Democratic pundits and bloggers are busy touting Hillary Clinton’s complete surrender after her win in Indiana and loss in North Carolina, but of course Clinton was always going to lose North Carolina and it’s clear by now that setbacks in individual primaries are not going to end her campaign with the final showdown coming down to the superdelegates.
But while Hillary Clinton hasn’t achieved a victory, what she has done is pretty thoroughly demarcate the areas of the Republican victory. The picture from Indiana and North Carolina may have pro-Obama pundits celebrating, but all they’re celebrating is their own candidate’s defeat in the general election.
Let’s take a
closer look.“Fewer than half of Clinton voters in both states said they would support Obama over McCain in the general election should that be the matchup.”
Now I’m sure those same Democratic bloggers will claim those voters are really Republican and reject them entirely, but Republican crossover voters were never that sizable. This is a far more troubling trend and it’s part of the general discomfort among swing and middle of the road Democratic party voters with Obama. Obama has won over the left wing of the Democratic party. He’s won over the media and the big brass in New York and LA. But he doesn’t have the working class vote and when he goes up against McCain, that vote will fly out the window even faster than it did here.
Just as in Connecticut, the left wing of of the Democratic party has achieved enough Pyrrhic victory, one they’ll pay for in droves with the “McCain Democrats”.
Let’s take another look at Obama’s big North Carolina victory
“Black voters have broken for Obama by wide margins throughout the primaries, and in both states about nine in 10 backed Obama. In North Carolina, 34 percent of Democratic primary voters were African American. Although Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) won the state’s white voters by 24 percentage points, it was not enough to close the gap.”
9 in 10 is pretty impressive as a landslide but the black vote isn’t going to be nearly as decisive in the general election as it has been in the key primaries Obama has won. The bottom line is if you subtract the black vote, Obama decisively lost in North Carolina. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is going to happen when you go to the general election in which the black vote is a much smaller proportion of the general electorate.
If Obama can’t pick up the other half of the Hillary voters who aren’t interested in voting for him, he’ll have another landslide in the African American community an a defeat at the polls, which Michelle Obama will blame on America’s racism– but the real cause of it will be Obama’s increasingly sectarian appeal and his lack of qualifications and credibility on the serious issue.
Keep doing the math
“According to the Election Day exit poll, Clinton won among white women, seniors and those with lower incomes… More broadly, a closely watched divide among white voters extended to Indiana, with Clinton winning by 30 points among white voters without college degrees but running even with Obama among those with college degrees. Clinton prevailed among both groups in North Carolina, winning non-college whites by more than 40 points and those with college degrees by seven points.
About six in 10 voters under age 30 favored Obama, while Clinton won about seven of 10 of the votes of the 65 and over crowd.”
The media is doing their best to tap dance around these results by citing Obama’s victories among first time voters and white voters under 30, but both of those are negligible factors compared in a general election compared to gray voting power which is going to wind up kicking Obama’s ass at the polls.
And
off we go.
“Two-thirds of Indiana Democratic primary voters said the economy is the most important issue facing the nation. Those voters favored Clinton, with 53 percent voting for the former first lady and 47 percent voting for Obama, according to exit poll results.”
Economy is the elephant in the room, the one Democrats expected to play, but it’s an issue that clearly favors experienced candidates. It favored Hillary Clinton. It will favor McCain too. It’s a key issue among older voters and working class voters who want an inexperienced hand at the helm. Obama’s feel good posturing appeals to the youth vote, but voters who actually work for a living are going to look for a serious candidate, not just one who smiles a lot and spouts optimistic inanities on the campaign trail.
Those are going to be the McCain Democrats and there are going to be plenty of them, from disgruntled congressmen and senators who enjoyed positive bipartisan ties with McCain in Congress to the bottom line Democratic party voter who wants someone serious to deal with his or her concerns.
“One in five Indiana voters Tuesday said the war in Iraq was the top issue. Those voters leaned toward Barack Obama, giving the Illinois senator 54 percent of the vote, and Clinton 46 percent.”
And here’s the even uglier truth, out of the Democratic party’s own primary voters, only 20 percent even list Iraq at the top and Iraq is the core of Obama’s pitch. Worse yet Obama couldn’t even seem to win them by a hefty margin. The left has pushed up Obama precisely on Iraq, but Iraq is an electoral dead end.
“Seventy percent of rural residents who voted favored Clinton, while 30 percent voted for Obama. In the state’s suburbs, Clinton won 54 percent of the vote, while Obama got 46 percent. Obama was favored in cities with more than 50,000 residents, getting 62 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 31 percent.”
And that’s a picture we’re going to see a lot of in the general election. There’s no doubt that the precincts in LA and NYC will be stuffing it for Obama, but they’ll be going for McCain across middle America. Red vs Blue will be back in a big way, but the reality it’s more like rural vs urban and suburban. The difference is a culture clash and it’s a way of life. It’s why Obama supporters can’t understand the skepticism felt toward him by voters who aren’t as media saturated and programmed to buy Brand X the way they are.
Obama is going to lose and the bitterness over it is going to eat up liberal urban Democrats for another generation because Obama isn’t just John Kerry or Al Gore, he’s been built up as a liberal messiah, as a solution for all our social and racial woes and a rejection will be only further enrage and embitter liberals and convince them of the worthlessness of America and Americans.
We’re already seeing a taste of their hatred for McCain but it’s only the tip of a rabid iceberg of what will happen when he becomes President.
The opinions and views articulated by the author do not necessarily reflect those of Israel e News.
