain the only really successful Democrat U.S. presidential nominee since 1964, and Hillary Clinton would be a very strong contributor to public policy if Obama won.
One big problem was pinned down in Salon by Thomas Schaller, which is that Hillary Clinton should not have done as badly with African-American voter as she has. She would never have got a majority once it was clear that Barack Obama was a real chance, but figures such as 6% and 8% of the African-American vote in Indiana and North Carolina are appalling for a candidate whose husband had a very strong base of support among African-Americans when he was President.
It’s possible that Obama may win Indiana, if narrowly. Two counties left to count, and one (Lake) being the second largest in population in the state, and home to Gary, one of the most African-American cities in the US.
Clinton is GONE. But does she realise it?
Great post, Terry Flew, man on the ground.
Can we just hope, now, Hills and Bill will to retire to Florida or anywhere with the sensible advice ringing in their ears.. “don’t put your daughter on the stage”?
I hope that the electoral officer in Lake County, Indiana does not have the surname Mugabe! They are really upsetting the cable news pundits here, who are reduced to speculating on the frown on Bill Clinton’s face when he was on stage with Hilary.
I can say the Clintons have no intention at all of leaving the political stage, although the ‘why?’ question is hovering seriously over them.
Sending cash to hilaryclinton.com right now would look as sound as taking out a sub-prime mortgage.
They are really upsetting the cable news pundits here, who are reduced to speculating on the frown on Bill Clinton’s face when he was on stage with Hilary.
And what’s your take on the pundits? Bloviating bathetic blowhards (as I’ve heard) or not?
BTW: thanks for the posts, Terry. Are you going to be around for the conventions?
This Hillary-Obama contest seems to have taken on a grotesque life of its own. Hillary’s overweaning ambition (since distaste with Rev. Wright’s radicalism apparently had little effect on Obama’s popularity) and, it would appear, mindless unmitigated bitchiness causing her to sacrifice whatever principles apart from a sense of entitlement and lust for power, that she might’ve had. The woman is frightening, and ultimately, very sad. And, unless Obama wins, the world is going to be worse off because of her.
And some results for Lake have come through. 28% counted, and 75% for Obama! Whether that will be balanced by the suburbanites remains to be seen.
Down and Out, I think I’ll be back in my real job by convention time, unless LP donations can sustain me here or I can get some of that hilaryclinton.com cash (Don’t delay! Ring now!).
The interesting thing is how little the two issues that dominated the cable channels - the gas tax holiday and Reverend Wright - seem to have shaped the result.
LP’ers would be interested to know that Karl Rove is no on the payroll as a FOX News political analyst.
More praise to Obama for defeating this shithead.
Loathe though I am to link to teh Opposition Oracle, they deserve credit for running the full text of Obama’s NC victory speech, and boy is it a doozy!
I heartily recommend reading it in full.
Meh. This was over two months ago, it’s a reflection on the insanity of the media cycle and the vestigal power and influence of the Clinton machine that this crud has gone on for as long as it has.
Going forward the Republicans are broke, disunited, with a weak candidate. Assuming this fight wraps up by June 3 and the party unites behind Obama I predict the Dems will piss this one in.
More medical analogies.
Terry, that’ an interesting point about Swing States being exposed to Obi’s charms in a way they would not have been, had the Dem nomination been a lay down misere after Super Tuesday in February. Many pundits shrilled that the contest since Feb. was attriting the Dems, thereby giving McCain a rails run. HRC’s hint that she’d make nice whoever got the nod must come as a relief to Dem Poo-bahs through to the Party’s grass roots. Should HRC wish to remain a Player in National Affairs, I dare say they’ll hold her to that undertaking if ranks are to be successfully closed and the battle taken to McCain.
Suggest HRC will do a lap of honour in West Virginia, then bow to the inevitable math, if not the rat-a-tat of shoulder taps from Super-Dels. The paralysing finishing burst that The Kid came home with in IA (as well as HRC’s current 4% Deathwatch rating on Slate:) has placed the nomination contest into the Dept. of the bleedin’ obvious.
Sensational day for pol. junkies. Obi is chipping back the Rock Chopper and Family Six-Pax demographics that deserted him in PA and OH. If he stays away from tank turrets and wind-surfers, reckon he’ll get many more of them onside before November. The MSM and Fox mud slung about Wright and Obi’s “elitism” didn’t stick because Obama’s teflon worked to specifications. His War Room is performing brilliantly.
For HRC, the prospect of SoS or suchlike, might mollify her wounded pride and help her coax her “base” to back Obama. Should she spit the dummy, then perhaps BHO could get the keys to 1600 Penn. without her. Not impossible, but very few gave him a serious chance before Iowa. Lord knows Sen Clinton has tried everything else, if she’s as smart as people suggest, then it’s high time she played the conciliation card.
Board Odds, Cbet latest:
OBAMA, Barack 2.00
MCCAIN, John 2.65
CLINTON, Hillary 4.70
Indiana isn’t really a swing state, EC, as Terry said. It’s more usually in the bag for the GOP. It hasn’t voted Democratic since LBJ in 64, and went to Bush 60-40 over Kerry.
It might more be that these states are in play, rather than they’re winnable by the Democrats.
If Obama wins what I more and more suspect will be a poisoned chalice, at least he and his people could have some fun teasing Hillary (and the right) with a Supreme Court possibility and very publicly offering McCain the Ambassadorship to Iraq.
If McCain wins, everyone else will have some fun watching him reading a teleprompter with visible disgust at what’s scrolling up. Or even watching him trying to get up from a chair in a hurry.
“No Mr President! The floor’s over there!”
Ah! The Iraq gig for McCain. (There’s a win/win.) Nabs, you’ve done it again.
Providing he has to drive round Baghdad in his bloody bus!
“Providing he has to drive round Baghdad in his bloody bus!”
The Straight Shot Express?
Heh!
Remember his famous shopping expedition in Bagdhad?
Paul Burns, is that what passes for progressive thought where you live? Why on earth would anyone be in the primaries if they didn’t want to win? I suppose democracy would be easier if only one person put their hand up for every position though.
Still don’t see how the Rev Wright thing doesn’t just sink Obama straight to the bottom once the campaign goes live, me. (But I’m taking the $2.00 anyway out of hope.)
Anna, I was an *unenthusiastic* Hillary backer for a long time, longer than I really wanted to be when she started in on the sorts of crap that Terry’s talking about. It should have been possible to appeal to the demographics she was targeting without going postal on the negatives, and turning into an ersatz Republican. So am not any more.
But I agree with you that there’s a real problem with the whole “she has no right to keep running” thing.
Yes, I think Paul Burns may have drunk just a little too much zeitgeist there, Anna.
Anna W,
Not a Hillary fan and never really have been. Dislike the fact the fact she hasn’t gracefully conceded defeat, since she hasn’t got the numbers and is perhaps just weakening Obama’s run for the presidency. Its got nothing to do with progressive thought and everything to do with counting delegates.
Fair enough, Kim, I meant that in swing states generally the Dem base has been “energised ….significantly” but wasn’t specific. Voters in all states have been watch Obi hang tough throughout this long nomination slugfest. Terry’s qualifies Ia and NC, so point taken. BHO would be hard pressed to take Ia from the GOP in Nov, but as Jonathan Alter from the conservative Newsweek says:
“Last week, not a soul in politics would have predicted that Obama would win North Carolina by 14 points and virtually tie in Indiana. But through a combination of luck and smarts, the campaign ended on the theme that Obama ran on: Old politics vs. new politics…….
[link]
So, yep, Ia certainly is a tall order, but it’s by no means out of Dem reach in November.
Paul, I suspect what Anna is unhappy about is this:
Most of the specifically misogynistic criticism of Hillary (and there’s been tons of it) focuses on her unwomanly desire to reach for the top, and I think the sort of language you’re using is playing into that.
EC, sure, but it’s a good thing if the vote is also energised in states that are safer for the GOP. Remember turnout will be all important everywhere.
Yes Kim, that is what I was referring to.
“…since she hasn’t got the numbers…”
Neither of them do.
If your view was such common sense, people would have stopped voting for Clinton in order to ensure that Obabma got enough delegates not to need any superdelegates. They’re still voting for her. Are they all power-hungry bitches too? Are they threatening Obama’s ascendency?
I am both a woman and not a Hilary supporter and have been pretty appalled by some of her tactics in smearing Obama, I am also completely opposed to the continuation of the Clinton family in power - under Bill poverty and social justice were marginalised and workers denied increases to the minimum wage. I do not want a two for one deal if we have to get the pathetic “I did not have sex with that women” sexual miscreant back into a positon where he can continue and be validated for the abuse of power he perpetrated and by default Hilary supported by staying with him.
Indeed, Kim, the more redoubts the GOP have to defend, the more thinly their resources will be spread. Not entirely dissimilar to El Rodente’s doomed plight of having to defend Maxine’s formidable challenge in Bennelong while simultaneously being compelled to schlep his weary old bones around the length and breadth of OZ. And we had a comparitively sort campaign.
Bet your bestest pirate hat that over the next six months The Kid will work McBomb-Bomb all over the court.
Well, EC, with the Aussie dollar about to equal the greenback, I could buy a few decent pirate hats to through into the ring!
I hope that my comments on Hillary Clinton weren’t coming across as misogynistic. I think it would be great to have a female Presidential candidate in the U.S. election.
The problem is that the majority of Democrat voters clearly don’t support Hilary Clinton and the policies that she has. And its not changing. Between the Indiana and North Carolina counts, the vote was 55-45 to Obama.
Also, Hillary Clinton only won by 15,000 votes (out of 1.3 million) in a conservative state that is 94% white. So it isn’t a race-based vote since somewhere close to 50% of white Democrat voters are supporting Obama. Given that an unknown number of voters in Indiana were Republicans voting for Hillary as part of Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Operation Chaos’ (oh, irony!), it would seem at least to me to be time for Hillary to graciously concede and offer to help Obama for the good of the party.
The fact is also that this is a campaign of The Clintons, not just Hillary, with all that this entails. It now appears that $6.4 million of the $10 million raised after the Pennsylvania primary came from their own account books.
How Obama will go in November is another question. Will he be the first black President in the U.S. since Dennis Haysbert in 24? We’ll see.
Obama’s theme is anti-Washington. Does this remind anyone of a campaign theme in 2000? Not Gore, but Bush. And nothing changed.
And the reason nothing changed is because it is really hard to change how Washington works. The only man do to it since World War II was Lyndon Johnson in the Senate in the 1950s, and he was a force of nature. And he did it as Senator, not President.
Obama is a great orator, and his speeches are great to hear. But I don’t see anything about him that engenders in me a feeling that he can fulfill his vague promises to change the way America works, and the way Washington works. I prefer a little realism from my politicians.
Not at all, Terry! No one’s saying anyone has to like Hillary, or vote for her. Or not analyse what she’s up to. Just that attacking her with vehement language which replicates and picks up on some of the themes used to attack her which were misogynistic is problematic.
I’m no fan of Hilary - as far as I’m concerned, anybody that voted for the Iraq war sholuld be disqualified from any office requiring judgment or common decency. But I suspect that her continued candidancy is invaluable for Obama since by the time the real election starts most of the mud will already have been slung and is going to seem very old and stale.
Kim/Anna,
Two of my uncomplementary comments could equally apply to men. Hillary is frightening. Any US Presidential candidate willing to nuke Iran is scary, regardless of gender. I apologise to both of you for the second comment listed by Kim at 25, and, indeed to anyone else offended by it, because that was going far.But I do truly believe Hillary Clinton would make a very bad President and I’d believe that if she was a bloke spouting the same garbage.
In terms of the delegate count, as I understand it, Obama is peeling away super delegates like crazy, and is certain to be the candidate. The only thing that can help Hillary (since she’s also running out of money for campaigfning) would be if the Democratic Party was to recognise delegates from Michigan and Florida, which from all accounts I’ve read won’t happen til he end of the month and is very unlikely.
All Hillary will achieve by staying in the race to the end is a Republican Presidency under McCain and a split Democratic Party that could take years to heal = more bloody Republican Presidents, God help us!
If Hillary waits a little longer, then gets a sweetheart deal to drop out, like being made Senate Majority Leader after November, then she has every chance to be the most powerful Democrat in Washington. Maybe now she knows she cannot lose, that is what she is after.
And mark my words: if Iran gets close to developing nuclear weapons, then the US will invade, because it’s better than the certain alternative (Israel using nukes on Iran).