DUCKPOND

Obama has a poll lead of 7 percent in North Carolina, so he is expected to win there, leaving Indiana and his support among “Euro-Americans”, and particularly the working class as critical to his chance of finally clinching the nomination. Similarly, if Clinton win significantly in Indiana and possibily take North Carolina her chances are substantially improved.

David Usborne in The Independent noted:

An Associated Press-Yahoo poll did not offer the Obama camp much respite. It showed that 53 per cent of white adults with no college education viewed the candidate unfavourably, up a dozen points since a similar survey in November. The poll also continued to suggest that white working-class Americans lean overwhelmingly towards Mrs Clinton.

The problem Obama has in dealing with Clinton’s phony play acting that if he attacks her too harshly he might lose credibility with his base of more educated and more middle class supporters. As Glenn Greenwald never stops reminding us it is not as if there is a shortage of real issues, not least the war and the economy. The trivialization and the distraction is being, he argues ( I think credibly) by the corporate media.

In The Guardian, Michael Tomasky observed:

For months now, the race has been Barack Obama’s to lose. He’s had a number of opportunities to end this contest with just one win, and he hasn’t been able to do it. Some of this has to do with Hillary Clinton’s destructive “kitchen sink” campaign, which began in late February when she was in danger of being chased from the race, and which lately has placed her perilously close to positioning herself in almost rightwing populist terms the better to tag Obama an “elitist”.

Some of it has to do with the aggressive vetting of Obama by the media on sometimes dubious questions. And, no doubt, some of it has to do with plain old racism, which has not, wouldn’t you know it, disappeared from American life.

But some of it has to do with Obama himself, and his campaign. And if he does end up losing the nomination – I think there’s about a 40% chance of it now, though I’m still in the minority among US commentators in thinking it’s that high – some of the finger-pointing will have to be aimed at the mirror.

There’s been a paradox at the heart of the Obama campaign, and it goes like this. He has been, for millions of voters, a great inspirational leader, with a unique talent for defining the historical moment; but at the same time, in many ways, he hasn’t been a very good day-to-day campaigner. Campaigns must have Big Themes, sure. But at ground level they are largely about controlling the daily and weekly grind of issues. “Winning the headlines,” it’s sometimes called. The campaigns that win are generally those that pull this off.

Now think of the issues – and here I mean actual issues, not lapel pins – that have been front and centre since Clinton started her run in early March. They’ve included the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta); preparedness to be commander-in-chief; the federal gas tax; and, of course, the lamentable Jeremiah Wright, which, distinct from lapel pins, has indeed been a legitimate issue.

The 40% chance of Obama losing the nomination is, I think, a very interesting (and probably) accurate subjective judgment. I think too that Michael Tomasky is likely to be spot on about Obama’s failure to master the “winning the headlines”, but his campaign has not been just about rhetoric, it has been about connecting with community groups and activists and that has worked well in the caucuses. I think that Obama made a serious mistake by throwing Wright under the bus, instead he should have spoken as Revered Wright did about reconciliation – and thereby made his lost certain?

Clinton is making the most of her fighter image, and chides Obama for his failure to “close the deal”.

Just as supporters praise her “toughness” and “tenacity,” critics also describe her as “divisive,” “a dirty fighter,” or “willing to do anything to win.”

“She has learned how to be ruthless,” said Robert B. Reich, an Obama supporter who served as President Clinton’s secretary of labor. “I doubt that it came to her naturally, but she has learned.”

While Clinton is casting herself as a warrior for ordinary Americans who need jobs and healthcare and cheaper gasoline, she is also establishing a contrast with her opponent, suggesting that he is an untested lightweight.

When asked if the fighting motif could go too far, Clinton acknowledged that it could, but then quickly contrasted her aggressive style with Obama’s. His campaign “has been about creating an atmosphere,” she said. “I’ve never understood that. Because it’s not easy. I’ve been in a lot of these fights.”

It is not that Clinton has never understood Obama’s rhetorical ability it is that she lacks that attribute, which might be very useful in a president.Understanding this strange phoniness goes beyond politics.

David Kaiser has an explanation that incorporates the movies, All the Kings Men and Primary Colors. He identifies the Hillary character:

When the book came out in the 1990s, attention focused upon Jack Stanton, the charismatic, philandering governor of an unnamed southern state (capital: Mammoth Falls), whose campaign hires an old friend to anticipate and deal with accusations of adultery. His wife Susan was alternately calm and violent, precise and foul-mouthed–a portrait which Hillary Clinton’s friends immediately denounced, but which, I was informed by an acquaintance who had been in an excellent position to know, was actually totally accurate. Susan/Hillary was often infuriated by her husband–whom she described to a new acquaintance, the narrator, as “a faithless, thoughtless, disorganized, undisciplined shit”–but the chains that bound them together–a common ambition for power–were far more powerful than any ordinary love. His antics reduced her to tears, violence, and, on one occasion, adulterous retaliation, but the campaign always came first. And in the film, Emma Thompson gave a magnificent performance.

Indiana represents the last best chance for Obama to win before the issue of the nomination is place before the superdelegates who will be concerned with the electability issue and the effect of the voter turnout in November. One issue that has arisen is the contention that Catholic voters have disproportionately have supported Clinton. Brian C Mooney writing in The Boston Globe disputes this contention:

For about two months, pundits and analysts have been culling exit poll data from recent primaries to contend that Obama has a problem winning support from Catholic voters in his bruising struggle with Senator Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination.

Last week, a group of former national party chairmen who support Clinton drove home that point in a letter to members of the Democratic National Committee, part of a Clinton effort to stop the steady movement of superdelegates to Obama.

They wrote that Catholics are part of a Clinton electoral base that includes women, Hispanics, seniors, middle- and low-income Americans, and rural, suburban, and urban voters. They called it “a formidable coalition tailor-made for victory in a November general election.”

But for both campaigns, the issue of Catholic voters reflects the reality of a Democratic electorate that has split along lines of class, race, gender, and age.

The gathering of Catholics for Obama near Notre Dame last week reinforced a perception that if Obama has a weakness among Catholics, it is with those who fit into other demographic subdivisions: women and older, less educated and lower-income voters, groups that Clinton has attracted.

Well if Obama has problems with older, white, female, working class Euro-Americans (despite his mother’s ancestry) then Clinton has a problem with Afro-Americans. Thomas F Schaller on Salon, uses the conventional racist terms in his observation:

Though a majority of black voters may inevitably have gone for Obama, nothing precluded the wife of the so-called first black president from keeping Obama’s margins among blacks significantly narrower — say, losing to him by 4-to-1 or even 3-to-1, rather than the devastating 9-to-1 margins by which Obama has often won African-American Democrats. “The Clinton campaign has been focused on Barack Obama’s performance with white working-class voters in a few states, but they fail to mention Senator Clinton’s abysmal performance with black voters all over the country,” says political consultant and Obama supporter Jamal Simmons. “She has gone from leading among black voters to losing them 90 percent to 10 percent in Pennsylvania. One would expect Obama to win these voters, but 90-10 is a total collapse that Obama is not experiencing among any constituency. Simply put, Hillary Clinton has a black problem.”

Similarly, Charles M Blow, a makes the same points, with nice graphs in The New York Times, and makes the extraordinary suggestion that Afro-Americans might be tempted to support John McCain.

After the results are in tomorrow, and assuming the status quo remains, the pressure is then on the remaining undecided superdelegates dealing with a fractured political base, a result that surely not foreseen when the primary process was designed.

ELSEWHERE:

Terry Flew, guest posting at Larvatus Prodeo, makes the point that I should have made that if Obama is rejected by the superdelegates, the odds are that the Democrats will split, thus giving the election to the Republicans. If that happens, McCain probably wins. Clinton, he says, is pitching to the “Reagan Democrats” who he describes as:

. . .white voters, often older or less educated, anxious about change, deeply patriotic, and suspicious of liberal reformers.

Such people see accurately that “liberal” elitists look down on them. There is a conflict of values. Isn’t social polarization fun? I suspect that the One Nation/Reagan Democrats are trying to affirm their self esteem. The nonviolent thing to do is to respect other people and find some basis of common universal needs and go down the path of violence and even fascism. I suspect the real condemnation lies with those attempting to manipulate these, understandable reactions to life circumstances, through the public relations/media industry.

Everyone of us is responsible for those around us, and while there are limits to that responsibility, but in practice it is greater for those who are more privileged, and maybe even more developed talents. We should recognize the way in which our attitudes affect others. Truth telling, however desirable especially for any person who exercises power over another, is not for that reason always politic.The fundamental problem here is that people have been told that they are isolated and on their own contending with powerful economic and political systems. The alternative is to develop a sense of common purpose to meet common universal human needs, to develop compassionate listening so that we do not segment human experience, for example along class and racial lines,to recognize and cherish human diversity, and realize that if people are kept in a cellar all their lives they are more than likely be subject to extreme sickness.

Truthdig notes quoting The Political Wire that Obama is likely to win North Carolina and Clinton, Indiana. It comes to this I think: If Clinton can destroy Obama, then McCain, one of the most unlikely presidents ever, not counting the incumbent, can win. And then, my fellow people of Earth, what happens to the world?