When all the votes finally trickle in from every corner of Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton will have beaten Barack Obama by approximately 9.7%, a scant three tenths of a percent shy of that magic number bandied about in the press during the last weeks. If she won by more than 10%-or so the experts said-her candidacy would be back in full swing. If her margin was less than 5%, it was all over: she could kiss goodbye any hope of convincing super delegates to move en masse to her candidacy.

Instead, she won by what would normally be regarded as an impressive margin, but in the mathematically intensive days of April, she managed to fall a handful of votes shy of being able to convincingly declare total victory-at least according to the chorus of the mainstream press. Still, an energized Hillary Clinton survives to see another battle on yet another battlefield.

And now, with neither candidate clenching a total victory, we move back to square one again. And we endure another in a long series of reality checks...again...in this presidential nominating contest that never seems to reach a conclusion, a struggle that may in fact end only in August on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

In direct defiance of the mood and tenor of the chattering classes and the media in general, Pennsylvanians went to the polls in large numbers and-like the Ohioans and the Texans and even those New Hampshire voters in the distant past-snatched victory out of Obama's hands. Indeed, even Clinton supporters were saying in private that if she had lost in Pennsylvania, even by a single vote, the race was over. On the other hand, all Obama had to do was close this deal once and for all. Obama fell short.

Now Obama has to set up firewalls in Indiana and North Carolina. For surely if Clinton pulls off another victory in one of these two May 6 contests, she can credibly claim to be back on track as the real candidate of the Democratic Party. And if she wins in Indiana-the larger of the two-she has still another big-ticket trophy on her wall to prove that she has the grit and the mettle to beat John McCain in the all-important Electoral College math.


More than a few analysts were saying that April was simply a bad month for Obama-and his loss yesterday in the Keystone State was simply the crowning blow to 30 days of lost altitude for the Illinois Senator. Obama never fully regained his footing after a series of annoying dust-ups: the endless replays of Reverend Wright's incendiary talk; the "elitist" flap after Obama's remarks at a small San Francisco gathering; and even the silly stuff like the flag pin questions. And it didn't help his cause that when he appeared alongside Clinton on ABC on April 17 he delivered what many regard as his worst debate performance in eight months. So maybe Obama deserved this thrashing, if you can call 46% a thrashing.

Expectations were high for Obama on this one: he had recruited thousands more volunteers statewide than had Clinton; he had out-fundraised and outspent the Clinton campaign by over two-to-one; and he had registered more new Democrats in Pennsylvania than anyone in Keystone State history. Many in the mainstream media seemed poised to declare Clinton's candidacy dead if Obama showed even the slightest hint of exceeding expectations. And maybe that was a mistake.


Did the Clinton team outmaneuver him on the expectations game? Possibly. Either way, he came up short-most noticeably in the affluent suburbs of Philadelphia that stretch into four or five counties west and north of Philly. Obama was banking heavily on these densely populated areas to deliver a mixed bag of middle class and upper middle class white votes-the educated and upwardly mobile class of Democrat which has combined with the African American voters and young voters to give him his momentum up to this point. When those counties failed to deliver, he missed his opportunity to deliver a knockout punch.

Obama won in Philadelphia County, as expected, and his margin there was substantial: a dazzling 65% to Clinton's 35%. And he chalked up over 282,000 more votes in the increasingly important psychological calculus of popular votes. Obama also won in neighboring Chester and Delaware Counties, part of Philly's sub-urban and exurban sprawl, by comfortable 55 and 56% margins respectively. But he clearly needed to capture Bucks, Berks and Montgomery Counties as well, and the loss of these three counties cost him dearly.

Obama also won easily in Lancaster County, and in the capital of Harrisburg (Dauphin County), where he captured an impressive 58% of the vote. Some of Obama's widest margins came in the precincts of Centre County, home to the towns of State College and Bellafonte, and home also to Penn State University. In a pattern that has held solid across almost every previous primary state, Obama won Centre County's heavily student vote by a large percentage.

But beyond these islands, Penn-sylvania was mostly Clinton Country. Her margins in some of the working class cities and towns formed the backbone of her victory statewide, and she swept Erie County by over 63%, Lehigh County (Allentown) by 60%, and Cambria County (Johnstown) by 72%. And some counties were even more lopsided in their returns. Clinton won in Schuylkill County and Lackawanna County (Scranton) by 74%; she took Luzerne County (Wilkes-Barre) by a staggering 75%.

Even Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, failed to give Obama any solace: Clinton won there by a respectable 54% even though some polls had indicated a fleeting moment of opportunity for Obama to eke out a narrow victory there. Clinton's margins in the working class counties in the triangular cradle of the West Virginia border were wide-another indication of the deepening divide between how Democrats perceive the two candidates. These mostly white, lower-income areas pummeled Obama, delivering counties by as much as 79%. In Fayette County southeast of Pittsburgh, Obama received only about 6000 votes out of nearly 30,000 votes cast. Northwest of Pittsburgh, in Beaver County, where the Ohio River splits the line between neighboring Ohio and West Virginia, Obama received about 12,000 votes out of over 40,000 votes cast.

In fact, unlike some previous state primaries, Obama had very few "close-call" counties-places where he placed a narrow second to Clinton. Obama's losses in Clinton Country areas became outright defeats. Compare this to Obama's con-tinuing strength at channeling African-Americans, upper-middle-class college educated whites, and voters under the age of 30, and the fault line between Hillary and Obama seems to be turning into a canyon of unbridgeable distance.


Thursday, April 24, 2008:


So how much longer can this go on? The reality now is so clear that even the doomsday types aren't bothering to dwell upon it, and neither are the reserved-prose types bothering to deny it: a fierce fight for a definitive outcome in Indiana and North Carolina, followed by an epic struggle for the hearts and minds of every remaining super delegate. And finally an even more emotional demand for votes to be counted (or recounted) in Florida and Michigan. Is there a happy ending with these three sub-plots in play?


As I have discussed in previous editions of Road Show, the Democratic Party's divisions are neither recent news nor some sort of surprise. The separate family lines go back decades. Many political historians date this rift to the Vietnam War years when the party tore itself apart over the policies of President Lyndon Johnson. LBJ's challengers at the time-Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy-set in motion a rebellion to the status quo of Democratic Party processes and patronage protocol. Two major factions within the family developed: the traditionalists, or Old School pols, most easily recognized in the shape and form of Hubert Humphrey; and the progressives, or New School adherents, their most common early icon being George McGovern. Even in today's ongoing family feud, the lineage of most of today's Democrats can be easily traced back to these subsets.

Still, over the years, one side or the other has prevailed early in each election cycle. The fights can be bitter-in a couple of cases even more nasty than what we see today. Eventually, there is an attempt at harmony and a reluctant agreement to combine forces to face the Republicans each November. But these long bruising internal fights usually result in war-weary, dreary campaigns coupled with mismanagement and then crushing defeats in the general election: after 1964 Democrats have succeeded in electing only two presidents, and one of those-Jimmy Carter-won in a squeaker.

Internally though, the Democratic Party has avoided intense scrutiny of this ongoing family fight because either the Old School or the New School is able to produce a candidate with enough clout to overwhelm the opposition early, usually by March. Walter Mondale was able to take the wind out of Gary Hart's sails fairly early in March. Michael Dukakis was able to checkmate Richard Gephardt by the end of January. Al Gore was able to lock up his winning momentum long before Bill Bradlee could spring to life. And so on. Disparities in voting patterns, a front-loaded primary and caucus season, and demo-graphic unevenness have been able to insure that this fight does not gain prolonged exposure to the press and the voters.

But now things are different. Now we are watching a demographic parity so closely matched as to make neither Obama nor Clinton the hands-on favorite to lock this thing up. Clinton, the Old School operator, draws disproportionately from older voters, women over 45, the working class and those without a college degree. She also pulls strongly from voters who have a history of frequent turnout at polling places-i.e., the party regulars. Obama pulls votes in ever increasing numbers from the young-especially under the age of 35-and from the college educated, the upscale liberals, and the economically comfortable suburbanites and city dwellers. In previous election years this would not have been an even fight: Old School would have beaten New School by a country mile. But Obama has an important edge: African-Americans. Since 1968 black voters tend to back the traditionalist side of the family. Skeptical of the abstractions and detached style of New School progressives as far back as McGovern, blacks lean statistically toward the traditionalist liberals for their down-to-earth, bread and butter approach-choosing Mondale over Hart, Jesse Jackson over Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton over Paul Tsongas, Al Gore over Bill Bradlee, and so on. Democrats in the Old School speak directly to traditional constituents via direct promises regarding social services and economic interdiction.

So in a world without Obama, Hillary Clinton would have been the natural beneficiary of the African-American voter. It is unlikely that John Edwards would have been able to draw these votes in large numbers away from Clinton. It is even more farfetched to see how Bill Richardson, Joe Biden or Chris Dodd could have made the same powerful inroads into the black vote. (Of course in this same theoretical contest sans Obama, Hillary Clinton would have already closed the deal-just as she had originally planned in those blueprints-within the first few contests back in January.)

But to the complete dismay of Clinton, Obama is in this fight for the long haul. Sensing the very real possibility of victory in November, black voters have coalesced around his candidacy in large numbers (Obama is getting better turnout from African-Americans than Jesse Jackson did in 1984 or 1988), boosting the arithmetic of the New School Obama to a near perfect parity with Clinton the traditionalist liberal, and even generating the odd effect of pushing Hillary Clinton (and perhaps cunningly husband Bill Clinton) slightly to the right. By the time she had closed out her sixth week of more-or-less continuous campaigning in Pennsylvania, she was once again talking the language of the working class whites, ethnic Catholics and rural, small town voters in a shameless but nevertheless necessary tactic to checkmate Obama on the left. Obama, conversely, still finds himself cut off from these voters-and his remarks in San Francisco about the working people clinging to guns and religion show his lingering detachment from some Main Street realities.

Even so, Obama benefits mightily for his ability to create large turnout among black voters in each state. And his strength at mobilizing hundreds of thousands of young voters-many of them voting and participating in politics for the first time-has introduced a generational split unlike anything Democrats have seen since the late 1960s. In Pennsylvania-one of the "oldest" states in the country in terms of median age-Obama still pulled in huge numbers of young people and fueled voter registration activity that broke all state records. On the other hand, Clinton steals the show with her penetration into older demographics. She managed her victory in the Keystone State in part because of the large participation of voters over the age of 60. Voters 60 and older made up 32% of all Pennsylvania turnout, according to CNN's exit polling data, and Clinton pulled in a solid 62% of these voters. When you turn the chart upside-down, Obama took 65% of voters under the age of 24, and 55% of those aged 25-30.

So now the Democratic Party faces a numerical Perfect Storm: a near even split between the Bowling Alley Democrats (many of them the Reagan Democrats of the recent past) and the arugula and Belgian endive Democrats. NBC's Chris Matthews has referred to the divide as Dunkin Donuts versus Starbucks. Others have referred to the split as the wine track. versus the beer track.


This divide has deepened as the months have passed, and the results in Pennsylvania extended the various demographic gaps even further. Obama took the vast majority of the college educated, while Clinton took the lion's share of those without college education. Obama receives the majority of Democrats who could be described as upwardly mobile or financially secure, where Clinton draws strongly from the hard-hat, lunch bucket, blue-collar Democrats. Late into Tuesday night, CNN's exit poll guru Bill Schneider offered figures showing that these rifts are wider now than just 30 days ago. More dangerously, the number of voters blaming the divide on the candidates themselves has grown large. Many polls are indicating the strong possibility of some partisan Democrats staying home in November if their horse fails to win the nomination. Obama supporters blame Clinton; Clinton supporters blame Obama. And for the first time in many months the majority of Democrats no longer feel a Dream Ticket is possible.

If the May 6 results in Indiana and North Carolina fail to produce any surprises-meaning Obama wins easily in North Carolina and Clinton wins a close race in Indiana-then the numerical parity will continue unchecked, with neither candidate gaining much new moral or political ground and leaving the issue unresolved.


The challenge for party chairman Howard Dean is to somehow broker harmony between the Old School and the New School by the time Democrats convene in Denver. The thought of a divided Democratic convention, with all the bruising bitterness played out live on CNN and Fox News, gives many leading Democrats chills. Dean has already stated publicly that he wants super delegates to stop hedging their bets and start making decisions, now. The longer the supers wait, the more difficult it will be for the party to present a unified face when the first gavel falls. And though the party has already started hitting John McCain with some direct mail pieces and TV advertising, the efforts seem thin and unfocused without a Democratic candidate's name attached to the message. Valuable time is being wasted while McCain himself zigzags the country consolidating his narrow lead over either Democrat. And McCain is using his time making deliberate inroads into traditional Democratic geography, brazenly taking much-publicized walking tours of places like Selma, Alabama. Some polls are already showing McCain slowly-but surely-building on his edge over Obama or Clinton while the two Democratic titans hack each other with machetes.

There are not many contest left on the map to help tip the scales for the Democrats. After Indiana and North Carolina comes West Virginia on May 13. Clinton could win there. But Obama could easily counterattack one week later on May 20 in Oregon and Kentucky, where he holds commanding leads in current polls. Then the last stop on this cross-country tour takes the candidates to Montana and South Dakota. If past primary and caucus patterns prevail, Obama will carry these western states easily, prompting the Clinton team to once again scoff at the small states as "political boutiques" in order to downplay the fact the Obama padded his points in the last seconds of the game.

So do the super delegates back Obama based on the moral math that says he has won more states and racked up more votes from rank-and-file Democrats? And will that choice wreak havoc in November when all those big electoral vote states fall reliably back into the GOP column (just as Hillary Clinton has predicted)?

Or do the supers choose the safe electoral bet and back Clinton in spite of the will of the voters who have given Obama his solid lead in the pledged delegate total? Will the super delegates opt for the "fully vetted" candidate who will offer no surprises and no unchecked baggage?

And if the Democrats choose Clinton, would this offer McCain his mightiest weapon yet: the option to point a finger at the Democrats and say, with clear justification, "this political party didn't even nominate the person with the most votes and the most pledged delegates!"

Clinton had put her own spin on this question by claiming-some say incorrectly-that she now leads in the popular vote total thus far. She stakes out this mathematical position by including all the votes cast for her in both Florida and Michigan, even though those primary results were invalidated by the DNC long before the first votes were cast, and by including some "straw votes" cast in other beauty contest venues.

Still, it raises the possibility that Clinton may yet take her case to a higher authority than the DNC credentials and rules moguls. With more rumors circulating that the Clinton camp has a team of legal experts prepping for a court fight, the emotional stakes could go even higher as spring ends and summer begins. How far would the Clinton team go in a court fight over delegates? Are there any constitutional grounds for such a fight? And would engaging on this legal front in federal court-or theoretically the U.S. Supreme Court-not disaffect many Democrats previously optimistic about finally taking the high road approach to reclaiming the White House?

 

Road Show is published each week by Thursday Review publications, copyright 2008

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