Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Core Support

James Edmund Pennington says in a piece at The American Thinker what I have been saying in comments here and there for several weeks. He says that Obama has the nomination locked. Why does he say that? Because Democrats can afford to lose an election. They cannot afford to alienate their core supporters.

The current agony of the Democratic Party, which grows more acute every day, is laden with an unspoken truth. As the unending Clinton-Obama struggle drags on, the core unutterable reality for Democrats is simply this: because of the composition of the Party's domestic coalition, its continued electoral viability makes absolutely necessary perpetual capture of 90+% of the black vote.

Because of this grim fact -- of the Party's own making -- the Clinton/Obama fight is over. Obama has won, and every leading Democrat knows it. In short, because of his race, Obama must be awarded the Democratic nomination. So much for the myth of America's first major post-racial candidate.
The anti-racist party is racist to the core. i.e. Barack is their affirmative action candidate.

So why is Hillary going on if she knows this? And believe me the wife of the first Black President must know this. If she can't win the marbles she is going to destroy the game. A scorched earth policy. If she can't have it, it will not be worth having.

The only question is: how badly will this hurt the down ticket races? My guess? Badly. Very badly. The House is gone. The Senate could easily turn as well.

Let me add one further prediction. The Democrat nomination race will go on until the convention. Why? A decision before then would cost them a significant fraction of Hillary supporters. That alienated support would have time to organize demonstrations or worse outside the D convention. So there will be no decision until the convention votes.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

2 comments:

Piercello said...

One plausible (to me) argument for H to stay in as long as possible, even knowing she won't win, is to ransom herself into a permanent position of power within the party machinery--her leverage increases as the party grows more desparate.

But will it work?

M. Simon said...

Good thought.