Obama should just keep on keeping on.
Krugman’s wrong. But since this post will be truncated see the first comment below
Advertisement
flavius
Following: 1
Followers: 13
Posts
Comments & Recommends
- Location Long Island
- Party Democratic
- Politics slightly left of the party's center
Favorites
- Favorite Blogs Brad Delong
- Favorite Books Skidelsky's biography of Keynes; Naipaul's "In a Free State"
- Favorite Quotes First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out etc. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out etc. Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.
I was tempted to agree with Krugman today- that Obama should spend more time telling us what he would do as President .On Tuesday when he once against talked about taking the Government away from the lobbyists I found myself shouting at the screen “To do what?”
But is his comparative lack of specificity what turned off the unemployed workers in the Mons Valley. Consider the exit polls
There were 2,306,000 voters including……….
1,334 k women , of whom….
1,058, were white women of whom 719k or 68% voted for HRC.
So of her 215k or 9.23% overall margin over Obama 190k came from the extra 18 points she won among white women. Partially explained by the fact that there were .
322 women who said that gender was important 77% for hrc compared to women who said it wasn’t who gave her 52%
So about 80k (77% minus 52% Xs 322) of that 190 came from women who were voting against Obama because he was a male rather than because of any particular policy .
Also contributing to her 215 overall margin were
..
276k whites who said that race was important voting 76% vs all other whites' 66%
It’s tempting to say that this explains the rest of that 215 margin since it gave HRC an extra 28k votes (10% Xs 276). But some of those whites were white women already included in the gender calculation. so probably only about half of these 28k constitute an added explanation of that 215k overall margin.
And in any event a better explanation of the rest of her margin was her lead among.
805K gun owners 63% HRC, and
437K union members 58%
Her extra 13% among gun owners by itself gave her 105k votes.
And finally adding to her lead were
414K catholics who go to mass weekly 74%
vs 414K other catholics at 65%
If Catholics had only given HRC half their votes her margin would have been reduced to only 45- about 3%
To me these numbers don’t support Krugman’s plea for more substance from Obama.
The only candidate with a chance of affecting those gender and race influenced voters would have been Nancy Pelosi.. In fact ,there’s an idea for the General Election.
April 25, 2008 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
And to continue,and continue and continue
am I the only one who goes tilt at the idea that Reagan Democrats are thirsting for more policies?
Reagan? Policies ? As opposed to those generalists
Carter and Mondale?
April 25, 2008 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the bigger problem is that the media narrative is that he's not specific. I see plenty of specifics on his website. For contrast's sake, look at John McCain's issues sections. They're worse than scant. They're scant and vague and general, and you can pretty much read the whole thing and still have no idea what he's proposing. But I haven't heard one person say that, because it doesn't fit with the McCain picture. He's old, he's been in the Senate for awhile, therefore he must have loads of experience and by extension specifics.
I think there are a couple issues that I'd like more specifics from all the candidates, namely education. But that doesn't seem to be the issue du jour these days, so...
April 25, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink