Split Decision

It looks like Obama took North Carolina and Clinton is ahead in Indiana, according to CNN. If Obama does fail - again - to deliver the knockout, how does that play with the party elite?

As North Carolina results came in, Obama was leading Sen. Hillary Clinton by a margin of roughly 57-41.

The win will give him the larger share of the state's 115 delegates.

"Some were saying that North Carolina would be a game-changer in this election. But today, what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington," Obama told supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Obama congratulated Clinton on what he called her apparent victory in Indiana.

Obama took an overwhelming 91 percent of the black vote in North Carolina, according to exit polls, while Clinton claimed only 6 percent.

Clinton took 59 percent of the white vote compared to 36 percent for Obama, according to the polls.

With 75 percent of Indiana precincts reporting, Clinton was leading Obama, 52-48 percent.

There are 72 delegates at stake in Indiana.

Poll workers in Indiana and North Carolina reported heavy turnout in the two primaries.

I don't think Clinton can do it with this light a "victory" - she needed convincing wins in both states. Instead, she's lost one and is limping across the finish line in the other. If she does stay in until June, I think it may be a token effort at this point. Although she could surprise me yet again.

But the demographics are a disaster for the Dems.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Answer: I just took this an hour or so ago. It is May 6th and the tulips are just blooming. These are at the front of the house and get morning sun. (This is very, very late in this area, trust me.)

As for Rich's earlier post about Schiller's missing skull (and pretty much all of the rest of his remains), we here at Blue Crab Boulevard swear we have no knowledge of the whereabouts of the poet. Honest.

More Problems For Obama

The exit polls from North Carolina highlight a surprisingly little commented upon weakness in the Obama campaign.  This weakness is the absolute dependency upon the black vote in order to win anything.  The numbers:

White Democrats: (41%)  Clinton 61%  Obama 35%

White Independents: (16%)  Clinton 55%  Obama 38%

Black Democrats: (31%)  Clinton 5%  Obama  93%

I don't care what kind of spin you hear from the MSM types, Obama won because of the black vote pure and simple.  The real question is not can Obama win Democratic primaries in states with 30%  or more of the vote being supplied by blacks, but can he win a general election where blacks will make up 8-9% of the vote?  If the trend that Gaius notes holds true the answer to that question will be a resounding "no."

For Democrats it is looking increasingly like a re-run not of 1968 but 1972.  Either way its pretty grim.

Crackup?

Marc Ambinder has been looking at exit polls and thinks he sees a real problem for the Democrats. Things are looking very much like they may be falling apart for them - in a very big way.

Forget the horse race numbers for a moment: if the surveys are accurate, the polarization within the Democratic Party has reached critical levels. Nearly six in ten Obama supporters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the nominee — that's (I believe) the high percentage of Obama supporters who have ever said that.

In both IN and NC, two thirds of Clinton supporters say they'd be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee — I believe that's the highest number recorded for that question, too.

The percentage of Clinton voters who say they'd choose McCain over Obama in a general election is approaching 40% in Indiana. Put it another way: in North Carolina, less than HALF of folks who voted today for Hillary Clinton are ready to say today that they'd definitely vote for Obama in a general election.

From the way he words the rest of his post, there is even more disturbing information in the crosstabs. Of course, I've been pointing out the potential - and likely - train wreck for some time now. (Not that it takes a Nostradamus to see the trap the Democrats had set for themselves.) This is the inevitable outcome of an identity-group centered approach that the Democrats have been practicing for ages. Their misfortune is that they ended up with two powerful "identity" candidates at the same time.

Talk about a backfire. 

UPDATE: Rich makes another excellent point in the next post.

The Social Life Of Dead Poets

From the folks who brought you "Name That Sausage" comes the next great craze "Find That Schiller!"

Who is buried in Friedrich Schiller's tomb? Several people, apparently, but none of them the famous poet and playwright, according to new research.

After two years of painstaking DNA research, experts have determined that none of the remains billed as those of Schiller belong to the German writer, who died in Weimar in 1805, Germany's MDR television reported. The study, dubbed the Friedrich-Schiller Code, was undertaken by the television station, the Foundation of Weimar Classics and an international team of scientists.

"Two years ago I was certain that we would prove that it was him; now we have proved the opposite," said foundation president Hellmut Seemann, whose organization oversees the Schiller archives and exhibitions.

What's next you wonder?  Why, "Where's (Ralph) Waldo (Emerson)" of course.

Blue Collar?

This is all over the news media today. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are attempting desperately to appeal to blue collar workers.

The presidential race has turned into a riveting competition for ordinariness, as both campaigns have concluded that whoever does a better job of winning over voters like Winschief — an average blue-collar man in an average American town of 60,000 — is more likely to triumph in Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Identifying with the common man has been a requisite in presidential elections for almost two centuries. But the stakes are especially high in a race largely defined by an economic crisis, and campaign experts say the candidates have gone especially far in their appeals.

In the past six weeks, Clinton hammered down a shot of Crown Royal whiskey — not necessarily the first choice of the workingman — and chased it with a beer. Obama visited a Pennsylvania sports bar and sampled a Yuengling after making sure it wasn't "some designer beer." Clinton told stories about learning to shoot behind the cottage her grandfather built. Obama went bowling.

There's something ridiculous about a couple of millionaires trying to out blue collar one another. It isn't apparent that this strategy will actually work, but we'll continue to have this story pumped by the press. Every news outlet I have checked today is carrying a variation on this story.

The Identity Trap

James Carville, not exactly known as Mr. Peacemaker in the world of politics, points out the problem that either Democrat is going to have reuniting the Democratic party once the nomination is secured. He does so in a little bit different way than many pundits have, ignoring the terms left and center and addressing the identity factions instead.

There are two main parts of the Democratic party. The first and fastest growing is what I refer to (somewhat uncreatively) as “Party A” Democrats. Party A Democrats tend to be urban or suburban. They are traditionally better educated, white, more affluent, heavily female, socially liberal and reform-oriented. Examples are candidates such as Adlai Stevenson, Eugene McCarthy, Gary Hart, Mike Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean.

The other side of the party is a more broad coalition of working class people who are generally less affluent, less educated and look to the federal government to soften the harsher edges of capitalism. They tend to be either urban or rural. I refer to them as “Party B” Democrats. They favour increased funding for federal programmes from Medicare to unemployment compensation to subsidised student loans. This wing of the party has included labour unions, older voters, African-Americans and non-college- educated young voters. Party B Democrats have been much more responsive to classic “I’m on your side” Democratic rhetoric. Candidates from this faction include Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and (uncomfortable as he seemed in this ideological space) Al Gore.

One thing that struck me there was the number of losers Carville lists as examples. As in lost at the ballot box. Carville continues:

Underlying all of this is the inevitable game of electoral chicken that is almost certain to erupt at the conclusion of the contest. The winner, with help from the loser, is not only going to have to bridge the fissures within the party but also to find a way to re-embrace those racial and gender identity voters who now find themselves aligned with a new wing of the party. If Mrs Clinton wins the nomination, do the Party B African-Americans who have embraced Mr Obama’s campaign feel comfortable remaining in the party and voting for Mrs Clinton? Conversely, are the Party A, older, college-educated white women comfortable embracing Mr Obama’s candidacy after supporting Mrs Clinton so fervently?

Although he is phrasing it in terms of identity groups, he could as easily have said left wing or center wing of the party and the net result would have been the same. There is going to be a real division no matter how it is phrased, though. It will be interesting to see what happens in today's primary contests.