I should be kicking myself in the head for taking Dick Morris' bait. But I'm not going to give the Clinton machine that much credit. Neither should you.
The news is that Obama won South Carolina. OK that's nice. Pretty much people were expecting that because the swing vote is black in South Carolina. That is to say the swing vote is black this time around because everybody says so. And so to hedge bets, Morris predicted that white voters will take offense to this presumed racial voting bloc and deliver the rest of the South to Clinton. It was a crusty enterprise, but it's the kind of thing we've seen before. Karl Rove was the master and you've seen me excoriate him for it in these pages, even though we're on the same team.
Anybody who votes can be a swing voter, it just depends on what message makes you change your mind from apathy to voting or voting one way to voting another way. It's the job of campaign managers to figure out what that message is, identify the constituency for it and convince them that they are the agents of change. Every little percentage counts as you approach the tipping point whatever that tipping point might be. Let's do some math in our heads.
Imagine that I'm running for office in the state of Tennessee and I discover that 3% of the voters are pickle farmers. It's a close race, so I need every vote. My campaign boss tells me that traditionally pickle farmers vote for the other party, because they've traditionally been in the pocket of the salt brine lobby. But I notice that my opponent has not talked about the price of salt brine. So I have an opportunity to speak in Barrelville TN which is pickle central. My opponent is only going to Memphis (because he's appealing to the urban demographic and knows people at FedEx). In Barrelville, I give a rousing speech which is peppered with references to the cost of salt brine and its effect on the small farmer. I throw some extra money and sure enough, the pickle farmers show up in droves for me. I win the state and I say it's all because of pickles. In fact, I did this kind of micromanagement in each of four campaign stops in Tennessee, but take the pickle message nationally. Why? Because I think there are more pickle voters I can energize and steal from the other party. They are my new 'core' constituents.
As president I go to war with Bosnia, people who hate pickles, and everybody says it a clash of civilizations. Why? Because I pimped the pickle vote. Now substitute 'Christian Right' for 'pickle farmer' and you now understand the genius of Karl Rove, and the game that everybody is playing here. It doesn't matter what I stand for, it matters if I am electable, and that depends on money for hitting four towns instead of just Memphis, and polling research that tells me whether to talk about salt-brine or vouchers or partial birth abortions or single payer health plans or whatever unsophisticated buzzword the people can grab onto.
The thing is, it works. Why does it work? Because only about 17-20% of American voters cannot be bullshitted by campaign speeches, polling numbers, negative campaign ads and endless punditry. Those are the people who actually study the candidate positions and/or are basically in the business of electioneering. The rest of us are actually listening to the stupid debates, watching the insulting commercials, consuming the vapid commentary and waiting to see what our idiot friends are doing before we make up our tiny minds. How do I know that percentage is true? A campaign guru told me.
Once you understand how this kind of marginal majority cobbling works, it doesn't take much to work the angles. The real work comes in accurately tagging voter interest to cognizable chunks and hoping they stand still long enough. Just because pickle farmers went for salt brine this year in Tennessee doesn't mean it'll work next year in Minnesota. If it was easy, anybody could do it. If it was easy, New Hampshire would have done what the experts predicted. But Dewey did not defeat Truman and Colin Powell didn't even run. There are no slam dunks in this business. But that doesn't mean people aren't willing to believe that there are.
Enter 'Hillary Clinton's Southern Strategy'. Now everybody is an expert at predicting exactly what black voters are going to do, right? Shay Riley takes the hook and swims deep:
I noticed the coded language that President Bill Clinton — who got my vote twice, so I don't despise him the way Rush Limbaugh does — used in arguing that Sen. Obama was expected to win in South Carolina. Days before the South Carolina primary, President Clinton said that blacks would vote for Sen. Obama and women for Sen. Clinton (I guess the concept of black women, who are at least a quarter of Democratic voters in South Carolina don't exist). Following up that comment with the Election Day comment that Rev. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina (which is Rev. Jackson's native state, but President Clinton didn't note that fact) in 1984 and 1988. That quote served to tie Obama to Rev. Jackson in white voters' minds. This is part of the growing Clinton strategy since days before New Hampshire to "ghettoize" Sen. Obama's candidacy, by tagging Obama as solely the "black candidate". It attempts to undermine Obama's claim that he is a transcendent candidate.
This racially coded language worked in New Hampshire and Nevada. It will succeed after South Carolina, even though Sen. Obama won there. Sure, Sen. Obama was expected to win...but not by the 30-point margin ass whupping that he put on Sen. Clinton.. President Clinton ignores the fact that until some weeks ago, his wife was in the lead in South Carolina....even among black voters. Never mind that Sen. Obama won the majority of the vote in a state, which Sen. Clinton has yet to do. However, President Clinton sought to downplay Sen. Obama's achievement in order to increase anxiety among white voters that Sen. Obama is merely a younger and more attractive version of the dreaded Rev. Jackson.
It is intriguing, although not surprising, that the mainstream media has not zeroed in on this neo-Southern Strategy to appeal to latent racism among white Democrats. However, it has been picked up by some black commentators, such as liberal Michael Dyson. Apparently black liberal commentator Roland Martin agrees with me about the strategy. He accuses President Clinton of stoking racial fires: "Tapper said no one asked about Jackson. His name never came up. Yet Clinton had no problem invoking it. Isn't the reason obvious? The ridiculously called first black president didn't mention his win in 1992. Or that of Vice President Al Gore in 2000, or even then-Sen. John Edwards' win in 2004. He decided to bypass all of these gents and link Obama with Jackson, who is beloved in black America but stirs hatred among many whites."
And it goes on.
So instead of salt-brine prices motivating pickle farmers, it's latent racism motivating white Democrats. And we're sure because we know the numbers, right? Of course we don't. Those are some of the many motivations that we don't poll for, although the chunk of 'white Democrats' seems to be a fairly persistent one.
We went through this circus not long ago with the theory that the entire political career of Harold Ford Jr was derailed by three words in a 'racist' commercial featuring a blonde bimbo saying "Harold, call me". Then again I'm one of the 17-20% who can't possibly take such stuff seriously.
It seems to me that it will remain mostly impossible for the swill-swallowing 80% of American voters to avoid being manipulated by these kinds of seductions which reduce them to Pavlovian voting blocs whose knees jerk exactly on cue. So if Dick Morris says it's race, then it must be, and therefore all the white voters will play their zombie role and all the black voters will do likewise.
What's really going on is that people are seeing exactly what they want to see on this racial angle. What annoys me about it is that it's being called a strategy. Aggregating marginal voting blocs may be hard work, but it's not predictive genius. It's tactical reaction to ever-changing polls. Oh sure, the candidates and campaign managers will say they vibe with the people and that they always knew exactly how - but only the winners can say that with any credibility. We ought to know better than to give these shallow tactics any more credit than they're due, which ain't much.
Here are the results. Go ahead and read the black/white split. You know you wanna. Try not to forget the rest while you're at it. Or you can go ahead and tell me how this is just like the OJ verdict.
Download nyt_sc_2008_exit_polls.pdf
UPDATE:
John Rosenberg saw it coming.
Not only that, he offers countering evidence off a bit of the spin that Jay Reding suggests. Reding says:
As often as Dick Morris gets it wrong, he seems to be on to the Clinton strategy. Right now Barack Obama has two constituencies: well-off whites and blacks. Hillary Clinton is peeling away women, low-income voters, union members and other traditional Democratic groups. It’s a simple matter of numbers: Clinton can win with the groups on her side, and Obama can’t.
This loss certainly doesn’t look good for Hillary Clinton—she got creamed by Obama—but ultimately time (and the byzantine Democratic primary process) is on her side. The Clintons are masters of political hardball, as well as divide-and-conquer politics. They know full well that all they need to do is split the vote along racial lines and they can win—and it’s not like black voters will cross over and vote Republican in the general election.
Obama won a major victory tonight—but it could end up being a Pyrrhic one. Obama must broaden his appeal beyond racial and class lines, and so far he’s been unable to do it. The demographic tide going into Super Tuesday doesn’t favor him, and while he’s dinged Clinton’s armor twice now, he’s yet to slay the beast.
Rosenberg counters:
According to a Duke University professor, Obama has gained the support of a new generation of young blacks precisely because of his “color-blind” approach to politics.
A large majority of the young Democrats who cast ballots in the South Carolina primary voted for Barack Obama. That’s because Obama’s largely “color-blind” approach to racial issues may appeal to young voters who embrace multiculturalism and reject the politics of the old civil rights guard, says a Duke University political science professor who studies race, politics and gender....
“Obama’s message seems to resonate more with a particular generation of African Americans who are relieved by his stance on race,” says Kerry Haynie, an associate professor of political science. “He often leaves race out of it. Removing ‘the burden’ of race may be a relief for some black people. And it’s an idea that may be comforting to a new generation.”
Actually, I can say with a good deal of unimpeachable authority that the color-blind idea is also appealing to many in the old generation as well.
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