Dear television bobbleheads: The Dems are not going to win Mississippi in the general election. It doesn’t matter whether the nominee is Clinton or Obama. Ain’t gonna happen. And Obama did worse among white voters in Mississippi than in other states because of racism. Mississippi has no cosmopolitan areas like Atlanta to lift it from its sodden backwardness. You should have expected that, dear bobbleheads. Stop acting surprised.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
The exit polls had over 90% of the black vote going to Barack Obama and only 25% of the white vote. Now that is a racially divided state.
Obama’s not going to carry any of the red states in November and few of the the blue. Sad. It’s not worth it.
Ken — I think Obama should do fine outside the deep south and a few of the border states, especially against John McCain. Clinton ought to be able to beat McCain also, but I think the election would be closer.
Thanks for the realism, Maha. It’s pretty funny that these network political “analysts” can’t reach the simple conclusion you did from a general knowledge of recent history and election results. Pathetic. I am psyched, though, since I live in northern Virginia, and I think the Dems might actually have an outside shot here in November.
“Stop acting surprised.”
I only watched a brief portion of the coverage. I saw the acting, but I didn’t think it was all that convincing. No matter what they were saying, it seemed like every one of the commentators was thinking, “makes perfect sense — Mississippi is still home to this country’s largest concentration of unapologetic racists.” Of course, living as we do in the age of ginned-up indignation, feinting couches, demands for denunciations and apologies, suspensions, e-mail campaigns and boycotts, none of the TV commentators could risk saying what they were thinking.
Chuck Todd (on MSNBC) did make the point that Mississippi would most likely not be competitive in the general but, in his opinion, Obama would do better than Hillary (he had crunched some numbers based on various likely voter turnout models).
These media people are driving me crazy…First, that King guy on CNN – doing an analysis of the remaining states’ primaries and he gives North Carolina and Indiana to Clinton??? Then, Tucker…”I want someone to explain to me why Obama does better in the caucuses”….That was just a few minutes of viewing time yesterday (all I can take). Good gawd, can’t they spend a few minutes reading up on things before they go on national tv for all the world to see? Why am I, a stay-at-home mom in mid Ohio, more informed than these people? Thanks for letting me vent…
Somebody needs to do the analysis based on how states fell in the last election. Some states, as Maha put it, will vote for a potted plant if the veggie is the Democratic nominee. Likewise some Republican states. So in the states where the margin was slim in ’04, how many went Obama, how many went Clinton? Do the study based on the Electoral Vote count as well. That’s purely cynical, ignores the qualifications of the candidates… examines the issue objectively on electability alone.
Doug — what you should look at are the number of people voting in Dem and Republican primaries in the same states recently. Most of the time the second- and third-place Dem finisher got more votes than the Republican winner. And this happened in some states that went for Bush in 2004. I don’t think the margins in 2004 are going to tell us much about how people are going to vote in 2008.
Barbara –
Some states are known. New York will go Democratic; Texas is a gimme for McCain. But look at the swing states that went either way in ’04 by less than 5 points. My question is – which states were they? In the primary, who won them (Clinton or Obama)?
The Clinton argument is that she is more electable because she won big states. I am trying to examine the foundation – or lack of foundation by looking at the ‘close’ states. A bunch of the electoral map is already carved in stone; an examination of the 2 Democrats outside the delegate count, state count or popular vote, would be to look at how they did against each other in the states that were the squeakers of ’04.
With your permission, I will submit the list of states, the point spread in ’04, the number of elecotaral votes and which Dem won in the primary (if the primary has been run).
To respond to your reply – the only thing that will energize an apathetic GOP is fear of who McCain is running AGAINST. If the GOP shows up in Nov, it will be to vote against the Dem, not FOR McCain. I expect the most negative campaign we have ever seen, and swiftboat tactics so nasty even McCain will denounce them. But I would not bet the apathetic voting from the GOP will be the case in the general election.
Doug — I don’t have time to check this, but without looking I’d guess that Obama has won more states that went narrowly for Bush in ’04 than Clinton has.
If you think about it, most of the really “big” states are set in stone. They’re either safely red or safely blue. Has Clinton won any reasonably bigh states that are likely to shift from red to blue? Ohio, maybe. Any others? Virginia could flip to our side, and Obama won that.
Obama won Texas, btw.
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, ,,,
Ken: Pennsylvania hasn’t voted yet. And if you think Florida’s was an honest primary result, I hope you enjoyed the Kool-Aid.
Ah no; those are states that dems must win in Nov. Any dem can carry NY, CA, IL, MA, …
The argument that only big states count is Hillaryism at its most desperate. Thanks to our bizarre electoral college system (originally designed to perpetuate slavery), smaller states have disproportionate clout. And they are mostly blue anyway. The fact that Obama wins small states is a huge plus for him.