Quote:
Originally Posted by roni
We'll be able to do a direct comparison of Obama's general election totals to Bill Clinton's in 1992 in November.
Comparing primary vote share with general election vote share is not exactly an exercise in legitimate comparisons.
The three primaries noted by the author, those had different levels of openess to non-Democratic registered voters, did they not?
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Hillary Clinton doesn't seem to have a problem with it. In fact the entire electability argument she's been making for some time now seems to rest fundamentally on it being a legitimate comparison, as far as I can see, right down to the "hard-working Americans, white Americans . . . broader base" comment the other day.
(
Edit: Well not
entire, sorry, as she does also cite polling results not related to a particular vote or contest. Sorry for the oversight. However I take those as being significantly less important in her view than the voting results on the whole.)
On the latter question, as I say, I don't think the match is perfect, but it certainly seems more logical to see a similarity between Obama's and Bill Clinton's degree of success (if you call it that, at just under 40%) with the white vote than to argue argue that there's no relation and that Obama can't win with such a base when Bill Clinton did (which seems to be Hillary Clinton's approach, here).
And yes, of course, Jacko, Mel and many others have commented on such about the campaign! My comment wasn't to try to lay claim to such thinking, but rather to acknowledge that I had also thought such things despite being an Obama supporter and complaining a lot about the campaign, you see.
Steve