Hillary the Great White Hope? (Not.)

On May 8, 2008 Hillary Clinton told USA Today that white voters "were supporting me," and claimed to have "a broader base to build a winning coalition on." Clinton referred without citation to an Associated Press report that she said showed Obama's support from white voters shrinking. Clinton's remarks received considerable coverage on cable news and in the blogosphere, with some commentators questioning the racial overtones of her assertions.

Clinton was apparently referring to a May 3 article by Alan Fram that examined AP/Yahoo News polls from November and April, as well as primary exit polls including those from Pennsylvania. The polling showed that white primary voters without college degrees favored Clinton by 20 percent or more. In Pennsylvania, 20 percent of those voters said that race had played a role in their choice of candidate, and of those, 80 percent voted for Hillary.

Speaking to the Washington Post Emory University's Andra Gillespie observed that an election with the first black candidate having a "legitimate shot at the nomination ... was going to reveal these cleavages."

In an interview for National Journal On Air, congressional Marjority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina disputed the validity of Clinton's claim:

I don't think that carries any more weight than anyone who will argue that the fact that she only got 8 percent of the African-American vote in North Carolina indicates that she cannot get African-American votes in the general election. It's one thing for us to measure these two Democratic candidates against each other. It is totally something else again for us to measure a Democratic candidate against a Republican candidate. Those are two different things -- apples and oranges -- and I do believe it is a stretch for us to consider otherwise. If we buy into that, and we buy into the conventional wisdom that no Democrat wins the presidency getting only 8 percent of the African-American vote, then what does that to say for her prospects in the fall?

So I think that we have to be very, very careful with all of this. And I really believe that this is the kind of stuff that I had been talking about with tamping down the enthusiasm of young people, because scores and scores of non-black young people have gotten involved in this campaign this year. They are very excited about Barack Obama, for whatever reason. A lot of it nobody can really fathom, but it's happened. And I think we would do well as Democrats to welcome the support, welcome the reactivation of African-Americans, welcome the re-involvement of young white Americans, welcome all of these people into our fold and give them some positive messages to carry forward, and not keep talking about what may or may not be the other person's drawbacks.

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report agreed with Clyburn's view that Clinton's having done well with white non-college-graduates in the primaries does not imply that they would vote Republican in November any more than her lack of support among African-American voters in the primaries mean that they would vote for McCain.

Steve M. at the No More Mister Nice Blog observed that Bill Clinton lost the white vote, the white male vote, and gun owners in 1996, but won the popular vote overall by 49% - 41 % (with 8% going to Ross Pero).

The Gallup organization also took explicit issue with the Clinton campaign's claims that Obama is at an unusual disadvantage with "less well-educated voters:"

... [A]t the moment, it would appear that Obama's problems with less well-educated voters -- emphasized heavily by the Clinton campaign -- are no worse than were Kerry's in 2004, and are more than made up for by Obama's strength among those with college degrees.

Although comparisons to Kerry are not necessarily comforting, Gallup notes that Obama's is faring no worse with these voter groups now, at the start of his campaign, than Kerry did at the end of his.

In a related matter, E.J. Dionne noted that Louisiana Democrat Don Cazayoux won the race for an open U.S. House seat "despite an aggressive Republican campaign to link the moderate Cajun to Obama, liberalism and high taxes."

That the Obama link did not bring down Cazayoux in a district that voted 59 percent for George W. Bush in 2004 will help reassure Democratic superdelegates from Republican-leaning districts that they can live with Obama at the top of their party's ticket.