How to explain Clinton's nine or ten point victory in the primary yesterday? There are surely a number of factors, but with Team Hillary playing the race card relentlessly, it may have ended up being key.
From Booman today:
What really cost Obama was what happened in the northern suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery Counties. Obama simply got crushed in Bucks, giving up 29,000 votes. I think most people expected him to poll well in Bucks, perhaps even winning it. I also expected Obama to win Montgomery County easily. Instead he lost it 51-49. In Delaware and Chester Counties he won 55-45, but he wound up losing the suburbs decisively because of the lopsided result in Bucks. No one predicted this. The exit polls showed Obama winning the Philly suburbs with 57% of the vote.
(And outside of the Philly suburbs) ... the bulk of the loss came from one rural county after another giving Clinton over 65% of the vote.
... we can try to find explanations for the results, but these are the areas where Obama underperformed. He did worse than the exit polls suggested he would do, and I have no easy answer for that either.
http://Boomantribune.com
Is this the "Bradley effect" at work? Booman does not discuss this in his blogpost today, and there is no way to know for sure. My sense is that it apparently played a part. (In 1982, Tom Bradley lost the election for mayor of Los Angeles despite the polls predicting victory, because some people lied to pollsters to avoid the impression that race was a factor in their decision. Inside the voting booth, however, they would not vote for the black candidate -- hence, the Bradley effect.)
We saw the Clinton team subtly use race to persuade voters not to trust Obama. It was a simple strategy -- guilt by association. Reverend Wright and William Ayers are cast as "the angry black man who hates us good white folk" and "the bomb throwing liberal who hates our values" respectively. This is really what Clinton's campaign came down to ultimately. Forget the war (except the next one against Iran), torture, the shredding of the Constitution, or the menace of global warming. Her strategy was to paint Obama as an unknown and risky quantity -- probably a closet radical who would be a stealth candidate for those Dirty F*#king Hippies who run our universities, control the media, and look down on us. The fact that he is black, and inherently not to be trusted, made this all so easy to sell.
The media helped her enormously. I was struck by the spin on all the cable tv channels: MSNBC, CNN, and of course Fox. The debates, the MSNBC and especially the ABC debate -- were key in repeating slander and innuendo in a way that must have created associations in people's minds. Because he is black, it is not enough that he repudiates the words of persons that he is being linked to by the media. With Clinton or McCain a simple, "I don't agree with that, of course" would have been enough. Many in the media and Team Clinton ignored these statements because they knew all they had to do was raise the doubts -- racism would do the rest.
It's a truism in white America -- black people just can't be trusted, they can't be taken at their word. We cannot just believe Obama, he must be made to somehow prove a negative, that he does NOT believe ideas that they link him with, using smear and innuendo that would make Joe McCarthy proud.
The Republicans want to face Hillary in the fall. They also would be more comfortable if their fears materialize and she is elected President. They are supporting Hillary's despicable campaign tactics enormously. And Hillary encourages this.
Of course, I was hoping against hope for an Obama win and for an end to the drama. And so it hurts a bit this morning. You see, not enough people can see through the Clinton spin, and not enough people can see Obama for the honest, dedicated, patriotic American that he is. Some seem to prefer a congenital liar and power-hungry narcissist, who seems to care only for herself and her ambitions, plunging her party into a state of war, regardless of the devastating long-term effect on the progressive movement.
If this continues much longer, it's possible that the Democrats will once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory -- that is, unless we all redouble our efforts: donate, work the phones, canvass, blast the media outlets for each and every instance of media bias.
We have a great candidate and he deserves our total support. The Pennsylvania defeat was a tough outcome, but it was not a game-changer. Unless we lose heart and let Team Hillary take over the momentum, we can do this thing. But we can't pretend that race and racism are not playing a role in this election. To recognize this fact and find ways to challenge it will help us affect the outcome and lead us to victory in November.