Updated - An afterthought on Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania is a quasi-Democratic machine state. Thus one expected the machine-backed candidate, Hillary Clinton, to do well with the most established demographics there: Whites and older citizens.
No doubt then that Hillary's expected win on Tuesday (nine points) and her turning-the-tide spin generated a round of media ridicule and explicit reference to the Pennsylvania machine-state status, minimizing the significance of the Clinton victory. Not what happened.
As Chuck Todd: (Hardball, April 7) had put it, "...Pennsylvania is a machine state. You know it‘s a machine democratic state. It is an old school machine state and she has the entire machine behind her, other than the Casey family. She‘s got the state party officially behind her."
The media's reaction, including Chris Matthews and Norah O‘Donnell, who know better, is to exclaim that Hillary did well with whites and older citizens, from which is extrapolated "huge" significance and alarm about how well Obama can perform with whites in a general election.
So why is Pennsylvania, which votes reliably Democratic in general elections in part owing to the effectiveness of the Democratic machine, more significant than Wisconsin (Feb. 19), which votes narrowly Democratic in general elections? It's not.
In Wisconsin, Obama brought out 10,000s of politically casual voters who didn't even show up at the polls six weeks later in a historic, high-profile Supreme Court race; and Obama clobbered Hillary in February, prevailing "by a wide margin among men, 67-31 percent. (His win among white men, 63-34 percent, was surpassed only in Utah)." (ABC News)
See also For Obama, a Struggle to Win Over Key Blocs (NYT, April 26) in which Adam Nagourney asks ,"Why has (Obama) been unable to win over enough working-class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination?"
Like Obama did in Wisconsin and the other 29 states in which he won, Nagourney could have added, though that would have had the effect of killing his story.
Hillary is desperate to pretend the race is still on; and the corporate talking heads and political media are desperate to engage Hillary's pretension.
One last note on the exit polling from Pennsylvania, pertaining to Hillary and blacks.
Blacks: 92-Obama - 8-Hillary.
Questions worth pursuing: Why is Hillary doing so horribly among blacks? And using the same primary-general election demographic logic applied to Obama, what does this mean for a prospective Hillary nomination and her performance in the general election? Can Hillary win without black support?
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