A number of TPM Readers have written in to suggest that in my posts today about racialized voting I seem to be treating it as an assumption that whites voting for Clinton are doing so because they’re not willing to vote for Obama because he’s black. So to dispel any confusion that’s definitely not what I’m saying. There are any number of reasons voters are voting for Hillary Clinton. And I don’t just mean that as a throwaway line. The one that stands out to me more than any other is her self-identification as a fighter, which puts her in line with recent Democratic candidacies much more than Obama’s. That stance appeals to a lot of people not only because that’s how they think of politics but because that’s how they experience their lives.
So I think it is acceptable and important to note the broad differences in how different demographic groups vote, especially because the percentage of the white vote that Obama gets has varied greatly from state to state. We can ask that question without assuming that one group of people is voting for candidate A only because of candidate B’s race.
But here’s the thing. If I’m not mistaken that’s actually pretty much exactly the argument the Clinton camp is now making both to reporters and super delegates. Namely, that if Barack Obama fails to make serious inroads with working class white Democrats in Pennsylvania that will mean that these voters actually refuse to vote for him either because he is black or because of the Wright issue, which is in many respects a proxy for the issue of race.
So in many respects it seems to me that Clinton is the one who in her current argument is reducing her candidacy to being largely about race.
