As you watch returns tonight, I want to give you a frame through which to see the contest. I spent all day canvassing and doing visibility for the Clinton campaign, which annoyed the person I was with because I am certainly not on message ('yes, she's awful on the war' is apparently not a talking point... and I also don't support Hillary, I was just canvassing for her because I wanted to talk to voters in South Carolina and had a bunch of Hillary supporting friends coming down here). Overall, I again do not feel a sense of intensity here, and there are a few grumblings that the Clinton campaign is not taking the state that seriously. The Obama campaign has doorhangers, the Clinton one does not, Clinton hasn't been around, etc. I don't know how widespread this is, but it coheres with the spin the Clinton's are putting out. They don't need this state, and they know it.
The frame I want to offer is rooted in talking to voters. The primary questions on their mind seems to be who can win the White House, and who can fix what Bush did to the country. It is not which Democratic surrogate said what about which person, and race and gender in the negative sense are annoying everyone, unless it's framed as a positive, in which case all sides are proud that a black man and a woman are running. There is worry about a black man winning the Presidency, and Clinton being polarizing, but it's rooted in electability. These are Democratic partisans.
Now, I met some great people, and I found a sort of yawing gap with the pundit world. Periodically I've had conversations with a senior level policy people associated with the Obama world about why liberals aren't breaking for Obama, and they just have a different understanding of the political landscape. They think it's just obvious that Obama is much more progressive than Clinton, and so progressives should break for him. What I see going on, and repeatedly try and fail to explain, is that this isn't obvious at all to voters. The voters I speak to think that Obama and Clinton have the same policy ideas, but that one is fresher and one is more experienced. Self-identified liberals see both as liberal.
I met Boo outside of the Mason Preparatory School today, after she voted for Hillary Clinton. Boo has been a stage writer and actress for 17 years, and was one of many older Southern women from Charleston we met doing visibility and volunteering. She really likes Barack Obama, and while she thinks he isn't quite ready, she would love to see a Clinton/Obama ticket. I asked her about her ideology, and she said 'I'm a flaming liberal' in the most adorable Southern accent, the kind that could easily grace either a proper Cotillion or dispatch a dirty joke with the girls. Again and again, I encountered people like Boo, those who really like both Obama and Clinton.
On the left is Faith, and I didn't catch the woman's name on the right. But both were Clinton precinct captains in Nevada, and both were incredibly excited about a female President. Faith really likes Obama, but she dreams about Hillary as President. She became a precinct captain because she saw a notice at a local library three weeks before the caucus, and was trained by a terrific campaign organizer who is now going back to school.
This is Judith Freeman of the New Organizing Institute posing with two construction workers at the Las Vegas caucuses. Both were Obama supporters, but both really like Hillary. I spent about a half hour talking to the guy on the left, and he told me about his buddy who couldn't handle being a pipefitter because of his nightmares, nightmares caused by his time in Iraq. And his buddy wasn't a basketcase, but was really 'level-headed' before he went over there.
So this is just a follow up on my last post on voters liking Democrats. They tend to like them. They care about stuff, and it's not the dogwhistle racism that Clinton's surrogates have been putting out or the attacks on Clinton's integrity that Obama has been pushing. And I don't mean to go all 'pox on both your houses'. That's not the point. And sure there are voters who claim they will vote Republican rather than for the nominee if it's not their nominee. The woman on the left, a teacher in Charleston, simply loathes the Clinton's after supporting them in the 1990s. She's a teacher and keeps a picture of George McGovern in her classroom, which prompts her Republican friends to comment, 'well, we need one Communist in the school'. And I've met Clinton activists who say they will go for McCain because of his experience, which is in many ways a generational identity fight.
But overall, the trend is more towards people liking and trusting both nominees, and wanting to talk about their problems and fixing what Bush did to the country.
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