What Clinton's Margin Of Victory Means

0. Nothing in so far as the identity of the probable nominee is concerned.

1. For Clinton, a chance to win the popular vote without counting Michigan (and with counting/estimating the tallies from the caucus states.)

2. A round of stories about Obama's problems in what Howard Fineman calls the "spine of Appalachia," or what Jim Webb would call, the "spine of Jacksonian America."

3. A redoubled effort by the RNC to identify those Clinton voters in WV, PA, KY and IN who say they won't vote for Obama

4. Questions among his supporters why Obama doesn't appear to be taking his problems among white working class votes seriously. Though the white working class demographic is declining relative to other demographics, white working class whites are, as Reihan Salam notes, "overrepresented in all of the so-called battleground states."

5. A little bit more leverage for Clinton on May 31 when the DNC's rules and bylaws committee votes.

Comments

I live in Ohio. Please don't compare us to Kentucky or West Virginia. Obama is up 8 in Pennsylvania against McCain and down 1 in Ohio. Florida will also be competitive.

Obama will not win Kentucky and West Virginia. They aren't battleground states this fall.

Posted by Brian | May 20, 2008 9:44 PM

The issue is that if Obama had tried in KY and WV and cut the margin to 10-20 points, the media would have skewered him more for trying and losing. He predicted losing these months ago.
They made the strategic calculation not to try in states that they thought they would lose. Hillary did the same thing in SC and other states.

Things will be different in the general. Once the primaries are over, Obama will have the time to make his case to voters during a protracted period of time in which there will be no exit polls to discuss over and over.

The low info voters have yet to hear anything bad about John McCain. Obama has faced several feeding fenzies already; McCain has had none.

The fact that Obama is competitve or ahead when he has been under constant attack is amazing.

Nobody in the media is talking about it,but SUSA has Obama well ahead of McCain in PA. I think Obama will easily win PA and OH too on economic factors alone. KY and WV will go McCain...but that's ok.

Posted by RKA | May 20, 2008 9:47 PM

First point was correct it means "NOTHING". BTW as a democrat I would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary....someone shouls ask how she plans to win the Ge with only 8% AA vote. No democrat has EVER done that either. Democrats never win the majority of the white vote...it is the Aa vote that puts them over when they win and she would never get that

Posted by Joyce | May 20, 2008 9:51 PM

OR is a white working class state, and Obama is poised to win it handily.

Posted by Jay Andrew Allen | May 20, 2008 9:52 PM

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=89a1b144-de19-4715-bb6f-97b2e817a23b

North Carolina

Obama 43
McCain 51

Clinton 49
McCain 43

(and Clinton is winning with a signficant number of african americans indicating they would support someone else in the ACTUAL POLL)

TROUBLING to say the least for St. Barack

Posted by obamamessiah | May 20, 2008 9:53 PM

7. More kids will be encouraged to sell their toys to fund Clinton's vanity (and Chelsea's children's multimillion dollar inheritance,if any of that money goes to repay the loans)

Posted by marc in asia | May 20, 2008 9:55 PM

This is some serious racism being played out in Appalachia and beyond. And Hillary complains of "sexism" and misogyny? The fact that 20-odd percent of Kentucky DEMOCRATS voted against Obama because of his skin color (in 2008...) is mind boggling. Is this too little, too late for the Dems in finding out that the U.S. isn't ready for a black president?

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | May 20, 2008 9:56 PM

20% of all voters claimed race was important and 90% of them voted for Clinton. Of the nearly 625 000 voters, doesn't that mean around 95000 admitted to voting against Obama because of race?

Posted by Vik N | May 20, 2008 10:00 PM

Kentucky isn't ready.....but is this country going to follow Kentucky's lead? No.

Posted by Brian | May 20, 2008 10:02 PM

Marc wrote (and then deleted):
6. Racism. By my estimate, at least 50,000 Kentucky Democrats ADMITTED to the exit pollsters that Obama's race played a role in their decision.

You might want to recheck your math, no? If 690,000 Democrats voted and 21% of them said that race was a factor, that's a lot more than 50,000 voters.

4. Questions among his supporters why Obama doesn't appear to be taking his problems among white working class votes seriously.

I think he is. But if you look at the math, it means that roughly 29% of Clinton's votes were based on race -- when she won the state by 35%. Even if he had campaigned himself to death, that's a pretty big margin of voters that he wouldn't have been able to win over no matter what, in this particular state. Meanwhile, he was working pretty hard to address his problems with working class white voters in the other state that voted today (Oregon), wasn't he?

Posted by jbryan | May 20, 2008 10:04 PM

A redoubled effort by the RNC to identify those Clinton voters in WV, PA, KY and IN who say they won't vote for Obama
Actually they don't need to identify these folks at all. They're the ones with Forget Hell tattooed on their forehead.

Posted by bjd | May 20, 2008 10:05 PM

according to that poll.. NC ain't ready either

Posted by blackmannot4obama | May 20, 2008 10:05 PM

I think head to heads of clinton vs mcCain and Obama vs McCain at this point underestimate Obama's fall strength and overestimates Clinton's.

Why?

1) Obama has gone through the roughest period of the campaign in the last few months with Wright, etc. Now that Wright is out of the picture, the memory of him will fade over time and it will be old news when the 527's try to use it.

2) HIllary has been getting a pass on all the dirt they'd use against her in the general.

3) HIllary's voters are being less generous to Obama than vice versa because they have lost. These numbers will get better when the party unifies. Even McCain's people admit that there will be a unity bounce for Obama.

4) John McCain has yet to get any scrutiny that filters down to the low-info voter. That will change.

5) John McCain will have turnout problems while Obama will have a huge financial and organizational advantage.

In think Obama can take NC in the fall.

Posted by RKA | May 20, 2008 10:18 PM

NC is a battleground state?

Posted by justinb | May 20, 2008 10:34 PM

Why are people considered racist just because they vote against Obama? They aren't required to support him.

However, if racism is the reason why some voters aren't voting for him, turnabout is fair play. He wouldn't be the putative nominee were it not for blacks voting on the basis of race.

Posted by Cal | May 21, 2008 12:32 AM

Cal, I think your comment can be read as asinine (I know that isn't how you intended it, so please don't mistake my criticism of it as criticism toward you.).

Clinton began with a large majority support among African Americans. It is hard to remember back to those salad days of 2007, but people wondered if Obama could win the black vote at all. Take a look at this link:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/17/poll.blacks.democrats/index.html

The real moment of change came in the racially charged heated moments of this primary, e.g., Bill's statement about even Jesse Jackson winning SC, Ferrarro's weird statements about how Obama was only doing so well because the party elders wanted a black nominee (a very weird statement since Hillary was leading among supers at that time, and given her own status as a party elder), the pivot about how Clinton, but not Obama, could win white votes; the endless peddling of Wright; the non-denial denial that Obama was a Muslim; etc.

Taken together, African Americans got the message loud and clear. It may have been a smart political move, but it also created the circumstances in which a racist democrat knew exactly who to vote for. It is very sad, actually. The Clinton's long and admirable record on race has been damaged, perhaps permanently, during this primary.

Posted by szr | May 21, 2008 9:45 AM

Marc: Why don't any of the pundits mention that Obama actually did well with "white working-class voters" in Oregon? Why can't pundits distinguish between the votes cast in WV and KY, which are clearly racially-motivated (voters voting to block a black man rather than because of love for Hillary), and votes cast by white working-class voters in states like Oregon? Also, why doesn't anyone ask why Hillary Clinton lost so badly in Oregon and what that says about her chances in the general election? Just wonderin' ....

Posted by Jason Carter | May 21, 2008 9:58 AM

The real moment of change came in the racially charged heated moments of this primary,

Oh, nonsense. Michigan and Nevada had primaries before Clinton made any comments about South Carolina, and Obama won over 80% of the black vote in Nevada. Uncommitted won 70% of the black vote in Michigan.

Blacks have been supporting Obama with huge margins since the first vote. It has nothing to do with anything the Clintons did, much less Gerry Ferraro. They are mad at Clinton now because she is in the way of their messiah.

And spare me the history lesson. Go teach eggsucking to grandmas.

Posted by Cal | May 22, 2008 2:10 AM