Election 2008: Clinton's Electability and Obama's Stunning Grass Roots Campaign

Not Your Grandfather or Grandmother’s Campaign

There’s a very good article in the March 20, 2008 Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson about the structure and operations of Obama’s grass roots organization (The Machinery of Hope). It discusses the Obama camps, four-day intensive seminars on organizing, which have trained about 7000 organizers thus far who, in turn, go back to their various states and help organize Obama’s efforts there. The article also discusses Obama’s use of social networking sights and how he enlisted one of the founders of Facebook to create his own site, mybarackobama.com, to not only get new recruits but to allow organizers access names, telephone numbers, and emails of organizers at the precinct level. With such ground level organization it is easy to see how Obama has wiped out Clinton’s top-down organizational structure in especially the caucus states.

It’s all about the General Election, Stupid

There are a lot of print journalists and television news geeks who just don’t get it. Hillary Clinton thus far clearly appears more electible in the general election than Barack Obama. It isn’t so much a matter of big states, as so many say—California and New York will likely go to either candidate in the general election—but the big swing states like Ohio and Florida.

For the last several elections the pattern of red and blue states has been pretty clear and this time around should be no different. Once again, the presidency will come down to the swingers. All indications are that Clinton would do better in these states in November than Obama. Not only has she won these states in the primary, but the demographics favor her—Latinos, expatriate New Yorkers, and lunch bucket Democrats in Florida, working class Dems in Ohio, with fewer blacks and latte-drinking liberals than some other states. Sad, but true, a lot of these working class voters will go to McCain before they would vote for Obama.

In her article for USA Today, “Super delegate’ Dem choice may hinge on electabilty,” Jill Lawrence includes the following to support her argument that the issue of whether Clinton or Obama is most electible in the general election based on primary victories is a muddle--

“It is always very dubious to say somebody winning a primary or caucus will end up necessarily winning a general election," says Andrew Dowdle, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas.

Historian Eric Rauchway of the University of California, Davis, says, "There's no correlation at all between your performance in primaries and your performance in a general election."

While there is no simple correlation between the numbers Clinton received in Ohio in March and how she would do in November, her performance there against Obama clearly indicates that she would be more likely than he to do well in Ohio in November. Clinton is doing well in the swing states for a reason—she appeals more to voters in these States than does Obama—the demographics in these states are simply more favorable to her. This means, if nothing else, that she would be more likely than him to win these states in November. I’ll buy the argument, though, that winning the Wyoming or Idaho Democratic caucuses is pretty meaningless. No Democrat has won the general election there in ages and no Democrat, much less a liberal Democrat, will be winning there anytime soon.

If Clinton wins Pennsylvania in April there will be little question that she would be the candidate most likely to beat McCain. The only question, then, will be whether the superdelegates have what it takes to cast their lots with her instead of the candidate who will almost certainly be leading in pledged delegates and number of states won. My guess is that unless Clinton wins the popular vote, the superdelegates will go with Obama, even knowing that his chances in November will not be good.