I don't want to further harm the name of The New Republic among Obama supporters, but they have two further stories up analysing Obama's chances, and I think they're interesting.
The current narrative is that Obama will sweep home all the primary states this month, and then face trouble in OH, TX and PA. But was it smart of the Obama campaign to basically reinforce the impression that all of the primaries this month are in Obama country? It's not exactly managing expectations, and these two items preview how the races in Virginia and, yes, Hawaii might be more fraught than is generally accepted:
Neither piece is particularly
down on Obama; but both are pretty level-headed down to the nitty-gritty analysis of the forces at play.
Key excerpts about Hawaii:
Quote:Barack Obama will probably win Hawaii on February 19. He does have a "home state" advantage and an organizational edge, since the state has a caucus. But here's something to ponder: almost 60% of Hawaiians are Asian Americans--as Isaac pointed out, by far the most anti-Obama demographic in the United States in the primaries thus far. [N]ot to mention that Hawaii's Democrats are notorious machine politicians, closely tied to the military and to huge unions that are officially in the tank for Clinton. [..]
[A] local expert, Ira Rohter from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, reveals that the Democratic establishment is aggressively working to inoculate the state against Obama--priming their warhorses, the two biggest government unions, for a major turnout effort and bringing professional organizers from the mainland.
During the 2004 primaries, Dennis Kucinich apparently caught them by surprise, coming in second place with the help of left-wing progressive organizers. Now warned, they've vowed to prevent a repeat performance by Obama. [..]
[A]s always, Obama's campaign has focused on community organization in a way that Hillary's doesn't even attempt to do. "They're doing all the right things," Rohter, a campaign-organization junkie, tells me. [But] the Democratic establishment there is powerful, and it's fighting him with everything it has.
Key excerpts about Virginia:
Quote:Virginia [..] tends to get lumped in with Maryland and D.C. into the "Potomac Primary" on Tuesday. But Virginia's demographic profile is much less favorable to Obama than its Beltway cousins and the Deep South states where he's won so far. It's a border state, and only 19.9 percent black. Its closest demographic parallels among states that have voted so far are Tennessee, where Obama lost by 13 points, and Missouri, where he won by only ten thousand votes.
In 2004, African Americans made up 33 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in Virginia. If the proportion is the same this year and Obama wins them 80-20, he'd need about 37 percent of the white vote to win the state. That's certainly achievable, given his totals elsewhere. But it's no sure thing. In Tennessee, he won only 26 percent of the white vote; in Missouri he won 39 percent. In other Southern states his totals have ranged from to 25 percent (Alabama) to 43 percent (Georgia).
Is there reason to believe that Virginia's white Democratic electorate will be more predisposed to vote for Obama than it was in Missouri and (especially) Tennessee? Yes, due to the growing strength of upscale, educated liberals in the Washington suburbs. But while this difference is real, it isn't overwhelming. Using income as a proxy, in 2004, 18 percent of Democratic primary voters in Virginia made more than $100,000. This year, in Missouri and Tennessee, the comparable figures were 15 percent and 14 percent. That edge goes up slightly when one includes voters making between $75,000 and $100,000 per year, but those voters aren't as reliably pro-Obama as their richer counterparts. In short, one would guess that Obama would do somewhat better among whites in Virginia than he did in Missouri and Tennessee--but not dramatically better, all else equal. [..]
[E]ven if Obama wins the statewide vote, the delegate count might not break his way, since his strongest supporters, African Americans, are packed heavily into two of the state's eleven congressional districts. Overall, Obama can expect to have the edge in four districts (the two heavily black districts and two more in the Washington suburbs), while Clinton can plan on doing well in four heavily white districts in exurban and rural Virginia. The remaining three districts remain up for grabs. [..]
So why is Virginia [..] being lumped in so casually with the other Obama-friendly states? It could well be [because] DC-based pundits say to themselves, "Well, I live in Virginia, and all my friends are voting for Obama, so he must be the favorite." But that's a misleading picture--in 2004, only 28 percent of Democratic primary votes in the state were cast in the inner Washington suburbs [..]. There are still quite a few beer-track, culturally conservative white Democrats in other parts of the state. The primary can be seen, in part, as a contest between pundit Tom Schaller's Virginia (wherein Democrats win by strengthening the Obama coalition of blacks and upscale whites) and political consultant Dave "Mudcat" Saunders's Virginia (wherein they win by peeling off working-class rural whites--and by swearing. A lot.) Neither one of these camps is clearly stronger than the other, which is exactly why commentators should expect the Democratic primary to be close. [..]
The Obama team [has] done nothing so far to temper the developing narrative that any Obama loss prior to March 4 would be a big upset. In fact, they've stoked it. [..] The Clinton campaign, by contrast, seems to be deliberately nursing that narrative, while making a strong below-the-radar play for Virginia [..]. An unexpected Clinton win in Virginia--which should not really be unexpected at all--might be enough to deflate Obama's strong February [..].
