From the ArcaMax Publishing, Clarence Page Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/clarencepage/s-345633-182111
Oh, no, she didn't. Or, as the young hip-hop generation might say,
"Oh, no, she did-int!"
But, oh, yes, she d-id. A day after her hoped-for monster triumph in
the Indiana and North Carolina primaries fizzled, Sen. Hillary Clinton
no longer seemed to care whom she offended. She dared to speak about
race and gender in public with the candid language that even political
consultants usually keep private.
Despite losing big to Sen. Barack Obama in North Carolina's Democratic
primary and barely squeaking out a victory in Indiana, she said in an
interview with USA Today that "I have a much broader base to build a
winning coalition on."
And who might that "broader base" be? She cited an Associated Press
story "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working
Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both
states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said. Yes, there is a pattern
here and it's not a very pretty one. When Clinton is sounding like Ms.
Cranky, implying out loud that her opponent's supporters are not
hard-working enough, white enough or undereducated enough, it's hardly
a high point in her campaign.
But the former First Lady rejected the notion that her comments were
racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a
Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election," she
said. "Everybody knows that."
She has a point. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina showed her
beating Obama among white voters, particularly white men, and voters
who lack college degrees.
She won about 60 percent of the white vote in both states, down from
the 65 percent of the white vote she won in the Ohio primary on March
4 and the 63 percent she received in Pennsylvania on April 22 .
Black voters, by contrast, turned out nine-to-one for Obama in Indiana
and North Carolina, which is close to the black turnout for Democratic
presidential candidates in recent decades. Some white bloggers see
some veiled form of black supremacy in that turnout. They might have a
case among those who choose not to remember how hard Obama had to work
to woo black voters away from Clinton before his South Carolina
primary victory.
Remember those days when everyone seemed to be asking whether Obama
was "black enough" to win black votes? Now Clinton is questioning
whether he is too "elitist" to win the votes of "hard-working people."
That's the message of her a Charleston, W. Va., speech a day after her
newspaper interview: "We need to bring back hardworking people to the
Democratic Party. I'm winning Catholic voters and Hispanic voters,
blue-collar workers and seniors. People Sen. McCain will need in the
general election."
She's right to observe that Obama has a challenge ahead in winning
white swing voters, if he wins the nomination. But so does she,
considering how despised she has been among conservatives over the
years. Taking advice from Hillary Clinton on winning white males in
light of that history sounds about as wise as taking child care advice
from Britney Spears.
Yet, as her relentless pursuit of the Democratic nomination has shown,
she's a fighter. Her recent populist pitch to "hard-working people"
("Some call you swing voters. I call you Americans," she said in
Charleston) is an appeal not so much to color as to culture.
The great unspoken question in every voter's mind is whether a
candidate is on their side, understands their values and connects with
the way they see the world. That big question turns Obama's biggest
asset, his being fresh and new, into a liability when it causes people
to question how well they know him -- and how well he knows them.
Those doubts were enhanced when incendiary sound bites from his former
pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, brought Obama's approval ratings
down to those of mortal people. His impressive showing in Indiana and
North Carolina appears to have put concerns about Wright to rest for
now, although they are certain to come back in attack ads in the fall
if Obama is nominated. That will be a very different campaign from the
one Obama and Clinton have waged so far.
With that in mind, the most important moment for Democratic fortunes
won't be the selection of their nominee, but in soothing the anger and
disappointment of the side that loses. Once the party's leaders bring
themselves back together, they'll have to reach out and unify the
folks who really count -- the voters -- regardless of race, color,
gender or how "hard-working" they appear to be.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com, or write to him c/o
Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY
14207.