Steve and Cokie Roberts make an argument for Hillary Clinton:
Democrats seem intent on nominating Barack Obama, in the face of mounting evidence that Hillary Clinton would be the stronger candidate against John McCain in November. And they only have themselves to blame.
What ‘mounting evidence’, you ask? Let’s look at Obama vs. Clinton by region.
They are both polling ahead of McCain in every state in New England except New Hampshire. Obama is running stronger in Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont, while Clinton is running stronger in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In New Hampshire they are effectively tied. There’s no evidence that Clinton is stronger in New England. How about the Mid-Atlantic (Acela) states?
Obama is polling stronger in New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. Clinton is stronger in her home state of New York. Obama is stronger in the Mid-Atlantic. So, how about the South Coast? Obama is stronger in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Clinton is stronger in Florida. Georgia is effectively tied. Obama puts Virginia and North Carolina in play, while Clinton does not. Clinton is running much stronger in Florida. It’s a wash.
So, how does Clinton do in the Rust Belt? She polls better in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but loses Michigan to McCain. Obama polls better in Indiana and beats McCain in Michigan. Again, it’s a wash, although Clinton’s advantage in Ohio is important, her weakness in Michigan is a major concern. So, what about the Northcentral region?
Obama polls better in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. In fact, Clinton loses (badly) to McCain in Iowa and Wisconsin. Obama is clearly stronger in his home region. How about in the Prairie region?
Obama polls stronger in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. It’s not even a contest. He also polls better in the Big Sky and Pacific states, including California.
So, where is Hillary stronger? Not in the Southwest, where Obama polls stronger in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Hillary’s strength comes in one area: the Highlands, or Greater Appalachia. She runs stronger in Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia. That’s it. That’s your mounting evidence. Looking at current polling, here are the states that Clinton is winning and Obama is losing: Arkansas (6), West Virginia (5), Florida (27), and Ohio (20) totaling 58 electoral college votes. Here are the states that Obama is winning and Clinton is losing: Michigan (17), Wisconsin (10), Iowa (7), Colorado (9), and Nevada (5), totaling 48 electoral votes.
These results project to an Electoral college win for Obama of 274-264, and for Clinton 284-254. However, Obama makes many more states competitive and is currently winning all Kerry states except New Hampshire. The Roberts counter:
Obama can make some strong counterarguments. While Clinton might be the better candidate in traditional swing battlegrounds, he can “expand the map” by bringing in new voters, mainly young people and blacks, and making the Democrats competitive in red states like Colorado and Virginia.
The election map, however, has been starkly static during the Bush years, with only three small states switching sides between 2000 and 2004. Winning Ohio with Clinton is a safer bet for Democrats than capturing Colorado and Virginia with Obama.
Every political scientist in the country is predicting a realigning election, which means the map does not remain static. In the latest Rasmussen poll, Obama is beating McCain by 3 points in Colorado, while Clinton is losing by 14 points. In Virginia, Obama is down by 3 points, while Clinton is down by six. In South Dakota, Obama is down by 4 points, while Clinton is down by twelve. In North Dakota, Obama is down by 6, and Clinton is down by twenty. In Montana, Obama is down by 5, and Clinton is down by eighteen.
Moreover, the latest polls out of Florida and Ohio have Obama down by a single point.
So why don’t Democratic leaders and superdelegates face these facts and shift to Clinton? One reason is race. It’s true, as Obama says, that being black in America has hardly been a political asset, given the fact that he’s the only African-American in the U.S. Senate.
But at this time, in this party, being black is an enormous asset. Given America’s long, torturous path toward racial justice, many Democrats simply cannot imagine denying the nomination to the first serious African-American candidate for president.
From a moral perspective, that’s a noble judgment. From a political perspective, it could cost Democrats the White House.
I think nominating the loser of the popular vote, the most contests, and the pledged delegate count would carry much higher risks than simply nominating the winner of those metrics.
I’m so tired of the “Hillary Fantasy”, “the race is neck-and-neck”, etc. That version is supported only in the fevered imaginations of die-hard Clinton supporters.
The facts tell another story, and I prefer living and operating in a fact-based world.
If she can’t outrun a fellow Democrat, how in the hell is she supposed to be a shoo-in for a win over a Republican? It’s just nuts.
EXACTLY. If she’s so electible, why aren’t we electing her?
And unmentioned above is the fact that the establishment is pushing Hillary HARD. If the establishment wants her so badly, that should be definite cause for concern with progressives!
Oh lordy BooMan, the primary season must be getting the best of you. Why untidy your beautiful mind with old Ms. Twisty Cokie Roberts. She pollutes.
I thought with the exception of NPR she had been pastured. Long overdue then.
is offensively racist because those folks like Jesse Jackson were extremely serious about running.
Race? RACE???? Great screaming FSM, Cokie Roberts is supposed to be a senior political analyst. How can she look at the priarmies and not see that Obama has registered hordes of new voters, raked in a ton of cash, has a message that is consistent with Democratic values, and has proven himself electable in election after election after election? The Democrats would nominate a Martian if he’d done all that.
You have to see Cokie sit down in an hour-long discussion without talking points. Her appearance on Bill Maher’s show was revealing. She’s really just not that bright.
They are a nasty, noxious couple, that’s for damn sure. They’ve been at this particular brand of bullshit since the affirmative action debates in the 90s.
And her ridiculous comment:
is just so appallingly stupid and astonishingly asinine as to be painful.
No, dearie, here’s your life:
She and my mother are the same age. She can’t hold half a candle to her in terms of “hard work.”
She can take her “analysis” and stuff it at her next cocktail party. But she should remember to have lots of Black serving staff there, so she can feel more at comfortable.
Hillary couldn’t run a nomination campaign. She lost fair and square. McCain will, according to outgoing Republican Rep. Davis of VA, lose by 20% if he’s painted as a 3rd Bush term. Obama’s doing just that and with Bush’s help. This should be fun. Sorry about that Hillary. You shouldn’t have listened to Mark Penn and to Bill. Wrong year to be an incumbent. Mandy Grundwald was right. That’s what listening to that kind of man gets you.
These people have all clearly either never taken, or took and failed, logic courses. And, really, facts are silly things that can be ignored in the interest of preserving narratives that idiotic reporters need to keep their world together. It’s not even worth getting worked up over, Boo.
I think the thing a lot of these polls are missing is that their results are based on the (flawed) assumption that Hillary can somehow capture the nomination in a method that would be perceived as legitimate. If her pipe-dream nomination is obtained by a method seen as illegitimate – coup by superdelegate, for example – I think her poll numbers will drop substantially.
Iran, IRAN, I-R-A-N. Don’t think so? Think again.
IRAN? Who said anything about Iran ? Nobody’s talking about Iran! Nothing on about Iran. Why would they be talking about Iran? I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you!
When did Pennsylvania secede from the Middle Atlantic states?
Just a point here:
John and Cokie Roberts both worked for Gloria Steinem’s CIA propaganda mill during the Helsinki International Youth Festival in the early sixties. It’s even mentioned with a chuckle in their joint autobiography.
John, Cokie and Gloria. Those are three “former” CIA propagandists in Clinton’s corner this go-round. “Retired” CIA “counterterrorist” specialist Larry Johnson is running a pretty vile pro-Hillary (really, a vile anti-Obama) website. He came out of right field in the last year to give some non-essential criticism of his ol’ Agency and then became yet another CIA propagandist for Clinton.
That’s four.
There are other loud Hillary supporters that strike me as at least suspicious. Taylor Marsh’s rise from the LA sex industry to political pundit, her bona fides all paid for, makes her another invention of someone or something. The Contours sang, “First I look at the purse.” Deep Throat said, “Follow the money.” Marsh is an invention and she’s a pro-Hillary invention.
At this point I’m even a tad bit suspicious of Valerie Plame and her Republican hubby. If you look at information developed independently by Sibel Edmunds and Larisa Alexandrovna, the cover for Brewster-Jennings was blown two years prior to all that stuff that became candy for us lefty bloggers. If Brewster-Jennings had been blown two years earlier wouldn’t the folks at B-J notice something was up? Wouldn’t Plame know?
I’m not saying that Clinton is the CIA’s candidate, or even that the CIA is anything more that another tool of the establishment which tries to keep control of the game. What I do say is that this is a fair-sized collection of keys of the mighty Wurlitzer and as such it is noteworthy.
Sure, it’s bullshit they’re all generating, but it’s a certain brand of bullshit.
Is there any site other than the Jewish World News willing to carry this desperate spin from the Hillary camp? Cokie and spouse are just regurgitating the fear-mongering talking points that the Hillary camp has been using to try to shore up their support in the Jewish community (even if they risk undermining Obama’s support among Jewish swing voters in the general). In the process, the Roberts have reworked Ferraro’s racist argument:
Lord have mercy, these cretins! As if Virginia has never elected a Black man! And that’s when the demographics were much less favorable. Sheesh.
They have issues. Period.
Stunning! This is the type of BS that repulsed me from the Clinton campaign. It’s more in the style of black propaganda than argument.
Here’s a few sections, of many, that I have problems with:
Although it’s certainly hard to disagree with the “stampede” that resulted in the sanctioning of Florida and Michigan (and S.C., N.H. and Wyoming for the Republicans, besides FL and MI), it was the Clinton campaign that (nearly) benefited from this front-loading of nominating contests. The argument should be turned on its head — why did Clinton campaign fail so miserably given their enormous advantages?
And a subtle point that might be missed here is that the Clinton campaign always relied on mass market appeal, as opposed to the retail, grass roots politics practiced by the Obama campaign. Although much has been made of the differences in class appeal, a better indicator is the educational divide between Clinton and Obama supporters, since it reveals a difference in the modality of persuasion technique favored by each campaign. The “Clinton brand,” as it’s been called, is an appropriate expression since the campaign’s emphasis was always marketing Clinton in much the same way a manufacturer might market dish soap.
The “unblemished, untested and unscrutinized” crap is just Clinton smear tactics. I’ll acknowledge that Obama has only been in the U.S. Senate for a short time so some of this is fair game, but it’s mostly a Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt (FUD) strategy. The purpose of a FUD strategy is not to persuade — per se — but to create confusion and paralysis. The end result is that the individual seeks safe harbor, which in this case is the well known Clinton brand.
Amazingly, they keep peddling this old brand, and as fewer and fewer are buying their brand, their niche marketing to her remaining loyal demographics gets more and more extreme in its claims.
Yes, I and others observed that at the time of the Texas prima-caucus. They seemed to narrowing their base rather than trying to expand it. I think the Clinton’s escalation strategy was a reaction to the decreasing returns from this narrowly focused appeal.
Moreover, the appeal to “working” class people (who doesn’t work?) is hard to take at face value. I’m always mindful of a paper:
http://firedoglake.com/2006/12/17/fdl-book-salon-whistling-past-dixie/
[originally in The unspoken truth about the GOP; Southern Discomfort – Rick Perlstein]