Why Edwards Helps Obama: Identity Politics and Low-Information Voters

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Saturday January 19, 2008 · 2:47 PM PST

2008/01/19 · 14:47

Most of us here see John Edwards as the most liberal of the major Democratic candidates, Barack Obama as the second-most liberal, and Hillary Clinton as, well, not liberal at all. Some folks don't even think she's a Democrat.

This, however, is not how most Americans, or even how most Democratic primary voters, perceive these three persons. And that difference in perception is why John Edwards' continued presence in the race is not only good for Obama, but may be the only way he can win the nomination.

Follow me and I'll explain.

Chris Bowers shows over at OpenLeft that the low-information branch of the vast group known as "Democratic primary voters" are, like so many other Americans, also into "identity politics".

Simplifying greatly, they think that black man = very liberal, white woman = liberal/centrist, and white man = conservative. That's why if Edwards pulled out, his high-info folks would go to Obama, but his low-info folks -- the ones who see his gender and skin and think he's more conservative than Obama -- would go to Hillary.

And the low-info people outnumber the high-info ones. (If they didn't, Kos' site traffic would be ten times what it is now and Al Gore would be finishing his second term as president.)

We've already seen it today in Nevada:

I can tell you what happened in my caucus site (16+ / 0-)

Edwards had about 10% of the vote, was declared non-viable, and 8 out of 10 went for Hilary.

The Obama campaign people were not prepared at all to have to go fight for Edwards supporters and they were flat-footed.

That was the story I heard from a bunch of of my friends. The Edwards vote went mostly to Hilary after it was declared non-viable and it was a surprise to the Obama folks.

UPDATE: Per Tom Edsall at HuffPost, we find that Obama does well among whites everywhere but the South -- where he loses ground to Edwards. There may be a slight 'native son' effect at work, but one would expect that to be countered among conservative Southern voters by knowledge of his progressive stances. But if the voters are both conservative and unaware of Edwards' populist-progressive turn, as I suspect is the case, then Edwards may do surprisingly well, but for all the wrong reasons unfortunately.

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