Yes, he carried other constituencies in states like North Dakota, Alaska, and Kansas that have few upscale whites and African-Americans. But Democrats won't carry those states in November,

Please do not give us this nonsense. Obama outpolls Hillary against McCain in most polls that I have seen. This does not explain his poor showing in California yesterday against her. Something else is going on here. I have noticed that the Hillary campaign has started to denigrate Obama's strong showing in these nominally red states because these states usually vote for republicans. Are you suggesting that all of these white women, Hispanic and Asian Democrats are going to vote for McCain if Obama wins the nomination? I doubt it.

I know I am in the barest minority here, but I believe if you pay taxes, you should be allowed to vote if you are under 18. NO paying into the system without being allowed a voice.

The California results are a bit skewed by the very large number of Californians who voted early by mail. Thus Obama's success in changing minds and closing the gap in the past few weeks did not fully translate into vote totals. Nevertheless his late work in California paid off by giving him a sizable number of delegates who would otherwise have gone to Clinton if the California primary had taken place a couple of weeks ago. I will be interested in seeing the breakdowns of early voters vs. primary night voters in California.

Wow, estrellas, I hadn't considered that before. I mean, I've always looked at the whole "taxation without representation" argument of the Revolution era and wondered why DC residents don't have a voice.

But I've never applied that thought to tax payers under 18. I mean, sure, a lot of teenagers are uninformed, immature, and flat-out dumb. But then again... many adults are too.

Perhaps that last paragraph sounded sarcastic. But it wasn't meant that way. You've given me something to think about.

I think it is interesting that so many purple and even red states, had more Democratic voters at their primary/caucus than Republicans.
(Voters in thousands)
Dem Rep
NH 288 239
MO 823 589
NV 116 44
AK 275 200

Red States
Dem Rep
SC 533 532
GA 1049 958
OK 418 336
TN 617 551

The key question is will the Democrats unite around one candidate or destroy themselves before November? I also personally can't see Clinton carrying any of those red states without Obama on her ticket (and I suppose AK is lost if Clinton isn't on the the ticket).

Also, if McCain picks Huckabee as his Veep, even without Clinton on the Democratic ticket to make Republicans come out to vote against her, the Republicans might have a fun enough/likeable enough ticket to defeat Obama (assuming correctly that Clinton would refuse to be VP).

If we see a McCain/Huckabee ticket going against Obama with no Biden, Edwards or Clinton as a VP, and Clinton backers being too pissed off about the way they feel they were treated during this primary process, I think we're looking at 8 more years of Republicans obstructing progress.

A mark in Obama's favor on the electability argument is his continued strong showing among independents. According to Ari Melber, Obama won independents by 15 points in New York, and by 30 points in California. In the swing state of Missouri, he won independents by 37 points.

Maybe it's just paranoia...but,
Before the SC primary, a CNN reporter went to a diner and interviewed a Republican who said he was going to vote in the Democratic primary for Obama or Edwards in order to block the road for Hillary.

I wonder how widespread this is? Could this be an under-the-radar Rovian tactic to ensure the Republicans face Obama and not Hillary? Unless he's too busy settling in at Faux News, I just wonder why we would sit back and not get involved, so tempting it must be for him to pull out his bag of dirty tricks. And the incredibly large percentage of Democratic voters compared to Republican in some of these red states where Obama has done so well, well they are so encouraging for the Democratic party...could they be too good to be true?

Aside from that sinister possibility, maybe it could be said that the value of being a candidate who can reach out to the right will be of less value against McCain, who will be reassuring the center right on security and tax issues and not leaving many pickings there. Best know how to mobilize your base.

The usual ratcheting up during the General election of class issues will play a part there, and Obama also appears the more vulnerable there. Those white males who are supportive now will be bludgeoned repeatedly on the theme of "its the north/urban/minorities/etc who are getting all the benefits while good ol' boys are doing all the work." That was the Rove/Bush tactic and it will be Mr. X/McCain's as well, why change a winning strategy? Hillary's realism in the primaries is her strength in the General: she has a more realistic program that can go straight through to November. Obama will have to flip/flop his commendable--though more deeply redistributive--platform into something that can withstand the inevitable onslaught.

Also, note that if Obama were to pick the southern white guy, he could send Edwards on his bus starting at home in North Carolina, driving up through VA, WV, the Ohio River Valley, KY, MO and IA, and turn around and go back ... and just keep on doing that lap, except for the jetting around to log the pro-forma 50 state strategery.

The critical question on that front would not be whether Edwards could help seal the election by forcing the Republicans to play defense around the borders of their base, but what Obama would have to promise to get Edwards to agree to do it.

The basis meme in Obama's Audacity book is that while he understands that certain actions are wrong he also understands that _________ (fill in the blank -- you, Bush, Reagan voters etc.) did that wrong thing from the best of all possible motives which Obama shares.

A case in point:

William Finnegan wrote May 31, 2004, in The New Yorker:[7]
"The left in Illinois, as it happens, is monitoring Obama for similar trimming toward the political center. When his speech at the antiwar rally in 2002 was quietly removed from his campaign Web site, activists found that to be an ominous sign. It is traditional, of course, for politicians to tack to the center after winning a primary, hoping to attract swing voters. Earlier this month, when major newspapers (including the Times) and leading Democrats (including Illinois’s other senator, Dick Durbin) began calling for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a result of the Abu Ghraib prison-torture revelations, Obama criticized the Administration's Iraq policy, but added, 'I have no doubt about Donald Rumsfeld’s sincerity.' Deciding Rumsfeld's fate, he said, should be left to President Bush."

Obama also has a tendency to wishful thinking which I think was evident when he thought it would be okay if Tony Rezko did him the favor of buying the neighboring lot and keeping it from being developed and selling Obama a portion that would not otherwise have been available. He was not able to understand how other people would see this if it came out.

It is not clear whether he can subordinate his own interest to those of the party when they conflict. If women voters were to sit home, the Democratic slate would go down in flames. Nonetheless Sen. Obama was very snidely nasty to Sen. Clinton in ways that most women picked up on immediately and most men were oblivious to. (And don't tell me that Sen. Obama could have Jesse Jackson, Jr. as a co-chair but if Bill Clinton recognized the Rev. Jesse Jackson's win in South Carolina that that is racism. 80% of the black voters remain positive on Bill Clinton because they know better. All that happened there was that Sen. Obama gamed the ref by making phony charges.

Dr. Sleeper's commentary articulates my feelings about, and analysis of, the Obama Campaign.

I was writing about "upscale young whites," such as Obama's fellow Ivy alums and others whose old-school ties and networking make them more "privileged" than they may realize. The Massachusetts loss strikes me as emblematic of the problem Ken Baer was flagging, in that even a high proportion of these elite college kids, energized also partly by the endorsements by Ted Kennedy and Deval Patrick, did not do very well against the contituencies Ken cited.

But my real worry is something along the lines of what Valdron says below: Will Obama prove to be the kind of fighter (and campaign commander) who wields not an enthusiastic movement but really a disciplined one that can face down the right wing, whose attacks may begin even before he gets the nomination (because so many of them want Clinton to be the nominee). Here Obama will need a base much broader and tougher than the one he has at the moment in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and California.

In the post just above mine, M.J. has some encouraging observations about this, and I hope that the data on which constituencies are going to stay with him will reinforce them as much the delegate count seems to be doing.

Jim

You actually make a good point here about a potential danger that Obama's campaign has become exclusionary by recounting this incident of his followers ridiculing Edwards references to working class life. I know in my town that the day after Iowa, our local mayor met with the Obama volunteers and offered to help in his campaign. They rebuffed her offer. These guys were real amateurs and seemed more protective of their property than interested in broadening Obama's appeal.

My initial hostility to your piece came from the tone in the first two paragraphs and that dumb reference to the silent majority set off all sorts of alarm bells. I see now that your comments appear to be made in good faith.

This is somewhat tangential to Mr. Sleeper's point, but I'd like to note that though I fit the demographic profile Mr. Sleeper discusses, I am a Hillary supporter who would seriously considering voting for McCain if Obama wins the Democratic primary. Though I may be idiosyncratic, I think it is worth noting that for many young people, 9/11 was a formative experience. Despite the more demonstrative enthusiasm of young Obama-maniacs, I think many young people, especially those of us who were politically engaged before the Obama phenomenon, remain quietly wary of a candidate with zero foreign-policy experience and who claims to be able to transcend conflict.

Hillary won in the heartland border states (Tennesee, Arkansas) where primary votes were actually cast (as opposed to caucus). And, in Missouri, while she came extremely close but did not win over all, she DID win in all the rural parts of the state.

Obama's "red state" wins, outside the deep South, were on the other hand caucus states that have very small percentages of Democratic voters. In fact, in states Like Utah and Idaho, Democratic voters are likely to be culturally very outside the mainstream. Even if every hippie in Utah or Idaho votes for Obama, it won't make him viable in those states in November. And it does nothing to suggest, as Obama's supporters claim, that he will be able to win the votes of typical white, rural, and most especially, male, voters.

I don't want to take away from Obama's actual success on Super Tuesday -- Minnesota and Colorado, I think, were significant. But, those states do demographically provide more opportunities to a candidate whose strongest appeal is to affluent voters. And I would feel better about his wins in those states if they had been won in primaries rather than caucuses that tend to offer a broader base of participants.

Frankly, looking objectively at the voting patterns so far, if the Democrats are really serious about putting forward a candidate who can help them reach new voters in the border states and the less strongly conservative parts of the Mountain West, Hillary's wins are so far making the better argument. She only lost Missouri in the big cities, among African American voters who will be very likely to vote for any Democrat who heads the ticket in November. Obama, on the other hand, lost the rural areas that will be needed to swing Missouri safely over to the Democrats.

This is a very important discussion. I do believe that there is a growing chasm between what the young, educated and elite say in their conversations with their contemporaries--and even what they implicitly say to themselves in the voting both--and what they genuinely believe and, more primally, feel, in their hearts.

The young, upscale whites that Jim speaks of, are especially susceptible to wandering off the path to real, meaningful, American-style civic engagement and into a dead end of endless glorification of the American promise and a cerebral defense of liberal orthodoxy.

But voting like a good little liberal and mastering the political canon is nary a substitute for the interpersonal contact that those with whom we purport to want union crave, at a root level, more than any old welfare check or food stamp.

I, too, support Obama, but I don't feel unabashedly great about it like most of my Northeastern, [Ivy] educated peers. We hear so much from Clinton about the difference between "saying and doing." But, forgetting the race between the two candidates for a moment, let's ask ourselves: What are we "saying" by our votes for Obama? And are we just tricking ourselves into thinking that pulling the lever the right way or making the right talking points to our friends--AND TO OURSELVES--is ever a substitute for "doing?"

We hear a lot about rampant materialism in our consumer-society. But this type of redemptive voting is perhaps an even more sinister type of self-gratification.

This is a very important discussion. I do believe that there is a growing chasm between what the young, educated and elite say in their conversations with their contemporaries--and even what they implicitly say to themselves in the voting both--and what they genuinely believe and, more primally, feel, in their hearts.

The young, upscale whites that Jim speaks of, are especially susceptible to wandering off the path to real, meaningful, American-style civic engagement and into a dead end of endless glorification of the American promise and a cerebral defense of liberal orthodoxy.

But voting like a good little liberal and mastering the political canon is nary a substitute for the interpersonal contact that those with whom we purport to want union crave, at a root level, more than any old welfare check or food stamp.

I, too, support Obama, but I don't feel unabashedly great about it like most of my Northeastern, [Ivy] educated peers. We hear so much from Clinton about the difference between "saying and doing." But, forgetting the race between the two candidates for a moment, let's ask ourselves: What are we "saying" by our votes for Obama? And are we just tricking ourselves into thinking that pulling the lever the right way or making the right talking points to our friends--AND TO OURSELVES--is ever a substitute for "doing?"

We hear a lot about rampant materialism in our consumer-society. But this type of redemptive voting is perhaps an even more sinister type of self-gratification.

Reading the comments so far prompts a few observations I wish I'd made in the post.

First, after what this country has been through in the hands of a Republican Party and conservative movement that have been, frankly, un-American and anti-republican since 2000, almost all Obama and Clinton supporters will vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee. John Rainwater says as much above. A lot of the suspicions that each camp has about the other and its candidate will abate if Obama and Clinton can refrain from deepening those divisions gratuitously and woundingly now.

Second, it's important that Obama have three debates with Clinton -- the thoughtful, one-on-one kind that helpe us understand not only their policy differences but what each really knows and believes that backs up his or her position.

Obama's excuse that we have had enough debates and that he needs to spend more time with voters is an unnerving dodge and possibly even a demagogic one: Giving great speeches and pressing the flesh is fine and absolutely necessary, but it is wrong to believe the media/pollster line that the Democratic contest is now all about demographics, i.e., identity politics, in which people square off in hostile ethno-racial and gender camps.

Who does Obama think will be watching these debates, if not millions of voters who are still making up their minds? The debates are his chance to elevate his campaign from symbolism to substance.

Third, Obama needs to reach out convincingly to the constituencies he didn't win -- and, through them, in some cases, to independent and even Republican voters, as well. After all, white working-class Democrats have a lot in common with (and even include) the so-called Reagan Democrats, some of whom vote for Republicans in general elections even while maintaining their Democratic registrations.

Some Reagan Democrats came back in response to Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, and, yes, the fact that Bill was a Southerner who rebuked Sister Souljah (a middle-class "blacker-than-thou" poseur from Englewood, New Jersey, by the way) helped Reagan Democrats to come back, and why not? Sister Souljah deserved Clinton's rebuke as richly as Tawana Brawley and her advisors deserved what they got for debasing the civil-rights movement's legacies with psychodramatic lies.

Obama, of course, can't pull off a "Sister Souljah" rebuke like Bill Clinton's, certainly not in the primaries; but if he wins the nomination, I hope he'll make such a gesture against any racial demagogue who acts up, confident it won't make Obama any less "black," or cost him any black votes in the general election, to rebuff the "blacker-than-thou" poseurs who ruined Democrats' prospects for a decade and more.

Fourth, Obama and Clinton supporters, for all their doubts and misconceptions each others' candidates, should remember that they all do support serious efforts to restore a morally and economically defensible tax code, put a health-care floor under millions of Americans now excluded, curb the powers of a 'unitary' executive in the White House, and restore this country's magnetism and credibility in the rest of the world. That's barely a beginning, but it's needed.

I have decided to bet that Obama could best make that beginning, because he's a quick learner who is relatively unencumbered and unscarred, politically. But Raymond Angelo above is right to warn that we can't redeem this country by elevating Obama into a marketable symbol of redemption or a quick, unthreatening fix for upscale whites' moral discomfort; and Kathleen Geier was right to note, in a powerful post here a few days ago, that people should stop treating him as if he were Jesus.

Let's have those substantive debates in which the candidates give us not sound-bites and point-scoring jabs but a window onto their thinking -- precisely what Obama has always said he wants to do.