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Obama, fired up

James Forsyth

Monday, 14th April 2008

Obama has decided that the best form of defence is offence and is ripping into Hillary Clinton in highly personal terms for her attempt to make political capital out of his comments about small town mid-Westerners clinging to their faith and guns in an uncertain world. The tactic of decrying all criticism of him as politics as usual works when up against someone like Hillary Clinton, who is seen by so many voters as a say anything, do anything politician. Whether it will be so effective in a general election campaign against John McCain is quite another question.

There’s no doubt that Obama’s words have hurt him politically; the fact that they were said to a bunch of wealthy San Franciscans makes it nigh-on-impossible for him to put a positive spin on them. Obama has given himself both a major problem for the Pennsylvania primary and the general election by further alienating the white working class voters he is already having such trouble winning over.

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Erica

April 14th, 2008 8:31pm

Did you see that Barack suggested Hillary is carrying a six-shooter. I seriously doubt he is familiar with the latest in personal weaponry.

Ian C

April 15th, 2008 6:01pm

James - if you have not yet seen them already see David Brookes today in the NY Times and TNR Online entitled 'Woe is he'. While both articles think Obama is still likely to get the nomination, he is becoming a serial mistake maker. He has not been scrutinised adequately by the Dem. primary process as they cannot be too tough on each other (I'd hate to see what tough really is!). TNR expresses the opinion, as I have, that this could still give Hilary the power she needs with the supers to swing her way should she win big in Pa. The justification? "in the heartland states, a Democratic presidential candidate has to win from 45 to 48 percent of the white working class vote. In some states, like West Virginia and Kentucky, the percentage is well over a majority". This is a very big ask for a black, inexperienced candidate prone to gaffs who is having a tough time in this constituency. It is the root of Hilary's claim that he is unelectable, and I think she & Bill know what they're talking about, even if she is doing her own presidential chances damage also. If they really believe this is the case she still has to try to blow him out of the water because this is the one constiuency she can (probably) bring home.

Ian C

April 15th, 2008 6:43pm

Again, the Gallup polls would seem to suggest that Clinton will have a good chance of persuading the supers: "McCain has bested Obama among voters without a college education [blue collar] each of the four full weeks that Gallup has tracked general-election voting preferences, and Obama has had a consistently large lead among postgraduates [elite, less numerous than those with no college educ.].... And " In a hypothetical Clinton vs. McCain race, the vote by education patterns is typical for a general-election contest. Clinton holds an advantage over McCain among voters with a high school education or less, and McCain runs strongly among those with a bachelor's degree only. Even so, McCain maintains considerable appeal to voters with less education against Clinton, and he edges her out among postgraduates." If the supers have any doubts about Obama after the primaries are over, and this pattern continues until then, they would find it very difficult to go with Obama as he cannot win the working class white vote which every president has to win. All she has to do is run him close and they will go with her.

Kyle

April 18th, 2008 4:44am

I live in an upper middle class suburb of Houston, TX where the average per capita income is $112,000 per year. I'm absolutely amazed at the amount of Obama bumper stickers I'm seeing around town. I want to tell these people, "Don't you know that our town would cease to exist in Obama's perfect world? You're rich dummy!!"

Get a grip on reality people. Obama absolutely horrifies me..