I’d Like to Play the Race Card

08May08

Prestigious film maker and recent commenter, Derek writes in via e-mail with an observation about the Democratic primaries he wanted to get off his chest.

Why is it that everyone for Clinton talks about how she is the stronger candidate because she has won important states? And, that Obama is somehow discredited for winning states that are going to go red. Yet, no one talks about how the counties that she has won are not counties that Democrats can win in the general election. The cities, where Dems are going to win, are overwhelmingly in favor of Obama, which means he has strong support in one of the significant bases of the party. This really pisses me off, there is no way that the rural nobody counties are going to be winnable by her in November. I think that the supposedly pro-Obama media would have picked this up if they were truly biased towards him.

This observation is pretty much right on, and the short answer for why I think this happens is that it’s because he’s black.

Longer answer is that there are always two ways to look at a close race such as the Clinton-Obama race. You will always have one candidate doing better among base Democrats and one candidate doing well among non traditional democrats. This will be hold true for traditional age groups, income groups, and regional patterns; similar people will vote in similar ways.

Subsequently there will always be a question which candidate will do better among the other candidate’s base supporters. I’d even go as far to say it’s almost always going to be a genuinely ambiguous question. Sure you can poll people about who they’ll vote for, but it’s not clear why any Democratic primary voter would ever vote for a Republican. Further Hillary will presumably have stopped trash talking Obama by the time the election comes around. This year has lots of odd voter patterns, Hillary wins in slightly more swing states, but does poorly when independents are allowed to vote. Obama wins red states, but not conservative regions and counties.

In the absence of overwhelming strength in polling, saying which candidate will do better is basically like saying what you see when look a Rorschach ink blot; people see things based on who they are and their own biases. In Obama’s case I think we’re seeing that a lot of people don’t think a black guy could possibly be as strong a candidate as the white wife of a former president. I wouldn’t say it’s racism per se, but that people are more comfortable with Hillary and thus imagine other people would be to.

I imagine many of the people talking down Obama’s electability in the media actually like him personally and would themselves vote for him over Hillary. But when presented with unambiguous evidence about his ability to get elected, they revert to base impulses or gut instincts.

Are they wrong? I think so, but I can’t be sure. My theory is that there are lots of people in America that won’t vote a black guy for President, they’re commonly referred to as Republicans. There are a few additional folks that aren’t going to vote Obama, but I think they’re a smaller group then the new voters and swing voters Obama will bring into the fold.

Filed under: Politics, United States   |  3 Comments
Tags: Barack Obama, Democratic Nomination, Hillary Clinton, Obama Electability, Race Card, Red States, The Race Card