Based on the exit polls in California it seems we could be looking at the very unusual situation of Obama winning white voters and black voters and nonetheless losing the state thanks to Hillary Clinton's large margins among Latinos and Asians. That's kind of an "only in California" dynamic (New Mexico and Hawaii also have unusual ethnic makeups that make something like this possible, but almost no black people live in those states) but it's a very large state and, more to the point, a signpost of how things are changing in America. Time was winning whites and winning blacks was by definition the same thing as winning.
« Rural Obama | Main | Show Us The Districts! »
California Exits
05 Feb 2008 11:21 pm
Comments (47)
If Barack Obama wins the nomination, what does he do to shore up Latino support? Pick Bill Richardson? Camp out in heavy Hispanic states in the Southwest?
McCain's immigration stands and being from Arizona means Arizona, New Mexico, and even California might go Republican. Does this almost necessitate a Bill Richardson pick to keep N.M. and CA Democratic?
We've been hearing a lot about the Black-Latino split the past few weeks, so maybe now we are going to start to hear more about the even larger Black-Asian split.
The most exciting race of the night is Missouri. Obama has been creeping up all night as the urban votes come in, and is now withing 3% with a lot of heavy Obama urban precincts coming in. It looks like he might pull it out.
After this, it's hard to argue that the Latinos' preference for Clinton has anything other than to do with racist attitudes toward Obama.
He had the better position on immigration and was endorsed by the major Spanish-language newspaper.
The republicans don't have these kinds of problems-the way a republican wins is by winning the white vote-the end. If identity politics gets out of hand, and if ethnic blocks tend to vote monolithically (and each for different candidates), it's just going to complicate things for the democratic party.
The MSM and pajamas media seem to always default to a racial bias to voting. How come nobody breaks things down by income? How about educational level? You tell me a white collar college educated cuban-american in S.F. is the same as a blue collar high school educated mexican-american in L.A.? It's insulting to voters.
Why not report CA results on a North vs. South basis? It is all gender and race all the time.
I wouldn't have figured Obama to have trouble among Asians, considering his background in plurality-Asian Hawaii. I don't quite get it.
Dan, I'm biased but I have to agree that if Obama could pull out the quintessential bellwether state, it would be the story of the night.
The Latino vote probably gave Hillary New Jersey too, as county breakdowns indicate. Obama carried affluent, lily-white outer suburbs and exurbs but seems to have lost cities like Paterson and Passaic, where Latinos and blacks live side by side.
If Obama wins the nomination of the Democratic Party, I can't imagine that is not the same thing as winning hispanic support for the general election, especially with McCain veering more and more to the right.
Mike, I'd be reluctant to assert racism. It's quite possible that there's a lot of racism and sexism moving votes, but it's also likely that there are a lot of people looking back nostalgically to the relatively idyllic Clinton administration. I'm an enthusiastic and committed Obama supporter, but it's a mistake to impute bad motives to people backing Clinton.
I don't know much about Hawaii's Asian population but California's is by and large conservative and very pro-business. Definitely a Clinton - not Obama - crowd.
ChuckE, I think the thing is that, just as someone pointed out about Latinos, Asians are really, really, really not a monolithic group. Obama will do very well in Hawaii, I have no doubt, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with appealing to Asians who live in California.
Well "guachi" is certainly right about an Obama candidacy having huge potential programs with the crucial Latino swing vote in November. But as I've said before, Bill Richardson would be totally useless in fixing that sort of problem.
Incidentally, I think we see on this thread exactly why Obama does so enormously much better in Caucus states than he does when there's a secret ballot. Basically, lots of Obamabots tend to claim that *everyone* who doesn't support their magnificent candidate is unmasked as a "racist" and since the white liberal Democrats who dominate Democratic primaries really, really hate having anyone think they're "racists", lots of them vote for Obama "under duress." Unfortunately, this strategy doesn't work on November's secret ballot.
Maybe the key is to switch over to the North Korean or whatever system, which doesn't use secret ballots. We mustn't allow "racism" to stop Perfect Barak...
By the way, Clinton had a killer ad in California featuring Cesar L. Chavez (grandson of the labor leader). I have no doubt it was very effective in turning out the Latino vote.
Radio host Eddie "Piolín" Sotelo, named by the L.A. Times as one of the 100 most powerful people in Southern California, has endorsed Clinton. Piolín is credited with being largely responsible for the big pro-immigrant marches a couple years back, so he's got a lot more clout than you would think a morning-show DJ would.
Sorry if this comment is too NYC-centric and too broad of a generalization, but it strikes me that Obama's demographic appeal is similar to that of the NY Yankees (that is African Americans and elite whites), and Clinton's demographic appeal is similar to that of the NY Mets (working class whites and Latinos). I am not sure where Asians fit into the Yankees/Mets divide. They might not fit the analogy.
Of course, Obama more strongly appeals to rural America - those Yankees haters out there, but in the end they are probably going to vote for McCain anyway.
The question is: Will Latinos vote for O if he is the nominee against McCain?
Warren Terra,
Sorry, but sooner or later, people are going to have to face the facts here. People in the Latino community and close to it know this is the reason.
There really is no other explanation. Look at what we have in this thread. Cesar Chavez's grandson? Seriously? And Piolin has not endorsed Clinton as far as I know. In fact, he had Obama and Kennedy on his show and praised him. So that doesn't explain it either.
Is Obama pulling a McCaskill in Missouri? AP called it for Clinton, but now with 97% of the vote in, CNN is reporting a razor thin 4,000 vote margin for Obama. Fascinating...
Of course, Obama more strongly appeals to rural America - those Yankees haters out there, but in the end they are probably going to vote for McCain anyway.
If Obama is the nominee do you think that they would still vote for McCain? I think that this shows that Obama's appeal to these voters is real.
I would personally prefer a Clinton/Obama ticket, but I find it annoying how many Clinton supporters are very dismissive towards red states. They have this weird stance that because Dems are not going to win these states is not important that they even try to make them blue.
RKU,
I agree that one should not overemphasize racism but to say that this is not a factor is quite silly.
MSNBC just called CA for her and McCain, a few minutes ago.
MSNBC just called CA for Clinton and McCain, a few minutes ago.
Unbelievable.
The polls show Missouri going Hillary's way for the last three hours, then at the last minute it looks like Obama won it after all. Lesson learned: Don't fucking call these things before the votes have been counted!
And how long does it take for the media to forget this lesson? About two minutes. Hence the "Hillary wins CA!" headline despite the fact that only 15% of the votes have been counted.
Unbelievable.
I find it extremely annoying when Wolf Blitzer keeps saying that a candidate "will carry" a state when the delegates are not winner-take-all.
"If identity politics gets out of hand, and if ethnic blocks tend to vote monolithically (and each for different candidates), it's just going to complicate things for the democratic party."
The Democratic Party is used to this sort of juggling. Compared to corralling Northern blacks and Southern segregationists for decades, this won't be so hard. The solution is to redistribute enough money from upper middle class tax payers to blacks and Latinos to buy the votes of both groups.
"By the way, Clinton had a killer ad in California featuring Cesar L. Chavez (grandson of the labor leader)."
You mean labor leader and nativist. Remember, Chavez was against importing cheap labor from Mexico.
Listen, I understand it's difficult and somewhat insulting to always play the racist canard when Obama loses but I have never, ever, been given a simple explanation, either policy or character oriented, that would explain why Hispanics monolithically vote for Clinton. Honestly, what explains this demographic trend if not outright hostility towards a black candidate? Are Hispanics culturally insulted by memes of "change?" What is it?
Go ahead break it down by education/income, whatever...simply put, Hispanics break overwhelmingly for Hillary. Why? Because of her awesome triangulation on the "driver's license for illegals" legislation in NY? I really want to know. I'm happy to shut my mouth and admit I don't know what the f*ck I'm talking about (I am, after all, an ivory tower liberal elite - and a white one at that) but I just have never been offered a compelling alternate explanation.
Historically, Hispanic voters in Illinois have had no problem supporting Obama.
So I really think that rather than looking for reasons why they are not (yet) supporting him in other states, it might be more fruitful to look for reasons why they might be supporting Clinton (so far).
Question:
Why don't Latinos totally love fabulous, wonderful Obama the way all decent non-racists do?!!
Answer:
(1) Hillary and her husband Bill were very popular among Latinos in the past. Having the same name as someone you already voted for twice helps.
(2) In California, Hillary had the endorsement of virtually every prominent Latino political figure. Offhand, I can't think of a single prominent Latino endorser or supporter of Obama anywhere in America. He also shows no sign of knowing anything about Latinos or understanding their issues.
(3) Hillary's campaign and policies are much more focused on the sort of economic bread-and-butter issues that appeal to working-class Latino voters.
(4) Obama has a very peculiar, exceptionally unfortunate name. Voters tend not to support people they've never heard of who have very peculiar, exceptionally unfortunate names.
(5) In general, Latinos don't like blacks or get along with them well, pretty much anywhere in the country. (Score one for "racism"!).
(6) Finally, I'd say that Obama is about the least-qualified, least-experienced candidate in modern American political history who's gotten this close to a major party nomination. I'd bet there are dozens of local Latino elected officials in CA and elsewhere who are far, far more plausible as the Democratic nominee. Guess it must be anti-Latino racism that's keeping each of them from being the nominee...
RKU: Man, you suck.
And while you've made it obvious in previous posts that you don't know much about Obama, now you're just pointing out that you don't know much about Latinos in California either.
Obama supported drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants while Clinton didn't. You don't think that's important to Latinos? He got the endorsement of multiple Latino leaders -- Linda Sanchez, Cesar Chavez's brother AND grandson, I could go on and on. But clearly you're not one of those people who can be swayed by facts.
New Mexico and Hawaii also have unusual ethnic makeups that make something like this possible, but almost no black people live in those states
Hey, it ain't our fault our black guy moved to Illinois.
"If Barack Obama wins the nomination,"
He's not going to win the nomination. Hillary won the big states--the states that will likely be blue in the general. Obama won the little states, many of which will be red states. Hillary won the Hispanic vote and the Asian vote--and the Asians, in particular, will likely go for McCain if Obama's the candidate. Probably Hispanics, too.
As you said, if Obama's the nominee, California's in play. The Democrats aren't complete idiots; the leadership's current panting for Obama notwithstanding.
It's not happening.
C,Michol:
It's always nice when someone proves my exact point...
Obama's supporting drivers' licenses for illegals is a perfect example of how totally clueless he is regarding issues in the Latino community. As an example, absolutely none of the many leading CA Latino figures would be stupid enough to go near it with a ten-foot pole. And Rodriguez---that extremely powerful Latino union leader in NY---publicly cursed Spitzer for having totally destroyed his own political capital over such a marginal and hopeless issue.
I haven't seen any recent polling, but I'd suspect that at least half of Latino voters *themselves* oppose giving drivers licenses to illegals.
Obama's not a bad fellow. But I think he'd probably lose something like fifty states in November...
"He's not going to win the nomination. Hillary won the big states--the states that will likely be blue in the general. Obama won the little states, many of which will be red states. Hillary won the Hispanic vote and the Asian vote--and the Asians, in particular, will likely go for McCain if Obama's the candidate. Probably Hispanics, too.
As you said, if Obama's the nominee, California's in play. The Democrats aren't complete idiots; the leadership's current panting for Obama notwithstanding."
You don't seem to understand how this works. Winning the blue states isn't a plus for the democratic nominee, because the blue states are going to vote for the democrat anyway. You think California democrats are really going to get all pissy if they have to choose between Obama and McCain instead of Hillary? That's silly. Obama's popularity in the red states is a strategic advantage in a general election-Hillary's popularity in the blue states is just a given.
I'm always perplexed when people make the argument that it is somehow more important for a candidate to win delegates from states in which the party's nominee is already likely to win the general election. Unless you have some good reason to believe the other candidates for the nomination would be unacceptable to those voters (and the polls say just the opposite, at least on the Democratic side), those are actually the least important delegates, not the most important delegates, when it comes to judging the possibilities for the general election map.
Similarly, it may or may not be the case that various former "red states" will be in play. But those states are at least proxies for the Republican-leaning areas in "purple states", and not losing those areas as badly as they have been lost in the past actually could contribute greatly to winning the "purple states" (again assuming the candidate in question is not unacceptable to the voters in the Democratic-leaning portions of "purple states").
Of course all this is easy to see when you look at the other party. Does any Democrats believe John McCain is a weaker Republican candidate for the general election than Mitt Romney because McCain won California and Romney won Montana? And yet somehow some people seem to have trouble achieving the same perspective on their own party's candidates.
"Obama's popularity in the red states is a strategic advantage in a general election"
Nearly all states are winner-take-all in the Electoral College, so it won't help Obama if he comes in a strong second in a red state, just like it won't help McCain coming in a strong second in a blue state.
RKU: As I said, clearly you don't know the issues in CALIFORNIA and you don't know the players either. A majority of Latinos in California say the issue is important to them. And you don't have any response to the Latino endorsements he got here, either, probably because you haven't heard of these people.
Hillary Clinton cannot win an election against John McCain. It is that simple.
DTM: You are exactly right.
I always believed that Clinton would win the nomination due to structural factors but the reason I use the phrase if Obama wins the nomination because anything can happen.
Obama the least experienced candidate. Compare to Hillary, he has held elective office far longer than she. In comparison to Dubya and Huckabee, he has a better grasp of foreign policy than these two.
Could it be most latino voters are not well informed? Clinton , sure I remember Bill, right. you gotta do your homework. Hillary, nice gal. Pro war in Iraq. no matter what she's saying on campaign trail.
Wall street is rooting for her you can be sure. I guess if you want to relive lewinsky, paula jones, whitewater and all that nonsense all over again and getaway from real problems facing the nation right
now, then maybe she's the one for you. Obama is the
best choice right now.
May have been said above, but Obama is a sure thing in Hawaii due to the local connection: he lived in Honolulu from 5th to 12th grade, vacationed in HI every year until just this past xmas, and his maternal grandmother still lives in a condo in Maikiki.(note not Waikiki) Ethnicity has nothing to do with this particular race.
"Obama's popularity in the red states is a strategic advantage in a general election"
No, it's not. As Fred points out, getting second gets you nothing. Unless he puts a red state in play--and there's no sign that he will--his popularity there does nothing.
And yes, I am saying that there's a huge risk that Hispanics and Asians will vote for McCain in California if the alternative is Obama.
Obama was the only Dem candidate who refused to sign a pledge on appointing Asian judges and working to eliminate discrimination against Asians. They won't forget.
If Obama's the nominee, McCain can put the Hispanic vote in play in many Western states. It's the one area his "soft on immigration" stance will help him. If Hillary's the nominee, that won't be a factor.
RKU--
6) Finally, I'd say that Obama is about the least-qualified, least-experienced candidate in modern American political history who's gotten this close to a major party nomination.
OK, I get it when the Rethugs ignore Bush. What's your excuse?
"Obama's supporting drivers' licenses for illegals is a perfect example of how totally clueless he is regarding issues in the Latino community. As an example, absolutely none of the many leading CA Latino figures would be stupid enough to go near it with a ten-foot pole. And Rodriguez---that extremely powerful Latino union leader in NY---publicly cursed Spitzer for having totally destroyed his own political capital over such a marginal and hopeless issue.
I haven't seen any recent polling, but I'd suspect that at least half of Latino voters *themselves* oppose giving drivers licenses to illegals..."
How right you are! Latino voters are NOT illegals, they are citizens, and many are the most directly threatened by cheap ultra-exploitable immigrant workers. Hillary's wonkishness on immigration reform respects their needs and their intelligence, plus she has a track record with the community.
A late embrace of driver's licenses for illegals just doesn't stand up to all that.
Also, many, many, Latino voters are LATINAS. They
respect Senora Clinton for sticking with her erring husband, which is what they are raised to do as Catholics when they marry.
These are just some factors in Hillaria's appeal to Latinos and Latinas, but all the Obamanista's can see is "racism". How pathetic and insulting!
What's the deal with Edwards getting 8% in California? It seems to have hurt Obama's chances in at least a dozen districts. Did CA not get the memo last week that Edwards dropped out?
calling all toasters:
Touche!!!
But Bush's name partly made up for it. I remember seeing some polls that around 20% of his Republican primary voters in 2000 thought they were voting for his father. In some cases, they even told the interviewers how young he looked, and that the eight years out of office had done wonders for his vim and vigor...
RKU:"I remember seeing some polls that around 20% of his Republican primary voters in 2000 thought they were voting for his father."
Are you serious about that?
I think we need genetic culling of the unfit to be the major campaign issue starting now if that is true.
How the hell can you run a democracy when 20% of the voters don't even know which human being they're voting for? And twice that probably don't know what he stands for?
I mean, Jesus Baron Von Christ...
RKU wrote:
I haven't seen any recent polling, but I'd suspect that at least half of Latino voters *themselves* oppose giving drivers licenses to illegals.
You're half-right--the poll here says your guess is correct for native-born latinos and barely correct for latinos who are registered voters (which means it might well be incorrect if we factored out Republican latinos, about 23% according to this), but incorrect for all latinos in the U.S. including the foreign-born. The numbers are:
"Hispanics are divided in their views of laws that deny drivers’ licenses to unauthorized migrants with 41% saying they approve of measures that prohibit licenses to anyone who is here illegally or without authorization while 55% disapprove. Among the native born 60% approve of such laws while 29% disapprove. The foreign born split the other way with 29% approving and 66% disapproving. A slight majority (53%) of Latino registered voters said they approve of such measures."
But why assume Obama was just trying to pander to latino voters? He may genuinely believe it's the most sensible policy for various reasons (lowers the number of accidents where drivers don't have insurance, prevents illegal immigrants from being afraid to talk to police about crimes, and so forth).
While I can't speak for Hispanics, when I worked in Asia for 12 years I can't tell you how many times I heard Chinese and Koreans spout racist crap. It was directed at blacks and the "darker type" Asians such as Filipinos, Indonesians, Malays, etc. Seriously, many of these people have fucked up views on color and race.
Comments closed February 19, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
How things *are* changing? How's about how things have already changed?
Posted by Chris | February 5, 2008 11:29 PM