Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - Posts
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Ever since John Edwards dropped out in January “so that history can blaze its path,” he has been careful not to get in history’s way. Even when his endorsement would have carried real weight—before North Carolina, for example—he was quiet. It almost seemed like he was going far out of his way to make sure his endorsement didn’t matter.
Well, sorry John, but it still matters. Not because it will change the race’s outcome—that was the point of waiting. It matters because it helps redeem Obama among the white working class.
The story line coming out of Obama’s West Virginia thumping is that white working-class voters abandoned him in record numbers, and for possibly ugly reasons. Clinton picked up 69 percent of the white vote, and of the voters who said race influenced their vote, 82 percent went for Clinton. No one thinks Obama’s 40-point loss was enough to derail his campaign. But it does raise tough questions about whether Democrats want a nominee with such paltry support among a potentially key demographic. To put it bluntly: With Kentucky just around the corner, Obama needed some white cred.
Enter John Edwards. By endorsing Obama now, Edwards isn’t handing him the nomination. He’s minimizing the damage wrought upon the all-but-inevitable nominee. Clinton insists a drawn-out election isn’t hurting the party. But it is clearly exposing huge holes in each candidate’s armor. By weighing in now, Edwards is reassuring Democrats—and perhaps telegraphing to Kentucky voters—that Obama is a safe choice.
Plus, Edwards is still influential. Just look at the 7 percent of the vote he picked up in West Virginia—impressive for someone who dropped out more than three months ago. If Edwards supporters in Kentucky take his cue and vote for Obama, it could tighten the margin of victory a bit. Also, cue speculation that Edwards’ 19 delegates will now swing to Obama, pushing him ever closer to 2025. (See Slate’s Explainer on what happens to Edwards’ delegates.) Expect renewed VP speculation as well, especially if Edwards paints himself as the man who could deliver the working class to Obama.
But Edwards’ endorsement isn’t the last round of battle; it’s the first round of cleanup. Both Democratic candidates insist the party will unite once a nominee is chosen. Edwards’ move tells party officials, more than any endorsement so far, that that moment has arrived.
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Twenty-four hours later, the verdict seems to be that West Virginia’s results weren’t ideal for Obama, but they haven’t hurt him in any lasting way. Still, he’d no doubt prefer to avoid repeating the same experience in Kentucky, a state that’s a lot like West Virginia, but bigger. Can Obama prevent another rout?
The demographics suggest it will be tough. Kentucky is slightly less overwhelmingly white than West Virginia—90.2 percent instead of 94.9 percent—and has a black population of 7.5 percent compared to West Virginia’s 3.3 percent. But if Clinton attracts 69 percent of the white vote, as she did in West Virginia, there’s not much Obama can do to lessen the blow, even if he sways 90 percent of African-American voters. And look at the populations: Kentucky has 4.2 million people; West Virginia had only 1.8 million. After netting about 150,000 votes in West Virginia, Clinton could plausibly net twice that in Kentucky. A win of that size wouldn’t close Obama’s popular vote lead—unless you count Florida and Michigan, which she does—but it would bring her within striking distance, especially if she manages to keep Obama’s Oregon lead in the single digits.
Obama also has the (chosen) disadvantage of not visiting Kentucky. We’ve seen that when he shows his face in a state, as he did in Pennsylvania, he cuts into Clinton’s lead. But Obama logged one paltry stop in West Virginia before the primary, and one in Louisville on Monday, with no more events planned. If 90 percent of life is showing up, Obama hasn’t gotten the message. His strategy of focusing on the general election—he’s in Michigan now—may well pay off. But ignoring Clinton might not work so well if she’s racking up vast margins.
Not that Obama isn’t competing there. He has TV spots up across the state touting his ethics legislation and commitment to “clean coal.” The campaign is also sending out mailers that show Obama standing in front of a big gleaming cross. (Smart move, given many Americans’ impassioned determination to believe that Obama is Muslim.)
It’s clear Obama thinks he can afford to lose Kentucky—even by a landslide. And he’s probably right. He’s 140 delegates away from the nomination, which is ultimately the only metric that counts. But at the same time, he’s giving Clinton yet another reason to hang on through June 3, marshal her own popular vote numbers (counting Florida, Michigan, and Puerto Rico), and make one final plea to supers to make her the nominee.
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Tous les blogs are aflutter today, less over Clinton’s West Virginia victory than over Democrat Travis Childers’ thumping of Republican Greg Davis in Mississippi’s First District special election. Despite the NRCC sinking $1.8 million into the race—plus robocalls from President Bush and a personal visit by Dick Cheney—Childers managed to pull off a 54-46 win in a district held by the GOP since 1994.
This is now the third special election—the first was for Dennis Hastert’s seat in Illinois’ 14th District, then Don Cazayoux’s Louisiana victory on May 3—in which a Democrat has defeated a Republican on his own turf.
How bad is this for the GOP? Judging by NRCC chief Tom Cole’s panicked memo last night, pretty bad.
One easy way to predict how screwed Republicans are is to compare these three districts with other Republican-held House districts that won’t have an incumbent running in November. Here’s each district’s Partisan Voter Index, which measures how strongly a district leaned over the past two presidential elections.
Special elections already won by Democrats:
IL-14: R +5
LA-6: R+7
MS-01: R+10
Districts held by retiring Republicans:
AL-2: R+13
AZ-1: R+2
CA-4: R+11
CA-52: R+9
CO-6: R+10
FL-15: R+4
IL-11: R+1
IL-18: R+5
KY-2: R+13
LA-4: R+7
MN-3: R+1
MO-9: R+7
MS-3: R+13
NM-1: D+2
NM-2: R+6
NJ-3: D+3
NJ-7: R+1
NY-25: D+3
NY-26: R+3
OH-7: R+6
OH-15: R+1
OH-16: R+4
PA-5: R+10
VA-11: R+1
WY-At large: R+19
Now for some pseudoscience. If you average out the PVIs of the districts Democrats have already won, you get 7.3. Average out the PVIs of the districts that vote in November, and you get 5.6. In other words, on average, the districts already won by Democrats are more Republican than the nonincumbent GOP district Democrats need to win in November.
Of course, these special elections aren’t exactly typical. Childers campaigned on a pro-life, pro-gun platform that his Yankee counterparts can’t exactly emulate. Nor was Cazayoux’s Louisiana win particularly overwhelming. But as a general indicator, the races give House Republicans reason to squirm.
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