A big win for Hillary Clinton tonight in the West Virginia Primary, she won by something like 56-29. If this had come last week instead of the North Carolina primary's results, we would have a very different race.
While this will not change a lot on the ground regarding delegates, it may change the "narrative", that is, the press consensus on where the race is. It is true that Senator Barack Obama, the frontrunner and likely nominee, did not campaign much at all in West Virginia and wrote the state off, but the result shows he is still not connecting with a significant portion of the base of the Democratic Party. White, working class voters (both with and without college degrees) voted for Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. Worse yet, significant portions of these Clinton voters say if Senator Obama is the nominee, they will either not vote for president, or vote for likely Republican nominee John McCain in the fall.
While most analysts believe this will not happen, I am not so sure. The Obama campaign has to do some work to attract these voters in order to win. The campaign probably knows this and will try to affect these results but there is always the chance they will ignore these voters and build a new coalition that they think can win--African-Americans, liberals, youth, and those seeking a "change". That could be a winning coalition for sure, but I don't think you can write off at least half of the base of your party without some risk.
We'll see what the Obama camp does.
Meanwhile, this should be the first of several large-scale victories for Senator Clinton in the next couple of weeks. Too little, too late? Or will this (plus expected victories in Kentucky and elsewhere) have any impact on the race to come?
Stay tuned.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment