From BeyondChron [HERE]
by Paul Hogarth‚ Apr. 28‚ 2008 The media still won’t admit that Barack Obama has already won the nomination. Hillary Clinton’s single-digit victory in the Keystone State was not enough to change the math, but now that she has “momentum” the race has moved to North Carolina and Indiana on May 6th. Obama is well ahead in North Carolina, and the media should define his victory in the largest state left as resolving the contest. Instead, pundits are focusing on the smaller Hoosier State, arguing that Obama must win to “prove” he can secure the votes of white working-class voters. But the media is paying no attention to Clinton's inability to win African-American or “creative class” voters, and her huge deficit to Obama in every Southern state but Florida. Nor do they acknowledge that Obama did better among the white working class in Pennsylvania than in Ohio, and that his weakness is limited to white working-class Catholics. Obama does not have to win Indiana to “prove” anything, as his expected victory in North Carolina will cement his lead in both delegates and the popular vote.
After Clinton won Pennsylvania by nine points (early returns had her ahead by 10 points, leading to false claims that it was a “double-digit victory”), her campaign has clung to the myth that the tide is turning. But that’s simply not true. “It’s like a football or basketball game,” said talk show host Cenk Uygur. “If you’re already down 45-10 in the fourth quarter, and you get momentum by scoring ten more points, it doesn’t matter because you’re still going to lose. Hillary Clinton is high-stepping after scoring a touchdown – when she’s still down by 28 points.”
And the rest of the calendar won’t be enough for her to catch up. The largest state left is North Carolina (115 pledged delegates.) With its large African-American population and high number of “creative class” workers in the Research Triangle, Obama should win by a good margin. Even after Pennsylvania, Obama is still ahead by 153 pledged delegates – and more super-delegate endorsements have helped him narrow the gap with Clinton in that category, making it even less likely that they will overturn the will of the people.
But because Clinton won’t give up her negative campaign, the media has to keep the race going. So they’ve settled on Indiana, which like North Carolina has a primary on May 6th – and where polls show the race in a statistical dead heat. Obama, they claim, is “weak” among white working-class voters. If he loses Indiana (just like he lost Ohio and Pennsylvania), it will somehow reveal a fatal flaw in his campaign with Rustbelt voters that he’ll need to win over in the general election.
Never do they acknowledge the in-roads that Obama made with Clinton’s base (old, white working-class voters) between the Ohio primary on March 4th and Pennsylvania on April 22nd. He gained 10 points among voters over sixty, five points with white males, four points among voters making less than $50,000 a year, and held steady among those without a college degree. Consider that during that time period, Obama got trashed over his association with Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers – and was called an elitist for saying that “bitter” working-class voters “cling to guns and religion.”
During the last six weeks, we were repeatedly told that Obama was “unelectable” because these Joe Six-Pack types would defect to John McCain. After a grueling period of attack after negative attack, the Clinton campaign now wants us to believe that he can’t withstand the right-wing noise machine – even though evidence of a blowback from the Pennsylvania results is minimal.
But Obama doesn’t really have a “white working-class” problem. The main obstacle his campaign now faces is that working-class Catholics are reluctant to vote for an African-American candidate. This explains why Obama did so poorly in Massachusetts despite a high-profile endorsement from Ted Kennedy, lost Rhode Island by a wide-margin – and why Pennsylvania’s large Catholic population meant that he faced enormous odds in the Keystone State.
Even in Wisconsin, where Obama won by 17 points and cut into Clinton’s base so far that it looked like her coalition was crumbling, he only tied her among Catholic voters.
And here’s the good news for Obama about Indiana: Protestants outnumber Catholics there by a 2:1 margin, and the state has a sizable chunk of evangelicals. Obama lost Protestants in Ohio, but he won them in Pennsylvania – which indicates that this bloc of working-class voters can be swayed to support his campaign. Evangelical Christians who vote in the Democratic primary have always supported Obama over Clinton, as evidenced by CNN exit polls. After comparing religious demographics with various primary states, I am now convinced that Indiana most resembles Missouri – which Obama barely won.
Does this mean that Obama will win the Indiana primary? Of course not. The result will be close, and Clinton may still eke out a small victory – which the media will use as a basis for still keeping her in the race. But in the long run, it doesn’t really matter – because Obama has amassed such a sizable delegate lead that she simply cannot catch up. It is time for everyone to recognize that the race is truly over.
Obama will be the nominee, and it makes no sense why the race has to come down to the Indiana primary. It’s time for the media to acknowledge that.