Tom Scudder ([info]tomscud) wrote,
@ 2008-06-05 09:05:00
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Counterprogramming
Mark Schmitt on Hillary's late-campaign rhetoric & its appeal to working and middle-class voters:

While Clinton was winning primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, much attention was paid to the reasons that white working-class voters in those states were not voting for Sen. Obama. Yet in every one of those primaries, turnout was two to three times higher than in previous presidential primaries, and in several cases exceeded the total votes for the Democrat in the general election of 2004. Voters don't turn out in such numbers to vote against someone. Support for Sen. Clinton among these voters, male and female, old and not-so-old, was overwhelmingly positive and affirmative. Even those of us who didn't find her candidacy inspiring have to acknowledge that Clinton gave her voters hope, every bit as much as Obama inspired younger voters, African Americans, and voters in other regions.

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[info]mmcirvin
2008-06-05 02:06 pm UTC (link)
That was a good article.

I agree with the people who said that Clinton ran what was, by the standards of politics of the past 30 years, a strong campaign. In any other year she'd have been heavily favored. She just got steamrollered by something really special and anomalous.

I'm currently spooked by all the polls pegging her as more electable than Obama. But I do think that at least part of this is people steeling themselves to vote for McCain who and justify it by naming the losing Democrat as the reasonable one. They were "Obamacans" when Obama was behind in the primary race; now that Obama's winning, he's revealed as a crazy super-liberal.

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[info]tomscud
2008-06-05 02:11 pm UTC (link)
There's that, and also the fact that Hillary supporters are getting used to the idea that Obama is the guy they'll have to vote for; it's easy for me as an Obama supporter to say "of course I'd have voted for Hillary if she'd won", since there's no chance it's going to happen.

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[info]mmcirvin
2008-06-05 02:25 pm UTC (link)
Well, I did think up through and after Super Tuesday that she'd pull off the nomination somehow, so I did give serious consideration to the scenario. Of course I'd have voted for her, but it would have been with more reservations.

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[info]mmcirvin
2008-06-06 01:54 am UTC (link)
...I also remind myself that the head-to-head poll map as it currently stands reflects the Obama organization's primary campaign behavior tailored for primaries and caucuses with proportional representation, which does not have the same geographic emphasis as an optimal campaign for the general election. If they're smart about the map and the rules, they'll change their behavior going forward, and I have every reason to believe that they are very, very, very smart. Though I do hope they run enough of a 50-state campaign to affect the down-ticket races.

Also, god damn are they good at fundraising. It feels Alice-in-Wonderland weird to be coming into a general election campaign with a gigantic financial advantage over the Republicans.

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