Hillary's ugly victory

At least we've approached the end of the Clinton-Obama deathmatch, with Obama emerging victorious.

Since the beginning I've rooted for Obama, for all the basic reasons- his freshness, intelligence, judgment, the inspiration factor and so on. One principle I especially believed in was that he was more electable than Hillary.

"We can't present a candidate who's already hated by half the country," I argued. "We need to go with Barack because he can reach a lot of people that Hillary can't."

Months later, I started checking out the electoral breakdowns- and pretty surprisingly, Hillary looks like she's in Much stronger position for a general election victory.

Obviously I still expect Obama to win big when it's all said and done, but it's worth asking. Why do the rubrics look so much stronger for Hillary right now?


Basically, months ago it seemed clear that the key voters were independents and repentant republicans.

So you see libertarian types in western states or traditionally conservative states say, "Bush really sucks, and I hate the Clintons- but Obama seems like a decent guy." and these states consistently gave obama huge primary victories (Idaho, NC, etc) and/or figure hugely into his November map- Virginia, Colorado.

These Obama>McCain>Clinton voters are a legitimate bloc.

The ugly victory of Hillary's campaign is her successful creation of a Clinton>McCain>Obama bloc.
Through a months-long parade of character assassination, beer swilling and race baiting, she's cultivated the oft-blogged-about "white working class" voters. And perhaps she's always had their support, but there's no doubt that her vocal and brutal campaign has furthered the alienation of these folks from Obama. Obama gets the indies, Hill gets the blue dogs.

And unfortunately, the states where the C>M>O demographic reign supreme- ohio, pennsylvania, michigan- carry a lot more electoral weight than the states of Obama's coalition.