Candidate Strategies after North Carolina and Indiana

After the American Century

The pre-election predictions I posted on Monday were so accurate that you can go back and read it now as a report of what happened. Obama did win North Carolina by a wide margin, and he did make it quite close in Indiana. Each did well where I predicted they would. The results can be read in several ways.

1. Obama's lead in delegates has increased again, because North Carolina has more of them to give him, and he won it by more than 14 points. He will likely get close to the same number of delegates as Hillary in Indiana. On the whole, he has come out of the election better than many expected after all the media hype about Rev. Wright.

2. Hillary will stay in the race, she announced, even though the New York Times reports that her campaign is broke again. Since there is a ceiling on how much any individual can give a candidate, she will need to find some new donors. This is not easy for her now.

3. While the results in the two states differ, the pattern is the same. Black voters are 90% for Obama. He also wins all the large urban areas, often by margins of 20-30%. But Hillary wins by equal margins in rural areas. She attracts poor whites, the less educated. old people, pensioners, and women. Barack continues to win decisively among the most support from the young, the educated, and those who make higher incomes. It's McDonalds vs. Starbucks.

What does this mean for the immediate future - the West Virginia primary? It will likely be a strong win for Hillary on May 13. Look at the counties that are most like West Virginia in rural North Carolina. She won them by huge margins. The same is true for the Ohio counties just across the Ohio River from West Virginia. There are few Black people in Appalachia, where plantation slavery never existed, and it is not exactly a highly educated state either. I once spent some days in its back country riding around in a jeep with a vet, Doc Weiner. He was very popular up i the hills and hollows as he made his rounds, mostly to treat dogs and horses. I heard several people ask him if he would treat their children as well. (He would not. ) Doc Weiner told me that often a man did not call a physician if one of the (usually many) children got sick, but he always called his office if a hunting dog fell ill. Admittedly this was years ago, and possibly the Internet and globalization has transformed the people I saw then, but I doubt it. These are mountain people in a poor state. This is not Obama-land.

So expect Hillary to proclaim herself the underdog, battling against tremendous odds. She has been comparing herself to Rocky Balboa of late. Expect her to keep on talking about her bogus plan for tax-relief on gasoline (see my earlier blog on this). Expect her to trumpet her poverty - shucks, she's down on her luck just like those mountaineers - and to keep painting Obama (poor family, single mother) as an elitist who is out of touch with the ordinary people like herself. It is astonishing to see how she has managed to bury her own elite education at Wellsley and Yale, not to mention her personal fortune.

What will Obama do? He probably will not campaign too hard in West Virginia, but spend time wooing the super-delegates, make a major speech attacking John McCain, and focus on the two primaries on May 20. As usual, he has been better at raising money and more disciplined in using it than Hillary, so he can afford to go all out for the primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. In short, his best strategy is probably to campaign in West Virginia just enough to pin Hillary down, spending money she does not have, while making sure he wins in the following week. It is not over yet, her chances are dwindling, but anything can happen in American politics.

Clinton Gambles for Nevada Votes

Whenever I get to Nevada I feel as though I ought to be given a free hotel room. After all, the first governor of the Nevada Territory, at the time of the Civil War, was James Nye (1815-1876. See the photo on the right). I admit he was a distant relative, but they did name a county after him (population 32,000), and he was the first senator elected to represent Nevada when it became a state. We have some rather friendly remarks about James Nye from the pen of Mark Twain, whose brother was the governor's secretary. Twain declared,

The Government of the new Territory of Nevada was an interesting
menagerie. Governor Nye was an old and seasoned politician from New
York--politician, not statesman. He had white hair; he was in fine
physical condition; he had a winningly friendly face and deep lustrous
brown eyes that could talk as a native language the tongue of every
feeling, every passion, every emotion. His eyes could outtalk his
tongue, and this is saying a good deal, for he was a very remarkable
talker, both in private and on the stump. He was a shrewd man; he
generally saw through surfaces and perceived what was going on inside
without being suspected of having an eye on the matter.

In any case, since my family has been associated with Nevada for almost 150 years, I have always taken a little extra interest in its affairs, including the caucuses going on there later today.

First of all, despite being a large western state, Nevada's 1.9 million people are mostly urban, with Las Vegas and vicinity concentrating 1.3 million of them, followed by Reno and nearby Carson City. As Las Vegas and Reno have grown, they have become more like other American cities. They have universities and high schools, supermarkets and malls, suburban housing areas, and all the other features you might find in Omaha or Denver. The majority of the land areas in these cities bears little resemblance to the glamorous "strip" of gigantic casinos that figure so prominently on CSI or in films.

A politician need not visit 95% of the state to reach the majority of voters, but can focus almost entirely on these two urban areas. The racial composition of this largely urban population is not much like that in New Hampshire or Iowa. One fifth of the entire population is Hispanic, and polls indicate they lean toward Clinton. Obama can expect strong support from the Black population, but they are less numerous (7%).

Economically speaking, Nevada is not like the rest of the country, or much of anywhere else, because its economy has such a large element of gambling and tourism. The gambling revenues are so large that the tax paid on them covers most of the state's expenses. There is no state income tax in Nevada. So it has been a liability for Obama that in the past he has been critical of gambling. I happen to think he was right to say that gambling was not a good thing for poor people, taken all around. In his words, it can have a "devastating effect" on communities. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did not always want to see gambling spread to more and more places. But Las Vegas is not the ideal place for a politician to get known as a critic of gambling, even if we do know that gambling in effect is a regressive tax that hits the poor harder than the rich.

The Clinton campaign has kindly made a point of letting Nevada know Obama's views, while Hillary has posed for photographs with casino owners. She has stressed her support of their operations. Meanwhile, Obama has the endorsement of the casino and restaurant workers, which makes for an interesting contrast. Who would have thought that the Hillary of New Hampshire who identified herself with mill workers could so quickly become a buddy of the high rollers? For her, gambling apparently is just good economic development, and she has been endorsed by leading figures at MGM Mirage and Harrah's. Clinton's new position potentially could mean she will support on-line gambling, which has large implications for the election as a whole. Gambling is a hot issue in California, where there are several referendums about it. Furthermore, John McCain is not friendly to on-line betting and gambling. So, is Hillary really intent on widening the reach of gambling? Is this what "change" means to her? Or is she just willing to use anything to get an advantage against Obama in Nevada? She has already run into trouble with the Methodist Church. She claims to be a good Methodist, but apparently the church has somewhat stricter views on gambling than she does. One suspects she will return to the church fold soon, perhaps as soon as the voting is over. Tomorrow is Sunday, after all.

Meanwhile, I am still hoping to get that free hotel room, though perhaps I will have to go to bone dry Nye County to get it.

Hillary Beats Obama, Just!

I was wrong, and so was everyone else who believed the polls. I looked at them all, and as of two days ago, Obama was widening his lead. But something happened in the two or three days since those polls and the actual election. Clinton got far more support from women than the polls had predicted - they said women would split between the two. In fact, she got 14% more, showing that when women go into the polling booth they are still thinking about their decision. This was decisive, as Hillary defeated him by only two percentage points - 39% to 37%. Obama was also perhaps a victim of his anticipated success, as Independant voters, who can participate in either primary, seem to have gone over to help McCain, because Obama apparently was going to win without their help. Had the polls showed Obama in a close race, then more Independents might have supported him.

Voters clearly were volatile in New Hampshire, and the process of the election brought more energy to Hillary's campaign. This surprised all the pundits, who admitted it on CNN and in the other media. In the last two days Hillary became more populist in tone and more open to questions from the crowds who came to hear her. Until this week, she gave few interviews and the communication was all one way. She also teared up in an emotional moment surrounded by women in a small public meeting. That moment was caught on TV and rebroadcast many times. (This seems to have worked once, but how many times could she become emotional before it would begin to hurt her?) She was learning from what worked for other candidates, and that is as it should be. The primary process gives candidates a chance to know the public and find out what they care about. She refocused on younger voters, as Obama has, making a point to pose many of them behind her on the stage. In her victory speech Hillary sounded a bit like Edwards, speaking about the "invisible Americans" and the hard-working people who cannot afford to pay the bills. She has also begun to attack the oil companies, the pharmeceutical companies, and the insurance companies, which may win the primary for her, but may alienate swing voters and can stimulate these companies to give more money to Republicans. Overall, Clinton presented her self as more emotional, and won over many to the cause at the last minute.

Now we have an open race, with two candidates almost equally strong in the North, and Edwards hoping for a comeback in the South. So far, the campaign has not tested the candidates' appeal in large cities or among Black and Hispanic voters. The next primary in Michigan will be the first in a large, urban, and multicultural state. Can Hillary appeal to that audience as well as Obama will?  Can she continue to outpoll him among women voters? 

On the Republican side, McCain made a tremendous comeback, defeating Romney, who has now come in second twice. But that race is still wide open, as it rolls on toward Michigan. Romney's father was governor of Michigan, after all, so he has one more chance to win a primary. But if he cannot win there, then it may come down to a race between McCain and Huckabee and perhaps Giuliani, with Fred Thompson as a remote outside possibility.