Thoughtful post as usual, Josh. You undoubtedly will be set on by those who repeatedly charge that a substantial slice of Hillary voters are racists. Mark Warner was my candidate before he decided to not opt in. I would add one qualifier: Southern generic Democratic white dude. Warner might have spanned the divide. If he would have become a going concern, the Hillary haters woudn't have had Hillary to hate and those put off by Obama would likely have not been so alienated by a Warner candidacy.

Thanks for your sensible observations. The truth is, because they represent historic, culture changing firsts, both Obama and Clinton have always presented some risk for the party as presidential nominees. But Obama's weakness, as illustrated by his performance in the primaries, doesn't appears to be race as much as it is the same weakness as other Democratic candidates in recent years -- class. The surprising thing is that during the course of these primary campaigns Clinton has somehow overcome the patronizing, meritocratic class image that has so afflicted and worked against Democrats in recent decades. That she has done so is quite surprising -- Democrats, including Obama, could benefit by seriously examing how she has done so.  

Maybe they should put West Virginia earlier into the Primary Calendar to represent the Appalachia "rust belt" region - Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia... or have all of those states vote on the same day (w/o Texas) so that the candidates will address the regional issues those states face.

Here's to hoping the Celtics channel the Sox rather than the Pats.

I think what is now appearing to be Obama's talking points against McCain (see "The New McCain Riff In Obama's Speech" as an example) will sway many of those who said they wouldn't vote for him.  Compared to either McCain (or Kerry!), Obama is articulate, energizing and passionate about issues that really affect the middle and lower classes of America.  That's what has energized new voters and will be what wins the election for him.

egan.blogs.nytimes.com/.../white-on-white

White On White

She’s got her white voters. He’s got his. Her whites go to church every week. His whites are more secular. Her whites have dirt under their fingernails. His are more likely to be changing ink cartridges in the office. Her whites like the hard stuff. His whites will choose Oregon pinot.

It makes you want to scream: enough with the hierarchal rankings of white Democratic voters.

But what Tuesday’s stumble-to-the-finish-line vote showed is that this sort of regional race trumpeting is largely meaningless — unless put in the correct context for the general election.

Consider the media shorthand for both Kentucky and West Virginia, where Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by huge margins. These are hard-working, real Americans, the Clinton camp says, and a Democrat can’t win without them.

In fact, both West Virginia and Kentucky have gone against the national tide of the last 8 years and have been trending Republican. Also – and this needs to be said – a significant percentage of the voters in both those states have now indicated that they may not vote for a fellow Democrat simply because he’s black.

Pollsters know that people lie about race; voters rarely come out and say they will not vote for someone because he’s black. Instead, they say things like we’re hearing from West Virginia and Kentucky – that “race is a factor.”

In Kentucky, over 25 percent of Clinton supporters said race was a factor in their vote – about five times the national average for such a question. Clinton, if she really wanted to do something lasting, could ask her supporters why the color of a fellow Democrat’s skin is so important to their vote.

Now, consider the argument that a Democrat needs these states. In 2000, George Bush won West Virginia 52 to 46 percent. Four years later, he’d increased his margin to 56-43.

In Kentucky, Bush won 57-41 in 2000, and padded that to 60-40 four years later.

Appalachia, we now know, is Clinton’s heartland – but it does not resemble the Democratic landscape. If these are Democratic states, there’s some strange serum in the local brew at party headquarters.

On to Oregon, where Obama won by double digits. A bunch of chai tea sipping elitists, with zero body fat, living in hip lofts while working at Nike, yes? No. Well, they do like running, and tea. Oregon is one of the nation’s whitest states – just under 2 percent of residents are black – but rich it is not. The state is below the national average in both per capita income and median household income.

This suggests that Obama doesn’t have a white working class problem so much as a regional problem, in a place where Democrats won’t win anyway.

In Oregon, voters’ surveys show Obama essentially tied Clinton for the blue collar vote while running up a big victory.

And Oregon, unlike West Virginia and Kentucky, may actually be in play for the general election. Al Gore won it by barely 7,000 votes in 2000, a margin that went up to 60,000 votes in 2004. McCain’s advisers say he’s a perfect fit for the state – independent, somewhat maverick.

So, from a purely strategic point of view, the ability to win white blue-collar voters in an open-minded swing state is certainly more important than a solid red state. I would include Pennsylvania in that equation. Just weeks after all the talk of Obama’s problems in the Keystone state, most polls now show him beating McCain in the general election.

What happened in the last few weeks is that Appalachia, in a 24-7 media hothouse, skewed perception. We stared at it far too long, parsing it for meaning beyond its historic range and its hard prejudices.

The Gallup poll this week showed that the rest of the nation is closer to Oregon. Gallup’s daily national tracking poll of Democratic voters found Obama tied Clinton among white voters. He’s tied among people with no college. He’s actually leading – yes, leading! – with women. With the young, he’s leading 3-1. Clinton’s last demographic is women over 50.

So, for Democrats: hello life, goodbye Appalachia.

I think that the main way that Hillary overcame the "the patronizing, meritocratic class image that has so afflicted and worked against Democrats in recent decades" was by being married to Bill Clinton and being able to utilize the goodwill that he built up among working-class white Democrats, especially in her hour of need against a more liberal opponent.  Her serial reinventions since 1994 have helped her a bit, but the relationship to Bill was always key.  I'm not sure how Obama would be able to replicate that strategy.

esmense, I don't think so, I think she simply got the anti-Obama vote in addition to her core supporters. Certainly Obama has gotten millions of poor people, that they are black should not be a disqualification. Hillary essentially has done well only in Appalachia, the Hispanic west, and a Gov. Patrick weary Mass. And if it hadn't been for Obama's Wrightmare, he would most likely have won Indiana as well. Hillary literally represents the past, her coalition of old people, uneducated white rubes, and nutty feminists is not something to build a party on. If Obama does lose, in 4 years Hillary will be shocked to see her "I told you so" campaign flame out early on as people like Mark Warner crush her.

One of the oddities of all of the punditry has been the notion that a candidate has to capture a majority of one particular demographic or another in order to win.  That simply is not the case.  Each vote counts once.  If you get enough votes in the demographics you lose but get a lot more in the demographics you win, you win.  And even an analysis by demographic segments needs to take account of electoral votes.  E.g., the Hispanic voters are a large bloc, but they don't all vote in one state called Hispania.  In which states are the likely to make the difference? The discussion about white, working-class voters is meaningless until it is considered state by state.

As I look at the Rasmussen analysis of the Electoral College, the must win state for Obama is MI.  Very hard to see how he can put together the necessary votes without it.  On the other hand, both FL and OH are must win states for McCain.  If Obama can figure out a campaign strategy that holds MI and takes OH, McCain is busted.

So, what are the "movable" segments of the electorate in those states?  How can they be moved?  These are the questions that you ought to be discussing and one hopes the Obama campaign is investigating very carefully.  Given the genius of David Axelrod, I would be astonished if he isn't hard on the task.

Now that the primaries are effectively over, a bit more insight from TNR would be very welcome.  We don't need the perpetual recycling of the contrarian CW.

Over at The Plank, Josh Patashnik makes an argument about the limited appeal of both Obama and Clinton: [W]hat's become clear at the end of this primary season is that neither Democratic candidate's appeal is as wide as Democrats would prefer. It's difficult

The great myth here is that Hillary somehow transformed herself in a manner that changed the course of the election, just too little too late.  Only in the collective mind of the media.  Right after TX-OH-VT-RI, which was when Hillary lost the race by failing to gain anything, it was evident from the polls, even back then before Hillary's "transformation" into a Republican cocktail waitress, that PA-IN-NC were most likely to be a wash.  In the event, Obama gained 3 net delegates.  Even back then, it was relatively easy to estimate that Hillary would gain 20, with a best case of 30, net delegates in the final round of WV through MT.  As of today, her strong showing in KY makes 28 the most likely number.  Net since March 4, 25 delegates to Hillary.  What was the median estimate based on the state by state polls as of March?  25 delegates to Hillary.

In short, NOTHING has really changed since March 4.  But that's not a good story, so the media writes a narrative that seems more compelling -- about the horse-race, Hillary's revival of her campaign, and blah, blah, blah.  

The NY Times had it exactly right in this case with their story showing Appalachia as a region.  Of 410 counties, Obama won only 48.  But Kerry won only 48 in the region in 2004 and Gore, from Tennesee, won only 66.  Hillary, the "Republican" Democrat beats Obama in Appalachia.  So what?  It's solid red in any case, no more meaningful than her winning the popular vote in TX.

Could someone have bridged the divide?

In a word: No. There was no one who could have pried women away from Clinton or put together a larger coalition than Obama. Warner would have gotten some of those youth votes and all of those creative class votes but Clinton would have crushed him in the south among African Americans. I suppose a Warner vs. Sebelius  vs. Edwards race might have produced a little less division but wouldn't it still be going on too?

No, I think this year had to happen. Obama was the only prospect Clinton wouldn't have rolled over and Clinton was the only one he wouldn't have.  He would have finished off John Edwards in New Hampshire and she would have finished him off in North Carolina.

Also, the underlying counterfactual question here -- could some other Democrat not in the race, like Warner, have been a universally unifying figure for all non-Republican voters? -- suffers from the fatal flaw of not accounting for Hillary. Even if Mark Warner had stayed in the presidential race and somehow cobbled together a coalition of the early voters who instead split for Obama and Edwards, Hillary would still have been in the race. The divisiveness and hardening of intraparty hostility is the inevitable result of Hillary's extended presence in the race. Geraldine Ferraro and her ilk would not have "oh, well, right then, boys win again" had it been Mark Warner, not Barack Obama, as the main non-Hillary candidate.

It is merely piling on to the very fine observations of posters above, but:

Hillary's campaign strategy, organization, and persona were brittle, but had Obama not come on the scene, she probably would have pulled it off through the combination of the "inevitability" argument, her inherited star-power, and the lack of a compelling opponent.  But even if she had pulled it off, she would have been a risky candidate.  Only because she carries the Clinton name can she even be a serious contender for the office of president with her high negatives.  Those are routinely understood by professionals to be political death, a much worse problem than low positives or low name-recognition because it is hard to change negative attitudes that have already hardened.  She would also have been in trouble because McCain trumps her on her campaign themes of "tested, vetted, ready."  With all that, she still might have won because the present conditions are shaping up as the Perfect Storm for Republicans, but the party would have been listless and there would have been a lot of ill will toward her in any case.

In the real world, this brilliant, young politician came on the scene at just the right moment to expose all of Hillary's weaknesses.  That is in part because he could see what they were and how she could be beaten.  Would there have been someone else who would have made the same observations and been in a position to exploit them?  Possible, but not likely.  Too much lightning in one place at one time.

But for Obama, Hillary would have been the nominee and quite possibly the next president, but the party and the country would have been as divided as it is now.

This post leaves out the next step, though: which candidate can most effectively win over the Democratic voters who have had their natural first choice eliminated?

One more element to Roid's lightning strike point ... Obama's surreal uber-popularity here in Illinois.

He was literally the only prospect from a state with votes and delegates enough to potentially leave them basically tied with Clinton after Super Tuesday and popular enough there to take advantage of that fact.

Re roi's mention of Rasmussen's Elecotral College analysis, here's the summary (200 safely/Likely D vs 189 Safely/Likely R):

Safely Democratic: California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), New York (31), Rhode Island (4), and Vermont (3).

Likely Democratic: Minnesota (10), New Jersey (15), Oregon (7), and Washington (11).

*** Leans Democratic: Iowa (7), Michigan (17), New Mexico (5), Pennsylvania (21) and Wisconsin (10).

*** Toss-Up: Colorado (9), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), and Ohio (20).

*** Leans Republican: Florida (27), Missouri (11), Virginia (13).

Likely Republican: Arkansas (6) and North Carolina (15).

Safely Republican: Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), West Virginia (5) and Wyoming (3).

If Rasmussen's data are good, and these trends don't shift in a major way in coming months, then the battlegrounds states will be not FL or PA but Colorado (9), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), and Ohio (20). If McCain wins Ohio, then we'd be tied at 260-260 and the race would depend on CO, NV, and NH.

Which means that latinos in the southwest battleground states of CO and NV will decide the election.

Ken Salazar for VP. Security First-- economic security + national security + security for working families.

Thanks to tep, but I suggest going to the Rasmussen site to look at this,  It is easier.

My reading of it is that FL is likely out of Democratic reach and hence not really a battleground, although it will certainly be fought over since it is a must-win for McCain.  If as tep posits, McCain wins OH, Obama still has a way forward, just as tep says.  The converse of this, however, is that if McCain loses OH, he is cooked, as I posted above.  It's a negative 40 vote swing with no way to recover.  The same is pretty much the case, in the other direction if Obama loses MI (except in the unlikely case that he lost MI but won OH -- seems implausible).  Hence, OH is a must for McCain, MI is a must for Obama.  

Tep, Obama's going to pick up Virginia and has a 50/50 shot at North Carolina.

Its also worth noting that new D voter registrations in South Carolina were just shy of Bush's 2004 margin of victory.

In short, Rasmussen's numbers are well ... high.

r - you think Obama's vulnerable in MI? Why, because Granholm's bearing as much blame as Bush for MI's meltdown, or...?

I agree that FL's not in play. Maybe Obama will win PA easily, but OH will be tough. I think the race will come down to CO and OH. Ken Salazar would seal the deal in the southwest and give comfort to blue-collar voters in OH.

Oh, man takes me back to late 2006, when I was a Warner fan in between Evan Bayh and Barack Obama. Bayh I see now was too boring to be the guy, but Warner would have been fantastic.

Had Warner run and become the nominee, the only question we'd be asking is how many more Senate and House seats we'd be picking up.  Warner's only task on the campaign trail would be boosting Democratic candidates for Congress and other offices. He'd win 40-45 states and bring about a fundamental shift in the American political landscape for a generation.

Indeed, there's nothing more frustrating about this election than the fact that it might be competitive. It really shouldn't be.  But in their wisdom, Democrats have chosen two very exciting, but highly risky general election candidates. If we lose this election, we'll only have ourselves to blame. But it's a shame that we're even going to be worrying about the number 270 this year and how to get there. With a candidate like Warner or even Evan Bayh, this wouldn't even be a question.

What's this "in their wisdom" stuff?  It's not like anyone had the chance to choose Warner (and weren't we wondering what was in the closet that caused him to say he wouldn't run?).

tep,

I'm not expecting Obama to lose MI, but it is a bit on the edge.  My point was only that, of the in-play states, it is a must-win for Obama because he has no other way to make-up the 34 vote swing (except in the highly unlikely case that he loses MI but wins OH which would be a wash),  If McCain could pick off MI, Obama is screwed.  Likewise, if Obama could pick off OH, let alone FL, McCain is toast.  

We are very fortunate that Obama can lose OH and still has routes to victory.

Yes, MI is must-win. I suspect Romney could help McC pick it off. Don't underestimate how depressed and frustrated Michiganders are, or how long their memories are. Romney's father remains popular in the state, and kindles memories of the older, moderate, sane GOP that was represented by longtime Michigan governor Bill Milliken, also Romney Sr. Lugar in IN, Danforth in MO, Javits and Lindsay in NY....

Y'all smirk at Romney's supposed phoniness, but Michiganders take a different view of a capable and dynamic executive type. Iacocca is a folk hero in MI, and Romney would play well also.