Why Uncultured Hicks Matter to Democrats

A few weeks ago irrelevant candidate Hillary Clinton scored decisive victories in irrelevant, uncultured, and possibly racist states.  Of course for Obama supporters this isn't surprising or alarming because Hillary expected to win there, and Obama has the numbers on his side.  However, as pundits are slowly catching on, that's not as reassuring as it seems.  In the last week more attention has finally been paid to what Ohioans have grimly acknowledged for some time now: Obama will need to win Ohio, and he faces a profound challenge in doing so decisively.

I've been thinking about this for a couple weeks now and probably should have posted earlier so that I could retain my self-proclaimations of clairvoyancy, but to do so now I have to push harder as the pundits are starting to put the pieces together as I write this.  Put simply, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio are linked together demographically and no candidate can be competitive in Ohio without being also competitive in her neighboring states.  The results of the Ohio primary showed Obama's strengths plainly but it was not until Kentucky and West Virginia that his weaknesses became so boldly illustrated.  The margins that declared Obama's loss in Ohio were carved out everywhere in between Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinatti, often by 20 points or more, but what saved him from disgrace in Ohio was strong urban support, which he had little to speak of in Kentucky and West Virginia.  These voters that I speak of now have similar economic needs and expectations from a presidential candidate and often vote on those principles when not otherwise stressed by social conservancy.  This allowed a few nice legislative victories in 2006, but none of these campaigns were so ideologically based as Obama's, they were specific (as you can get in politics) solutions to identifiable problems and they were little else.

Of course Obama has a plan, and much like his primary performance it has to do with a simplistic appraisal of electoral rules.  Obama will focus on Ohio and ignore Kentucky and West Virginia; he will pay special attention to new registration, provisional ballots, and the media campaign.  It is simply too difficult to run a campaign against the geography of Ohio as a singular candidate and the media, along with Ted Strickland and Ohio darling Sherrod Brown, will be his most valuable tools.  Yet the geography will most likely win, despite borrowing Strickland's and Brown's valuable inroads to Ohio politics, those inroads are still not his own and he fits them poorly.  But in the Obama Campaign's perception, it is Ohio, and nothing else that is the goal to understand.  They won't investigate why he was rejected by 20+ points in Ohio's neighbors, but investigate why he was behind only 8 points in Ohio itself, and his roadmap to failure will be predicated on this misjudgment without ever seriously considering the notion that the two phenomena are actually one.

That is my projection, I hinted at it earlier but I believe it is final now.  The abilities of the Obama campaign have reached their zenith and on his own merits Obama can do no more with the resources he has; he relies on luck as his campaign will, at best, be defined by the odds not dissimilar to the flip of a coin: Ohio, by less than 4 points.  To get there he will need to register even more voters (already there is expected record turnout), and spend a good deal of time in the state personally, but not so much as to lose the slim margins that he hopes to maintain in other states that are just as important as Ohio, but perhaps not so hotly contested by Republicans.

There is an alternative, but it relies on Clinton to display leadership abilities not seen from the presidency since that of the Abraham Lincoln.  She would basically need to convince Super Delegates to unanimously reject Obama and actually lead Democrats to the legislative pick-ups that they currently cross their fingers for as they recall 2006.  She would also have to win decisively herself, and crush any internal dissent along the way without any damage.  I don't know that she has that skill.  Yes, she is a skilled politician and lucky as well, but she would need to dispose of her enemies elegantly, without direct action.  The Democratic party faces two inferior decisions this late in the game: to carry on to certain failures, or fight desperately for solid ground.

Hillary though, she will be fine regardless, she has said time and time again that she is the strongest candidate in the general, should Obama perform as expected she will look rather good, and in every scenario she retains her Senate seat.