In classic MSM short-sighted fashion, many political commentators jumped on the "Why can't Obama close the deal?" story in the wake of the Pennsylvania primary.
It is often overlooked that Clinton was up by nearly 25 pts only 2-3 weeks prior to the Pennsylvania primary.
The New Republic's Jonathan Chait sees the flip-side: Why can't/couldn't Clinton close the deal?
For all of Hillary's brand recognition, institutional advantages (including the ferocious support of a former president), fund-raising head start and inherent appeal to the party's core constituency (working class white women), she finds herself on the ropes, in debt and having to go hugely negative just to stay alive. Does any sane Democrat really think that this is a viable alternative to Obama?
Chait has more on what's seriously wrong with the "Why can't Obama close it?" argument:
First, you can't automatically assume that any constituency that didn't support him in the primary also won't support him in the general election....
[The] assumption that a candidate's primary base will be the same as his general election base strikes me as seriously flawed. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, will her electoral base consist of blue-collar whites? No, it will be highly similar to Obama's, with a major reliance on minorities and white liberals. As my colleague Chris Orr has just burst into my office to point out -- don't be alarmed, he does this several times a day -- right now Obama is having a hard time winning blue collar whites on the economy in large part because he has an opponent with a virtually identical economic platform. When he has an opponent who's tethered himself to President Bush's highly unpopular economic policies, winning over blue collar whites on the economy will get a lot easier. Extrapolating from primary dynamics to general election dynamics is very dicey business.
The media has been obsessing over Obama's electability problem in a vacuum. But the Real Clear Politics poll average still has Obama performing a bit better than Clinton versus McCain -- and this is after several weeks when Obama suffered his worst two moments of the campaign, and the Republicans have been concentrating all their fire on him....
There has been obsessive media analysis of the demographic groups that support Clinton but might not vote for Obama. It's a fair point. But, given that Obama is running better than Clinton in trial heats, then the groups that would vote for Obama but not Clinton must be at least as numerous....
I agree that Obama will have a tough go of it against McCain. But the Clinton campaign has been marshaling the electability argument not as a reason for Democrats to feel glum about their inevitable nominee, but as a reason for superdelegates to flock to her. Their argument doesn't work if Clinton is even weaker than he is.
...all very valid points.
1 comment:
Look back to the Republicans. No where near as close as the Democratic race. Huckabee stayed in the race until McCain had the magic number. And there was no way for McCain to close him out before that point. This is a much closer contest and there’s no way to end it until the super-delegates declare. Why would anyone expect Clinton to exit or Obama to be able to close it out prior to this?
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