Dear Politically Savvy Friends,
Happy Columbus Day! While the legal holiday is observed on a Monday, it was actually October 12, 1492, that Christopher Columbus saw the Bahamas. As we all know now, he was not the first European to “discover” America, but be careful to whom you say that. I am old enough to remember the late PA Supreme Court Justice Michael A. Musmanno, a wonderfully colorful man who went on a six-week tour of the nation to defend Columbus when Yale scholars declared that Leif Ericson had landed in America first. Ironically, Musmanno died on Columbus Day!
As many of you have reminded me, it’s been weeks since I’ve taken hand to keyboard to share my thoughts about this presidential race. It’s not like I’m vacationing! Between money (read the economy and Wall Street) and politics, my two principal news beats these days, my plate has been very full indeed. Since the presidential conventions, I’ve had two interviews with Barack Obama and one with John McCain and multiple interviews with surrogates. Obviously, both campaigns know how important Pennsylvania and neighboring Ohio (just 30 miles west of me) are in this contest, and I can practically guarantee that if Pennsylvania and Ohio vote alike on November 4, that man will be president.
So, three weeks from decision day, where do we stand? Can you say President Obama? No, wait, could it be President McCain?
In this latest PSF, let me share my thoughts as someone who has spent 25 years in the political world – first, as a behind-the-scenes player, and, now, as an observer and commentator. As always, I welcome your off-the-record views. If you prefer not to get these occasional missives, there’s a button below to get off the list. Otherwise, dear Politically Savvy Friend, read on.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
The Wall Street Mess -- Calling FDR:
A friend of mine asked me the other day where was Franklin D. Roosevelt when we needed him. The reference, of course, was to FDR’s famous call in his First Inaugural: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” In the wake of the collapse of the Stock Market, causing most of us to lose more than one-third of our retirement funds, the absence of presidential leadership has been obvious.
It’s not that President Bush isn’t trying. It’s just that nobody cares what he says. His job approval ratings are in the mid-20s, the lowest of his presidency, and most financial analysts concluded that every time he spoke to the nation last week the market dropped some more.
Of course, presidents are not economists, finance wizards, or portfolio money managers. But they do have experts around them that are or should be. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may know a thing or two, but it’s not clear that even they know how to turn this market or the economy around. We begin this week with some hopeful signs. The stock market has resurged some 900+ points, and we are now seeing some concrete action out of Washington.
What surprised me most is that the Bush administration, having pushed so hard for its Wall Street rescue plan (or bailout, as detractors call it), seemed so unprepared to implement it, once Congress approved the bill a week ago. I would have thought the implementation plan would have been on the drawing board as the Congress debated its inevitable passage. The consequence has been delay, instead of action, and we all saw how Wall Street reacted to that. But concerted global action over this last weekend gives hope that maybe, just maybe, we can regain our footing.
Ultimately, the market will bottom out and eventually regain some, if not all, the losses over the next two years, if not sooner. At least that’s what the experts say. But all this focus on the economy demonstrates like nothing else how important it is to have a president with a team in place to make sure these meltdowns don’t occur and, if they do, to have a plan to minimize their impact on average working people. The Bush administration had neither.
It’s the Economy, Stupid:
When you’re hurting economically, it’s always about you. That’s a basic rule in politics. The candidate who can address your concerns or at least appears sympathetic to your plight will get your support. No surprise, every recent poll puts the economy and jobs as the #1 issue in this presidential race – 57% in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Most of us have felt a lot of economic pain in recent months – unrestrained energy and food price increases, higher unemployment, devaluation of our homes, and now the evisceration of our 401-Ks and IRAs.
Baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964), some 76 million of us, are particularly hurt by the latter, even if it’s just a paper loss (as long as we don’t cash in). My father’s generation had guaranteed company pensions, the so-called defined benefit plans, where the retired employee got a check every month from his employer for as long as he lived. Corporate America abandoned that approach when it became too expensive to sustain, and substituted a plan tied to the stock market wherein employees would deposit part of their own money (often matched partially by the employer) in a 401-K. Gone are those guaranteed monthly pension checks during retirement – except, of course, Social Security. Your retirement security depends on the return of your money set aside in investment accounts of your choosing and always subject to the vagaries of the stock market. That’s why everyone is so angry about what happened on Wall Street and the failure of our politicians to prevent it.
[Parenthetically, the only people left with those old-fashioned pension checks are public employees – teachers, government workers, and elected officials. We, the taxpayers, pay much of that monthly check, and I suspect that this last remnant of defined benefit will disappear in the years ahead, particularly if the typical American retiree appears to struggle while their neighbor who worked for the taxpayer enjoys a comfortable retirement.]
All this is to say that Americans hunger for a president who, not only understands all this, but appears willing to protect our jobs and restore jobs shipped overseas, raise our wages so we can (at least) stay even with inflation, provide affordable health care for all, and maintain our retirement security. It’s a very tall order.
McCain or Obama – Can Either One Make Life Better?
In their gut, most Americans don’t think either John McCain or Barack Obama can really do all that is necessary to make our lives better. Such is our cynicism that it’s easy to say that it doesn’t really matter who wins the White House, at least on the economy. But empathy is important and forced to choose, most Americans think Obama can address the economy better than McCain. In the latest Newsweek poll, those polled said Obama would do a better job on the economy and jobs than McCain by a 54% to 35% margin. Close to the same result in the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, 50% to 30%. We see similar results on health care, 56% to 30% for Obama in the Newsweek poll and 52% to 32% in the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll.
McCain’s initial response to Wall Street even if taken out of contest (“The fundamentals of our economy are sound.”), coupled with his short-lived suspension of his campaign and refusal to debate Obama until Congress resolved its response to the crisis, made it easy for Obama to portray him as “out-of-touch” and a bit schizophrenic. That’s not fair to McCain, but nothing is ever fair in politics.
Fundamentally, what hurts McCain, in my view, is the general sense that, at least on the economy, he is really not much different than President Bush, someone traditionally hostile to government regulation of Wall Street, generally pro-business, and much more attuned to the interests of the wealthy than working Americans. In short, in difficult economic times, it’s tough to be a Republican politician because it’s so easy for Democrats to affix a label to you.
McCain Tries to Change the Theme Line:
Democrats don’t like it, but the McCain campaign did exactly what a smart candidate does when the number one issue in a campaign is against you – change the issue. Enter Bill Ayers, a ‘60s anti-war radical who cofounded the Weathermen underground movement and participated in the bombing of the NYC police headquarters, the U.S. Capitol, and the Pentagon in the early 1970s, activities that occurred when Obama was a young kid, but actions that caused damage to public property but, fortunately, no death or injury. Not my kind of guy, that’s for sure.
Fast forward to the mid-1990s in Chicago. By this time, Ayers has become a prominent educator in that city, with multiple Masters degrees and a doctorate. Ayers, now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago, worked with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to write the so-called Chicago Annenberg Challenge, securing $49 million to reform the Chicago public schools over a five-year period. [Walter Annenberg, a Republican who died in 2002, was the billionaire Philadelphia publisher who was President Reagan’s ambassador to the United Kingdom]. Obama was an original member of the board named to distribute that money. Besides their association in this project, Obama and Ayers were board members on the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty philanthropic group. It’s also a fact that Obama was in Ayers home when Ayers hosted an event at which then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer presented Obama as her choice to succeed her in the 1996 Democratic primary.
What are we to make of all this? Obama has condemned Ayers’ illegal activity and calls McCain’s attempt to question his character through Ayers as “guilt by association.” He says he never “palled around” with Ayers, as McCain’s running-mate has charged. But McCain and his allies suggest that it’s just not believable that Obama was unaware of Ayers’ background and that he should have, if he had any decent character at all, completely excused himself from any association with this man. [This is similar, by the way, to the same argument made against Obama because of his long-time association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright whose anti-American, anti-white rhetoric was so inflammatory during the primary season].
PSF’ers can make their own judgment about what this says about Obama or McCain, for that matter. The political question is – has it worked to help McCain? Not yet, is my quick answer. Sure it’s “red meat” for the Republican base that wants McCain to attack Obama more vigorously, but the last-minute nature of the attack strikes many as “desperation” politics. The Fox News poll last week found that 61% of those polled said it made no difference to their vote. Even worse for McCain, some 51% said McCain was running a “negative” campaign for president, while only 21% said that of Obama.
So while McCain’s campaign may be right to change the issue from the economy to something else, a character assault on Obama because of his association (whatever it was) with Bill Ayers doesn’t seem to be working, at least not yet. Perhaps a better issue for McCain might be national security.
Sarah Palin (a/k/a Tina Fey) Becomes a Pop Culture Phenom:
Whether you think Gov. Sarah Palin is qualified to be President of the United States, no one can doubt that she has taken America by storm – and thanks to Tina Fey – has singlehandedly restored Saturday Night Live to “must-watch” television.
I have not met Palin, so I don’t know what she is really like in person, but her spunky style has certainly hit a chord with many. But, let’s be honest, she has also become a figure of ridicule – and, at this stage of the campaign, it’s unclear whether the strong support she gets from some trumps the shake-of-the-head others give her. The most recent Newsweek poll gives her a 49% to 45% favorable rating.
Nonetheless, McCain’s choice of Palin, in my view, did exactly what was intended. It brought the Christian conservative evangelicals back on board the Republican ticket. McCain is a social conservative, but he’s never really been comfortable with the Falwell-Robertson ideology. Palin is not only comfortable with that ideology -- she lives her beliefs. That scares some Americans, but it was those Christian conservative voters who delivered the state of Ohio to George W. Bush in 2004 and nearly delivered Pennsylvania.
Fundamentally, I don’t believe that either Joe Biden, who can quite legitimately point to his Pennsylvania roots, or Sarah Palin determines the outcome of this election. The race is between Obama and McCain, not their running-mates. The last vice presidential nominee to make a difference electorally was Lyndon Baines Johnson who delivered Texas – and the White House – to John F. Kennedy in 1960.
PENNSYLVANIA
Up for Grabs:
As the economy got worse, Barack Obama’s poll numbers got better in Pennsylvania. His lead last week over John McCain ranged from 12% (Marist poll) to 15% (SurveyUSA). Mind you, in September, Obama’s lead was well within the margin of error, ranging from 1% (Strategic Vision) to 4% (Morning Call). So is the recent double-digit bump for Obama a temporary surge, or a predictor of the final outcome?
McCain obviously believes it’s temporary, as both he and Palin criss-cross much of the state and, almost as importantly, their TV ads – and those of groups that support them – continue to run at full strength. Obama hardly thinks PA is decided yet either, as he and Biden stump the state and bring in some heavy-weights like President and Senator Clinton to campaign in Scranton this past weekend.
In short, both candidates act like this state is up for grabs, regardless of the polls. Maybe they know something we don’t know!
The Key for Victory in PA:
James Carville once described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between. It was a clever line, but not exactly right. In many ways, PA is like 50 states – urban centers, manufacturing river towns, rural deer country, agricultural heartlands, areas that identify with the east coast and other parts that are clearly Midwestern in outlook. PA has liberal Republicans and very conservative Republicans, just as it has liberal Democrats and very conservative Democrats, and both parties have Christian evangelicals. And, yes, many Pennsylvanians have guns, religion, and a small-town ethos. Bottom line, this is a hard state to categorize.
But the keys to victory are not hard to discern.
Four years ago, John Kerry just barely defeated George Bush in PA by 2.5% of the vote, or 144,000 votes out of 4.7 million votes cast. The Democratic victory began in Philadelphia where Kerry racked up a record 412,000 vote margin over Bush. In August, Gov. Ed Rendell told me that he hoped Philadelphia would beat that record for Obama this November. The latest registration figures show it possible: Philadelphia has about 852,000 Democrats, 145,000 Republicans, and 93,000 independents (or other third-party members). Could Philadelphia give Obama a 500,000 vote lead? It would be astounding, but do-able. Last Saturday’s four-stop visit within Philadelphia by Obama was designed to do just that.
The suburbs of Philadelphia used to be a sure Republican thing. No more. In 2004, Kerry carried three of the four “bedroom” counties – Montgomery (by 46,000 votes), Bucks (by 9,000 votes), and Delaware (by 42,000 votes), losing only Chester County (by 10,000 for Bush). This year, McCain thinks he can do better by stressing his “maverick” independent style. What hampers that is the growth of Democrats in these counties. Montgomery County has now turned Democratic by 19,000 votes, with only 10,000 votes separating Republicans from Democrats in Bucks County and 23,000 in Delaware County.
But even if Obama scores big in Southeastern PA like Kerry did, that does not guarantee victory in the state. Pennsylvania has important concentration of voters in the Northeast (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre), Northwest (Erie), South Central East (Harrisburg/Lancaster/York), South Central West (Johnstown, Altoona, Somerset), and the voter-rich area surrounding Pittsburgh in Southwestern PA. And I’ve left out lots other important nooks and crannies of the state.
Allegheny County (Greater Pittsburgh) is almost certainly going to vote for Obama. While not as lopsided as Philadelphia, it is overwhelmingly Democratic. Latest registration numbers have roughly 586,000 Dems here to 254,000 Republicans and 101,000 independents. In 2004, Kerry beat Bush here by 97,000 votes. In my view, Obama has the potential to win Allegheny County by more than 100,000 votes, depending on whether all the new registrants actually turn up to vote, but it is hardly a done deal.
It looks much better for McCain outside Pittsburgh and its immediate environs. Take Westmoreland County, where Democrats have a 49,000 voter registration edge over the Republicans: Four years ago, Bush beat Kerry in this county by 22,000 votes. In Washington County, Dems have a 40,000 registration edge today but Kerry only beat Bush by 552 votes. In Beaver County, Dems lead Republicans by 34,000 voters but Kerry only won by 2,200 votes. Take Lawrence County where Dems outnumber Republicans by 12,000 voters but Bush won by 551 votes. You get the picture.
The conservative Democrats in Southwestern PA can never be taken for granted by a Democratic candidate running statewide. Neither Obama nor McCain have campaigned in this region since late August – although Palin was here last Friday and Michelle Obama is expected on Thursday – but at some point the race will come down to regions west of the Susquehanna River. Both Gov. Ed Rendell and former Gov. Tom Ridge have certainly counseled their party nominees – western Pennsylvanians like retail politics, vote a higher percentage than back east, and are never predictable. In the end, while small in numbers, how Democratic counties like Beaver County and Washington County vote could well predict who wins the state of Pennsylvania.
The Role of Race in PA:
Finally, a word about race. I had a Democratic committeeman from this area come up to me a few months ago and bluntly tell me that he could never support Obama because he’s black. It’s abhorrent to me that anyone would vote for or against someone on the basis of race, gender, or religion, but we all know that it happens in every election. I have written about this in earlier PSFs. While most of us can point to stories from friends or relatives who say they know somebody who will never vote for Obama because of his race, it’s hard to measure the impact of this.
Last spring, Rendell observed that he felt in his race against an African American in Pennsylvania, the white candidate benefitted by as much as five to seven percentage points. He should know, not only as an astute politician but also as one who ran against an African American in 2006, the Pittsburgh Steelers great Lynn Swann, a Republican. If Rendell is correct, then Obama needs a double-digit lead to win PA.
But I don’t know if Rendell is right, especially when it comes to Barack Obama and John McCain. It seems to me that there are so many other legitimate reasons to vote for one or against these candidates that race is consequential only for the true racists, which I hope is less than one percent of the PA electorate, not seven percent.
Still, there is a gnawing feeling that race will play a greater role in this election than anyone wants to admit. There is not much Obama can do about this, although his recent 60-second biographical ad featuring his white mother and white grandparents was a subliminal way to deal with the issue. My gut instinct is what worries some white voters is not Obama but other African Americans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (notice how they’ve disappeared this election season?) who appear to have made a career blaming whites for everything wrong in the black community. One white woman asked me the other day if I thought Obama would be beholden to those leaders if he won.
Obama deserves to be judged on his own, not by what people think of Jackson or Sharpton – just as John McCain deserves to be judged on his own, not by what people think of George W. Bush. But it’s the nature of politics to obfuscate rather than clarify. We won’t know the role of race in this contest until the votes are counted.
There is always much more that I can opine on, especially here in Pennsylvania. But let me save something for another PSF next week. I’m committed to doing at least one a week through and right after the election. As always, I welcome your comments – and hope to see some of you out on the campaign trail.
Showing posts with label Jeremiah Wright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeremiah Wright. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
PA Primary Retrospective
Dear Politically Savvy Friends,
The other night, I finally got 6 hours of sleep for the first time in awhile. Three days in a row of double shifts (Monday through Wednesday) does take a toll on the body, but what an exciting time to be right in the middle of this never-ending presidential battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Despite the spin on both sides, which have tended to exaggerate or minimize the importance of the Pennsylvania win for Clinton, this primary has reenergized the Hillary folks. More importantly, in my view, the nature of the Clinton win has planted seeds of doubts about Obama’s ability to win a national race against Republican John McCain.
And then there’s the resurgence of race in this contest, aided and abetted by the reappearance of Jeremiah Wright, who is doing no favors for his parishioner.
As you know, I have been scrupulously neutral in this presidential contest, reporting the facts but unafraid to tell you exactly what I think even if my friends in all three campaigns enjoy taking issue with me. In this quick PSF, let me lay out some of my post-primary thoughts. As always, you can leave public comments on my occasional blog – www.delanosden.blogspot.com – or just email me your private, off-the-record views. I love hearing from you, and now I just might have a few more minutes to respond!
PENNSYLVANIA
Just the Facts, Ma’am:
On Tuesday, nearly 55 percent of PA’s 4.2 million Democrats went to the polls, and Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama by 9.2 percent – 1,245,911 (54.6%) to 1,037,953 (45.4%). Correct mathematical “rounding” by the media reported this result as 55% to 45%, the so-called “double digit” lead, but the “truth” is that the win was closer to 9% than 10%. Details, perhaps, but let’s be accurate.
Clinton won 60 of the state’s 67 counties, winning 15 counties with 70 percent of the vote or more. Those included the Democrat-rich Lackawanna County (Scranton) which she won by 74% and the less populated southwestern PA county of Fayette County that delivered Clinton her best vote at 79%.
Obama carried the state’s largest county, Philadelphia, with 65% of the vote but lost two neighboring suburban counties, Montgomery County (the third largest Democratic county in the state after Allegheny) where Clinton won narrowly with 51% and Bucks County where she won with 63% of the vote.
Obama also won the city of Pittsburgh with 59% of the vote, but Clinton won the overall Allegheny County vote by 9%. Of the county’s 130 municipalities, including Pittsburgh, Obama won a couple dozen, but Clinton beat him in most communities, often by a two-to-one margin.
In the neighboring Pittsburgh area counties, Clinton easily won with double-digits, carrying Butler County by 27 points, Beaver County by 39, Westmoreland County by 39, and Washington County by 43 points over Obama.
The delegate sort is still on-going with 103 delegates elected in the 19 congressional districts and another 55 delegates allocated based on the final statewide percentage result. I have seen various reports that Clinton could pick up as many as 12 delegates over Obama to as few as 6. Nobody has the exact facts on this one yet. I’ll keep you posted as this gets figured out.
Clinton’s win was slightly bigger than the last two polls of the campaign which predicted a 6% win (Survey USA) and a 7% win (Quinnipiac) and considerably bigger than some of the late afternoon exit polls on Tuesday which suggested a narrower 4-point win for Clinton.
The Spin, For What It’s Worth:
The day after the election both campaigns went overboard in “analyzing” the Pennsylvania primary. No surprise. The Obama campaign down-played the result to nothing, while the Clintons made this sound like Hillary’s second coming.
The Obama spin was contained in an artfully written memo entitled, “A Fundamentally Unchanged Race.” Here’s an excerpt:
“Tonight, Hillary Clinton lost her last, best chance to make significant inroads in the pledged delegate count. . . .The only surprising result from Pennsylvania is that in a state considered tailor-made for Hillary Clinton that she was expected to win, Barack Obama was able to improve his standing among key voter groups since the Ohio primary. . . .As he has done in every state, Barack Obama campaigned hard to pick up as much support and as many delegates as possible and was able to stave off Clinton from achieving a significant pledged delegate gain from Pennsylvania. . . .The bottom line is that the Pennsylvania outcome does not change dynamic of this lengthy primary.”
The Clinton spin was delivered by the candidate herself in her cogent acceptance speech. Here’s an excerpt:
“I’m in this race to fight for you, to fight for everyone who has ever been counted out, for everyone fighting to pay the grocery bills or the medical bills, the credit card and mortgage payments, and the outrageous price of gas at the pump today. . . . The pundit's question whether Pennsylvanians would trust me with this charge and tonight you showed you do. . . .Today, here in Pennsylvania, you made your voices heard and because of you, the tide is turning. We were up against a formidable opponent who outspent us three to one. He broke every spending record in this state trying to knock us out of the race. Well, the people of Pennsylvania had other ideas tonight.”
In short, Obama says PA didn’t change a thing because his delegate lead is insurmountable, while Clinton says the tide has turned her way because Obama’s millions could not win him the support of middle class, working Democrats essential to victory.
Another Point of View:
Pennsylvania did matter, in my view, because it breathed important “life” into Hillary Clinton’s campaign. She has now won four of the last five primaries. Barack Obama could not deliver the knock-out punch in a critical “November” state. Moreover, Obama’s loss has raised questions about how he can win the general election when he lost some important Democratic constituencies who backed Clinton on Tuesday.
At the same time, Clinton did not get the delegate boost she needs, although everyone now knows Obama mathematically cannot win a majority of the pledged delegates either. In short, this race is now all about the 795 super delegates who will ultimately pick the nominee because the millions of Democrats who have been voting since January were unable to give either Obama or Clinton the magic 2,025 delegates needed for nomination.
That’s an important point. Pennsylvania and the remaining nine contests are really aimed at persuading the supers which candidate can win in November. And, in my view, that’s why the Pennsylvania primary has more significance than the Obama camp would wish, even if it’s not necessarily the “tide changer” Clinton believes.
How Clinton Won:
Hillary won on Tuesday because her prime constituency, women, stuck with her, while she was able to end the campaign with a majority of white men on her side. Exit polls found 68% of white women and 59% of women overall voted for Clinton. This is an important constituency when you consider that 58% of all Democratic voters in PA on Tuesday were women.
Men, who were fickle throughout most of this campaign going back and forth between Obama and Clinton, split evenly (49% to 51%). But white men, in the end, jumped back to Clinton, 57% to 43%, giving her the near double-digit lead she wanted.
Despite all the youth vote talk in this campaign, it was the older folks who turned out to vote. Some 22% of the Democratic electorate were 65 and over, while only 12% were under age 30. About six in 10 young voters backed Obama, while 63% of the larger older voting cohort supported Clinton. In short, age trumped youth.
On the religious front, Clinton beat Obama among Catholics, 70% to 30%, among Jews, 62% to 38%, and among white Protestants, 59% to 41%.
Obama did well among what some call the Democratic elites – well-educated, economically well-off liberals. In Allegheny County, for example, Obama won the Dems who live in Fox Chapel, Mt. Lebanon, Sewickley, and Pittsburgh’s 14th Ward, uniting them with the predominately African American communities of Braddock, Clairton, Duquesne, and Rankin. But for any Democrat, this is hardly a coalition for victory, especially in November. Clinton was the overwhelming favorite of the blue-collar, middle class working white, winning this vote 61% to 39%.
The stark political reality for Obama is that he cannot become president in November if he cannot win over these voters. As U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle commented this week, Obama “needs to demonstrate that he can connect with blue-collar, working class people.” Doyle is an uncommitted super delegate, whose district narrowly backed Obama. The Obama camp believes that in a race against the McCain economic issues, including rising gas prices, will keep Dems in the fold. I’m not so sure it will be that easy.
Revisiting the Role of Race:
Lots of folks are dancing around the subject of race, but when exit polls say that 16% of PA Democrats claim race played a factor in their decision, I suspect the real number is higher.
Now let’s be clear. I’m sure some African Americans voted for Obama solely because of his race, and I’m equally sure some whites voted for Clinton solely because of her race. About 90% of blacks voted for Obama. Did they all do so because of they thought he was the better candidate regardless of race? At the same time, 63% of whites voted for Clinton. Did they all do so because they thought she was the better candidate regardless of race?
Voting for or against anyone on the basis of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual preference, in my view, is an ignorant way of voting, but it’s as American as apple pie.
In Pennsylvania, Obama won one-third of the white vote and Clinton won 10% of the black vote. Clearly, these voters disregarded race. But what about the others? Again, let’s be clear. Just because a black voter votes for Obama or a white voter votes for Clinton does not automatically make them racists. That’s insulting to the vast majority of voters who have perfectly valid, non-racial reasons for backing their candidates.
But, politically, the role of race is important for Obama’s (and the Democratic Party’s) future success on Nov. 4, and here the concern is not black racists, who will vote for Obama no matter what. What concerns many in the Democratic Party, particularly some of its super delegates, is white racists who will never vote for a black.
The other day I caught this provocative diatribe on the internet from a Virginia blogger, who ascribes Clinton’s win in PA to racism:
“Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania because she pandered to the overt racism that exists among blue collar whites as well as the latent racism in too many others. She won because the bulk of her appeal comes from the less-educated, the less-tolerant and the less-intelligent among us. If you're a stupid, illiterate, gun-totin' white hick you probably voted for Hillary. And so did your ignorant, baby-popping, big-haired wife as well as that bleached-blond bar maid that you're seeing on the side. . . . Where I come from, the guys with the John Deere hats talk about how they voted for Hillary in the Virginia Democratic primary because ‘it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for the [N-word].’"
This portrayal of Clinton supporters in PA is both insulting – “a stupid, illiterate, gun-totin’ white hick” – and dead wrong. This hardly describes the majority voters of suburban Philadelphia in Montgomery and Bucks who backed Hillary over Barack, or suburban Pittsburgh for that matter. Nonetheless, there is a kernel of truth in the notion that some whites, in every state, will simply never vote for an African American.
Political analysts must be up-front about that reality. I wish it weren’t so, but race does matter to some.
Still, to call every blue-collar, middle class worker in PA a “racist hick” is precisely the elitism that threatens to separate Obama from the base of his party. To be fair to the Illinois senator, I don’t think he has ever done that, even if some of his supporters have. But Obama’s own words in San Francisco, linking the economic unhappiness of these folks to their religion and guns, clearly cost him on April 22. To many, he came across as out-of-touch. Some 59% of those who attend church regularly voted for Clinton, along with 62% of those Pennsylvanians who have guns in the family.
Maybe I want to believe better of people, but I really don’t think the vast majority of Pennsylvanians are racist. Instead, voters were willing to let Obama make his case to them and he failed. But whether it’s latent racism or not (and I hope it’s not), Obama cannot be elected president if he is unable to connect with “regular folks” who want a president who understands them, shares their pain, and articulates a way to help them cope with the economic squeeze they feel.
Enter Jeremiah Wright:
When he could least afford it politically, Obama now has to contend with the reappearance of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who seems intent on restoring his good name without regard to the consequences on his famous parishioner. I watched Bill Moyer’s interview with Wright on PBS on Friday night, and obviously saw a different Wright than the one we have seen in those ugly video clips. That, of course, is the whole point of Wright’s speaking out, to suggest that what we saw on TV was not the “real” pastor, but a highly distorted picture. On Sunday, Wright will speak to the NAACP in Detroit, and then he addresses the National Press Club in Washington on Monday.
I understand the minister’s desire to rehabilitate his image. Who wouldn’t do that? But there is no way this can be helpful to Barack Obama. It only resurrects the old murky images of a screaming preacher and, frankly, the issue of race. And that undermines the central message of Obama’s candidacy.
At the beginning of this campaign, Obama won all-white Iowa (and many other states, too) because he transcended race. A multi-racial American, he came across to many as neither white nor black but as this uniquely transformational figure who could bridge the racial divide. But the rants of his pastor, whether fair or unfair, upended that image, at least for some Americans. This man, whom Obama called his spiritual mentor, said things from the pulpit that were not just offensive but clearly racial. Wright conjured up images of all the worst black preachers, the ones who blame whites and America for all that is wrong.
And, all of sudden, Obama is no longer a racially unifying candidate, but a black candidate who cannot disown his pastor even as he rejects the preacher’s tirades, saying they are rooted in an earlier generation of black liberation theology. The Pennsylvania primary suggests that Obama’s eloquent speech in Philadelphia on race did not work, at least not politically, with the audience he needs to reach the most.
So just when he needs to develop a strategy that can resurrect the “unifying” Obama that so many white voters embraced before Wright’s image cast across the TV screen, Wright reappears. Now he tells us that Obama’s words distancing himself from his pastor were merely the words of a “politician,” implying that Obama only said what he said in Philly because that was the political thing to do.
“He's a politician, I'm a pastor,” Wright told Moyers . “We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they're two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do."
Obviously, the pastor has every right to speak out and correct the record, as he sees it. But, in my view, if Wright had really wanted to help his parishioner win the presidency, he would have enjoyed his retirement and kept his mouth shut until the day after November
Moving On:
Pennsylvania is over until November where, in my view, John McCain has a good shot at winning the state, regardless of the ultimate Democratic nominee. For Clinton and Obama, of course, the race goes on.
Next Saturday, May 3, Guam will elect eight delegates to the convention, followed by Indiana (72 delegates) and North Carolina (115 delegates) on Tuesday, May 6. With one-third of its Democratic voters African American, nobody really expects Hillary to win North Carolina, but her campaign would like to keep Obama’s lead under double-digits, not unlike what Obama did in Pennsylvania.
Indiana appears up for grabs, although Obama has a slight poll lead and an advantage since the Chicago media market (where Obama calls home) overlaps into part of Indiana. In my view, Indiana is another place where those working class, blue-collar workers could make the difference. For what it’s worth, a life-time ago, nearly 30% of the Dems in Indiana voted for segregationist George C. Wallace.
Once again, the remaining nine races are all about spin and super delegates. Perhaps if Obama won nine straight, Clinton might fold. But why should she? And does anyone expect Obama to call it quits if Clinton wins the next nine? No, of course not. This race is not over until it’s over. And that won’t happen until all the super delegates weigh in with their choices because neither Obama nor Clinton will have a majority of the delegates when the last pledged delegates are elected on June 3.
Okay, folks, that’s my take on the PA presidential primary. I would welcome your views. Next week, I will review the other races in Pennsylvania, including the congressional battles where both sides dream of pick-ups. In the meantime, Pennsylvanians will enjoy a politics-free week (sort of) as it finally feels like spring! Is that a lawn mower I hear calling?
The other night, I finally got 6 hours of sleep for the first time in awhile. Three days in a row of double shifts (Monday through Wednesday) does take a toll on the body, but what an exciting time to be right in the middle of this never-ending presidential battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Despite the spin on both sides, which have tended to exaggerate or minimize the importance of the Pennsylvania win for Clinton, this primary has reenergized the Hillary folks. More importantly, in my view, the nature of the Clinton win has planted seeds of doubts about Obama’s ability to win a national race against Republican John McCain.
And then there’s the resurgence of race in this contest, aided and abetted by the reappearance of Jeremiah Wright, who is doing no favors for his parishioner.
As you know, I have been scrupulously neutral in this presidential contest, reporting the facts but unafraid to tell you exactly what I think even if my friends in all three campaigns enjoy taking issue with me. In this quick PSF, let me lay out some of my post-primary thoughts. As always, you can leave public comments on my occasional blog – www.delanosden.blogspot.com – or just email me your private, off-the-record views. I love hearing from you, and now I just might have a few more minutes to respond!
PENNSYLVANIA
Just the Facts, Ma’am:
On Tuesday, nearly 55 percent of PA’s 4.2 million Democrats went to the polls, and Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama by 9.2 percent – 1,245,911 (54.6%) to 1,037,953 (45.4%). Correct mathematical “rounding” by the media reported this result as 55% to 45%, the so-called “double digit” lead, but the “truth” is that the win was closer to 9% than 10%. Details, perhaps, but let’s be accurate.
Clinton won 60 of the state’s 67 counties, winning 15 counties with 70 percent of the vote or more. Those included the Democrat-rich Lackawanna County (Scranton) which she won by 74% and the less populated southwestern PA county of Fayette County that delivered Clinton her best vote at 79%.
Obama carried the state’s largest county, Philadelphia, with 65% of the vote but lost two neighboring suburban counties, Montgomery County (the third largest Democratic county in the state after Allegheny) where Clinton won narrowly with 51% and Bucks County where she won with 63% of the vote.
Obama also won the city of Pittsburgh with 59% of the vote, but Clinton won the overall Allegheny County vote by 9%. Of the county’s 130 municipalities, including Pittsburgh, Obama won a couple dozen, but Clinton beat him in most communities, often by a two-to-one margin.
In the neighboring Pittsburgh area counties, Clinton easily won with double-digits, carrying Butler County by 27 points, Beaver County by 39, Westmoreland County by 39, and Washington County by 43 points over Obama.
The delegate sort is still on-going with 103 delegates elected in the 19 congressional districts and another 55 delegates allocated based on the final statewide percentage result. I have seen various reports that Clinton could pick up as many as 12 delegates over Obama to as few as 6. Nobody has the exact facts on this one yet. I’ll keep you posted as this gets figured out.
Clinton’s win was slightly bigger than the last two polls of the campaign which predicted a 6% win (Survey USA) and a 7% win (Quinnipiac) and considerably bigger than some of the late afternoon exit polls on Tuesday which suggested a narrower 4-point win for Clinton.
The Spin, For What It’s Worth:
The day after the election both campaigns went overboard in “analyzing” the Pennsylvania primary. No surprise. The Obama campaign down-played the result to nothing, while the Clintons made this sound like Hillary’s second coming.
The Obama spin was contained in an artfully written memo entitled, “A Fundamentally Unchanged Race.” Here’s an excerpt:
“Tonight, Hillary Clinton lost her last, best chance to make significant inroads in the pledged delegate count. . . .The only surprising result from Pennsylvania is that in a state considered tailor-made for Hillary Clinton that she was expected to win, Barack Obama was able to improve his standing among key voter groups since the Ohio primary. . . .As he has done in every state, Barack Obama campaigned hard to pick up as much support and as many delegates as possible and was able to stave off Clinton from achieving a significant pledged delegate gain from Pennsylvania. . . .The bottom line is that the Pennsylvania outcome does not change dynamic of this lengthy primary.”
The Clinton spin was delivered by the candidate herself in her cogent acceptance speech. Here’s an excerpt:
“I’m in this race to fight for you, to fight for everyone who has ever been counted out, for everyone fighting to pay the grocery bills or the medical bills, the credit card and mortgage payments, and the outrageous price of gas at the pump today. . . . The pundit's question whether Pennsylvanians would trust me with this charge and tonight you showed you do. . . .Today, here in Pennsylvania, you made your voices heard and because of you, the tide is turning. We were up against a formidable opponent who outspent us three to one. He broke every spending record in this state trying to knock us out of the race. Well, the people of Pennsylvania had other ideas tonight.”
In short, Obama says PA didn’t change a thing because his delegate lead is insurmountable, while Clinton says the tide has turned her way because Obama’s millions could not win him the support of middle class, working Democrats essential to victory.
Another Point of View:
Pennsylvania did matter, in my view, because it breathed important “life” into Hillary Clinton’s campaign. She has now won four of the last five primaries. Barack Obama could not deliver the knock-out punch in a critical “November” state. Moreover, Obama’s loss has raised questions about how he can win the general election when he lost some important Democratic constituencies who backed Clinton on Tuesday.
At the same time, Clinton did not get the delegate boost she needs, although everyone now knows Obama mathematically cannot win a majority of the pledged delegates either. In short, this race is now all about the 795 super delegates who will ultimately pick the nominee because the millions of Democrats who have been voting since January were unable to give either Obama or Clinton the magic 2,025 delegates needed for nomination.
That’s an important point. Pennsylvania and the remaining nine contests are really aimed at persuading the supers which candidate can win in November. And, in my view, that’s why the Pennsylvania primary has more significance than the Obama camp would wish, even if it’s not necessarily the “tide changer” Clinton believes.
How Clinton Won:
Hillary won on Tuesday because her prime constituency, women, stuck with her, while she was able to end the campaign with a majority of white men on her side. Exit polls found 68% of white women and 59% of women overall voted for Clinton. This is an important constituency when you consider that 58% of all Democratic voters in PA on Tuesday were women.
Men, who were fickle throughout most of this campaign going back and forth between Obama and Clinton, split evenly (49% to 51%). But white men, in the end, jumped back to Clinton, 57% to 43%, giving her the near double-digit lead she wanted.
Despite all the youth vote talk in this campaign, it was the older folks who turned out to vote. Some 22% of the Democratic electorate were 65 and over, while only 12% were under age 30. About six in 10 young voters backed Obama, while 63% of the larger older voting cohort supported Clinton. In short, age trumped youth.
On the religious front, Clinton beat Obama among Catholics, 70% to 30%, among Jews, 62% to 38%, and among white Protestants, 59% to 41%.
Obama did well among what some call the Democratic elites – well-educated, economically well-off liberals. In Allegheny County, for example, Obama won the Dems who live in Fox Chapel, Mt. Lebanon, Sewickley, and Pittsburgh’s 14th Ward, uniting them with the predominately African American communities of Braddock, Clairton, Duquesne, and Rankin. But for any Democrat, this is hardly a coalition for victory, especially in November. Clinton was the overwhelming favorite of the blue-collar, middle class working white, winning this vote 61% to 39%.
The stark political reality for Obama is that he cannot become president in November if he cannot win over these voters. As U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle commented this week, Obama “needs to demonstrate that he can connect with blue-collar, working class people.” Doyle is an uncommitted super delegate, whose district narrowly backed Obama. The Obama camp believes that in a race against the McCain economic issues, including rising gas prices, will keep Dems in the fold. I’m not so sure it will be that easy.
Revisiting the Role of Race:
Lots of folks are dancing around the subject of race, but when exit polls say that 16% of PA Democrats claim race played a factor in their decision, I suspect the real number is higher.
Now let’s be clear. I’m sure some African Americans voted for Obama solely because of his race, and I’m equally sure some whites voted for Clinton solely because of her race. About 90% of blacks voted for Obama. Did they all do so because of they thought he was the better candidate regardless of race? At the same time, 63% of whites voted for Clinton. Did they all do so because they thought she was the better candidate regardless of race?
Voting for or against anyone on the basis of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual preference, in my view, is an ignorant way of voting, but it’s as American as apple pie.
In Pennsylvania, Obama won one-third of the white vote and Clinton won 10% of the black vote. Clearly, these voters disregarded race. But what about the others? Again, let’s be clear. Just because a black voter votes for Obama or a white voter votes for Clinton does not automatically make them racists. That’s insulting to the vast majority of voters who have perfectly valid, non-racial reasons for backing their candidates.
But, politically, the role of race is important for Obama’s (and the Democratic Party’s) future success on Nov. 4, and here the concern is not black racists, who will vote for Obama no matter what. What concerns many in the Democratic Party, particularly some of its super delegates, is white racists who will never vote for a black.
The other day I caught this provocative diatribe on the internet from a Virginia blogger, who ascribes Clinton’s win in PA to racism:
“Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania because she pandered to the overt racism that exists among blue collar whites as well as the latent racism in too many others. She won because the bulk of her appeal comes from the less-educated, the less-tolerant and the less-intelligent among us. If you're a stupid, illiterate, gun-totin' white hick you probably voted for Hillary. And so did your ignorant, baby-popping, big-haired wife as well as that bleached-blond bar maid that you're seeing on the side. . . . Where I come from, the guys with the John Deere hats talk about how they voted for Hillary in the Virginia Democratic primary because ‘it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for the [N-word].’"
This portrayal of Clinton supporters in PA is both insulting – “a stupid, illiterate, gun-totin’ white hick” – and dead wrong. This hardly describes the majority voters of suburban Philadelphia in Montgomery and Bucks who backed Hillary over Barack, or suburban Pittsburgh for that matter. Nonetheless, there is a kernel of truth in the notion that some whites, in every state, will simply never vote for an African American.
Political analysts must be up-front about that reality. I wish it weren’t so, but race does matter to some.
Still, to call every blue-collar, middle class worker in PA a “racist hick” is precisely the elitism that threatens to separate Obama from the base of his party. To be fair to the Illinois senator, I don’t think he has ever done that, even if some of his supporters have. But Obama’s own words in San Francisco, linking the economic unhappiness of these folks to their religion and guns, clearly cost him on April 22. To many, he came across as out-of-touch. Some 59% of those who attend church regularly voted for Clinton, along with 62% of those Pennsylvanians who have guns in the family.
Maybe I want to believe better of people, but I really don’t think the vast majority of Pennsylvanians are racist. Instead, voters were willing to let Obama make his case to them and he failed. But whether it’s latent racism or not (and I hope it’s not), Obama cannot be elected president if he is unable to connect with “regular folks” who want a president who understands them, shares their pain, and articulates a way to help them cope with the economic squeeze they feel.
Enter Jeremiah Wright:
When he could least afford it politically, Obama now has to contend with the reappearance of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who seems intent on restoring his good name without regard to the consequences on his famous parishioner. I watched Bill Moyer’s interview with Wright on PBS on Friday night, and obviously saw a different Wright than the one we have seen in those ugly video clips. That, of course, is the whole point of Wright’s speaking out, to suggest that what we saw on TV was not the “real” pastor, but a highly distorted picture. On Sunday, Wright will speak to the NAACP in Detroit, and then he addresses the National Press Club in Washington on Monday.
I understand the minister’s desire to rehabilitate his image. Who wouldn’t do that? But there is no way this can be helpful to Barack Obama. It only resurrects the old murky images of a screaming preacher and, frankly, the issue of race. And that undermines the central message of Obama’s candidacy.
At the beginning of this campaign, Obama won all-white Iowa (and many other states, too) because he transcended race. A multi-racial American, he came across to many as neither white nor black but as this uniquely transformational figure who could bridge the racial divide. But the rants of his pastor, whether fair or unfair, upended that image, at least for some Americans. This man, whom Obama called his spiritual mentor, said things from the pulpit that were not just offensive but clearly racial. Wright conjured up images of all the worst black preachers, the ones who blame whites and America for all that is wrong.
And, all of sudden, Obama is no longer a racially unifying candidate, but a black candidate who cannot disown his pastor even as he rejects the preacher’s tirades, saying they are rooted in an earlier generation of black liberation theology. The Pennsylvania primary suggests that Obama’s eloquent speech in Philadelphia on race did not work, at least not politically, with the audience he needs to reach the most.
So just when he needs to develop a strategy that can resurrect the “unifying” Obama that so many white voters embraced before Wright’s image cast across the TV screen, Wright reappears. Now he tells us that Obama’s words distancing himself from his pastor were merely the words of a “politician,” implying that Obama only said what he said in Philly because that was the political thing to do.
“He's a politician, I'm a pastor,” Wright told Moyers . “We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they're two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do."
Obviously, the pastor has every right to speak out and correct the record, as he sees it. But, in my view, if Wright had really wanted to help his parishioner win the presidency, he would have enjoyed his retirement and kept his mouth shut until the day after November
Moving On:
Pennsylvania is over until November where, in my view, John McCain has a good shot at winning the state, regardless of the ultimate Democratic nominee. For Clinton and Obama, of course, the race goes on.
Next Saturday, May 3, Guam will elect eight delegates to the convention, followed by Indiana (72 delegates) and North Carolina (115 delegates) on Tuesday, May 6. With one-third of its Democratic voters African American, nobody really expects Hillary to win North Carolina, but her campaign would like to keep Obama’s lead under double-digits, not unlike what Obama did in Pennsylvania.
Indiana appears up for grabs, although Obama has a slight poll lead and an advantage since the Chicago media market (where Obama calls home) overlaps into part of Indiana. In my view, Indiana is another place where those working class, blue-collar workers could make the difference. For what it’s worth, a life-time ago, nearly 30% of the Dems in Indiana voted for segregationist George C. Wallace.
Once again, the remaining nine races are all about spin and super delegates. Perhaps if Obama won nine straight, Clinton might fold. But why should she? And does anyone expect Obama to call it quits if Clinton wins the next nine? No, of course not. This race is not over until it’s over. And that won’t happen until all the super delegates weigh in with their choices because neither Obama nor Clinton will have a majority of the delegates when the last pledged delegates are elected on June 3.
Okay, folks, that’s my take on the PA presidential primary. I would welcome your views. Next week, I will review the other races in Pennsylvania, including the congressional battles where both sides dream of pick-ups. In the meantime, Pennsylvanians will enjoy a politics-free week (sort of) as it finally feels like spring! Is that a lawn mower I hear calling?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
