Pennsylvania Recap
And so, another long night of politicking draws, sadly, to a close. The "conventional wisdom" seemed to be that a larger than 10 point victory really said something about Clinton, while Obama cutting the margin to somewhere substantially less than 10 meant he was even more better than Clinton than we already thought. And what do you know? Right on the money with a nine point spread. So, what are we left with? Obama still leading by almost any imaginable statistic (she seems to have picked up about 14 delegates), Clinton feeling like she has enough momentum to not feel at all obliged to call it quits. So basically, exactly where we were yesterday. Great.
Where do we go from here? Obama is still going to be haunted by his "bitter" comment. People aren't religious because they're bitter, and its especially noxious to hear that coming from a man who claims to be religious himself but who suddenly became that way when he started community organizing in a religious Chicago neighborhood. Whatever the polls say about its effect on the race, it speaks to whatever issues he has winning the vote of working class white men. You might recall this problem when it was called Reagan Democrats. It shouldn't be taken lightly.
On the other hand, that is a potentially fixable problem, and Obama is clearly adept at making strides at convincing voters to support him. Clinton's performance in the last few weeks has been pretty deplorable, to the point that the New York Times basically unendorsed her. If she was anyone else in the whole world, except for maybe Al Gore, she would have been forced to drop out by now. She should take a long look in the mirror and think about whether she really deserves that credit.
See you next week in Indiana and North Carolina. For more of exactly the same shit as this week, and last week.
Posted on April 23, 2008 by - Morgan Clendaniel
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On bitterness...
Amen to the general sentiment---I had to cheer myself up last night by revisiting pictures from our <href> Women for Obama Rally earlier this year in NYC. I differ with you slightly on one point, however: While I think Obama should have been more wary of the potentially combustive nature of his remarks, the way the press tells the story makes it sound far worse than what he actually said. Here is NBC, for instance: "The Illinois senator has spent two days on the defensive after comments he made at a San Francisco fundraiser suggesting working class people are bitter about their economic circumstances and 'cling to guns and religion' as a result." Now here is Eleanor Clift of Newsweek putting the quote in context: "He was asked at this fund-raiser--it happened to be in San Francisco--whether he could win white working-class voters because he was black. And he basically said that these voters have a lot of other grievances much more salient than race, and he pointed out that their jobs are gone. He used the word 'bitter.' He used the words 'angry' and 'frustrated' also. And he said the politicians have failed them repeatedly and that they then are vulnerable to wedge issues. And the wedge issues, we're all familiar with -- God, gays and guns. That's what he was saying. And Hillary Clinton knows perfectly well that's what he was saying. It's been the subject of Democratic study for years, going back to the Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Michigan. It was the focus of a best-selling book, 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' It's hardly a new line of argument." I tend to agree with Clift---Barack should have chosen his words more carefully (and in fact he said so himself later), but there's nothing terribly subversive here. The sad part? A man who has spent more time contemplating his own spiritual path than most people do in a lifetime is now faced with scathing criticisms that he doesn't understand people who come to religion.
Posted on April 23, 2008 — by Maywa Montenegro
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