A post-election call to California
I decided to check in with The Red Electric’s Barack Obama correspondent in California (Berkeley to be exact) on the day after the big primary.
John McCarthy, an old college friend, leapt onto the Obama bandwagon early and helped precinct leaders navigate computer data in the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote. John has been into the political uses of computers from the early days, but that’s another story.
“Hey, we didn’t do badly,” he exclaimed. “Two weeks ago we were down by 20 points,” The gap was narrowed to nine points in Tuesday’s vote, he pointed out.
Besides, he added, the delegate count is proportional, so Obama’s surge in the closing days netted convention votes.
So where does it go from here? Some in the campaign are painting a “nasty scenario,” he said.
If the contest goes to the convention without either candidate having a clear majority, there’s talk of a rules committee fight over whether delegates from Florida and Michigan should be seated. Because the state parties in the two states moved their primaries up, the national party punished them by disallowing their delegates.
Because no delegates were at stake, the candidates didn’t campaign in Michigan and Florida — except Clinton, who, absent opposition, won the two elections.
A decision by the convention’s rules committee could be appealed to the floor of the convention for a real donnybrook.
Enter the 20 percent of the delegates with “super” status. These are party functionaries who weren’t elected by flesh-and-blood voters.
John surmises that the “super-delegate” pols could view their choice in two ways.
They might see Obama, with his demonstrated strong appeal to independent, new and young voters, as a sure winner in November. For the super-delegates, that means longer political coattails helping elect Democratic Party candidates deeper down on the ticket.
Obama has even demonstrated some appeal to Republicans who are ready for his “change” strategy and are fed up with more of the same. With Hillary as the nominee, the same Republicans are likely to stick with a McCain.
Then again, super-delegates don’t get to be super-delegates without putting in their time and pressing the flesh. They may owe chits to the Clintons stretching back to 1992 or even farther. Talk about coattails.
John and I talked about a disturbing reality that has emerged from the voting. Large numbers of voters are casting ballots based on race and gender. Consider the preponderance of women voting for Clinton and the preponderance of blacks voting for Obama. Call that prejudice “for.” Its flip side is prejudice “against”: white men voting against Clinton; Latinos voting against Obama. In California, a big surprise was the Asian-American vote that was 75 percent for Clinton (or against Obama.)
What is there to explain this besides race? (Quick now, what’s the issue that leads Asian-Americans to vote three to one for Hillary?)
Little of this voter bias shows up in pre-voting polling because no one wants to admit to being a bigot. But the bias is undeniable in the results and it is scary.
John had some interesting observations about voting irregularities in the California primary, but I’ll save them for tomorrow.
John McCarthy, an old college friend, leapt onto the Obama bandwagon early and helped precinct leaders navigate computer data in the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote. John has been into the political uses of computers from the early days, but that’s another story.
“Hey, we didn’t do badly,” he exclaimed. “Two weeks ago we were down by 20 points,” The gap was narrowed to nine points in Tuesday’s vote, he pointed out.
Besides, he added, the delegate count is proportional, so Obama’s surge in the closing days netted convention votes.
So where does it go from here? Some in the campaign are painting a “nasty scenario,” he said.
If the contest goes to the convention without either candidate having a clear majority, there’s talk of a rules committee fight over whether delegates from Florida and Michigan should be seated. Because the state parties in the two states moved their primaries up, the national party punished them by disallowing their delegates.
Because no delegates were at stake, the candidates didn’t campaign in Michigan and Florida — except Clinton, who, absent opposition, won the two elections.
A decision by the convention’s rules committee could be appealed to the floor of the convention for a real donnybrook.
Enter the 20 percent of the delegates with “super” status. These are party functionaries who weren’t elected by flesh-and-blood voters.
John surmises that the “super-delegate” pols could view their choice in two ways.
They might see Obama, with his demonstrated strong appeal to independent, new and young voters, as a sure winner in November. For the super-delegates, that means longer political coattails helping elect Democratic Party candidates deeper down on the ticket.
Obama has even demonstrated some appeal to Republicans who are ready for his “change” strategy and are fed up with more of the same. With Hillary as the nominee, the same Republicans are likely to stick with a McCain.
Then again, super-delegates don’t get to be super-delegates without putting in their time and pressing the flesh. They may owe chits to the Clintons stretching back to 1992 or even farther. Talk about coattails.
John and I talked about a disturbing reality that has emerged from the voting. Large numbers of voters are casting ballots based on race and gender. Consider the preponderance of women voting for Clinton and the preponderance of blacks voting for Obama. Call that prejudice “for.” Its flip side is prejudice “against”: white men voting against Clinton; Latinos voting against Obama. In California, a big surprise was the Asian-American vote that was 75 percent for Clinton (or against Obama.)
What is there to explain this besides race? (Quick now, what’s the issue that leads Asian-Americans to vote three to one for Hillary?)
Little of this voter bias shows up in pre-voting polling because no one wants to admit to being a bigot. But the bias is undeniable in the results and it is scary.
John had some interesting observations about voting irregularities in the California primary, but I’ll save them for tomorrow.
Labels: Barack Obama, California election, Hillary Clinton, John McCarthy
posted by Rick Seifert at
10:30 PM
3 Comments
