5/21/08

Two  points about the Democratic primary. Full disclosure:  I  switched from Dodd to Obama, and have voted 4 times for the Clintons, though I am a registered Republican.  I think, with the possible exception of tort reform, and aid to Africa,  the Bush administration has been wrong on everything.

1) For the last several months the Democratic party should have had one overriding concern: given the fervor of  each candidate’s  support base, blacks in the case of Obama, white women, especially over 50,   in the case of  Clinton,  and that is, how to mollify the supporters of the loser...if Clinton, wins how to pacify the black voters and get them to transfer support  to another nominee  with minimum loss...if Obama wins, how to placate Clinton’s equivalent cadre etc. This is inherent in a campaign that has aroused such intensity and enthusiasm.  I would think, in fact,  for anyone  those thinks the change of regime is essential,   this would be the issue: the real and  deeply disturbing shadow of schism.  Assurances that everyone will pull  together  after, are certainly baseless, given the unique nature of this campaign, and probably disingenuous.

It seems obvious the best chance, and maybe the only real chance,  to achieve this is to convince  the disappointed supporters that the decision process was fair and open. If the black community, for instance can see that their guy lost fair and square,  though they will be sorely disappointed, they will be less inclined to rage (not disinclined but less inclined) and  long term alienation.  But it must be abundantly clear that they have not been ‘cheated.’  Not less for Hillary’s support group. Otherwise  we are opening Pandora’s box. Bitterness leads to action which breeds more bitterness.

I do not see how anyone of whatever persuasion and with even reasonable intelligence can seriously question the above.  Given the intensity of competition, it is of utmost importance  to make process credible, and to avoid needless offense.

Given this,  what Hillary is now doing is absolutely lethal. She has switched her fire from Obama and focused it on  the process.  The pity here is that the damage she might do attacking  Obama is more easily mended   than the harm she does in undermining her  group’s faith in the  process itself.  In attacking the process, she is potentially costing the Democrats an amount that is impossible to estimate.  (How to you get back people who have lost faith in the process?)  Its ruinous potential is difficult to overstate. 
Frankly I cannot  see how Hillary  does not know this.  In fact I think both understanding of it  and deriving gratification from it (imagine Obama losing in November and Hillary reading that he only got 1% of the white women over  50 vote)  is what I now consider to be the  essential Hillary, the Hillary  I have come to know in this campaign. It is one more case of her perfect willingness to poison the village well.

2) I don’t think that asking people whether race affected their votes  on exit polls provides an accurate picture of how they really react to race.  If 2 out of 10 people admit in an exit poll, that race ‘was a consideration’  we may intuit that those who used race as a disqualifier is some higher , but how much higher?

Actually I think there may be a good proxy.  Another question on exit interviews was whether the respondent thought Obama shared Wright’s views, and of course that refers to credos a la UTube. As far as I can see it would be difficult to find  anyone more quintessentially opposed to Wright’s paranoid and vengeful outlook than Obama. If you wanted, starting from scratch, to make up someone who was the antithesis of Wright, you would come pretty close to Obama. (An irony I admit.) But an amazing 53%  of Kentucky respondents, with no evidence whatever,  thought the two shared views, the sound bite cuews.  to an appreciable extent.  For argument’s sake, and though the cases are not exactly comparable, McCain  not being parishioner but there being  no support issue between Obama and Wright,  you could ask respondents how many thought McCain shares Hagee’s views to an appreciable extent. You could take the McCain-Hagee figure as a  proxy for native  propensity to assigning guilt by association,  subtract that from the Obama-Wright score, and get a the better measure of   degree to which “race was a factor.”

The Obama-Wright score was 53%. Adjusting for the fact that fewer have heard of Hagee, i.e. supposing they did know, the McCain-Hagee score might be 15%.  (Pure guess.) If that is correct it suggests that 40% of Appalachia won’t vote for O’Bama because of race. Now that is more like the America of  my boyhood.  (I am 77 and raised in upscale New Jersey)   Let’s now suppose 3% of blacks  are positively motivated by  Obama’s blackness, given the low black population in Kentucky.  So out of 100 voters, Hillary starts with 40 predetermined voters and Obama starts with 3.  Obama would have to win about  82.5% of the open voters (100-40-3) to break even.

If this analysis is remotely correct, Onama has to work a near miracle to convert Appalachia and Reverend Wright has provided some value after all.