Comments from James Forman

Some wisdom from James Forman (below).  I esp. agree with this comment:

Middle aged white woman tells me that she worked for President Carter.  He had good ideas.  But he did not have the ability to move people, to persuade a majority, to convince those that do not start off agreeing with him that they should come to his side, or to truly mobilize those who already agreed with him.  She thinks Clinton and Obama are similar on the details (I don't, as I've written before), but she thinks that Obama's ability to persuade and mobilize means that he is more likely to be able to get his agenda through. 

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From: James Forman [mailto:jamesformanjr@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:16 PM
To: James Forman
Subject: Hawaii, Wisc. and more

To put yesterday in perspective, note that the Wisconsin 17% margin, while a blow out by election standards, was the SMALLEST margin of victory of the last 10 primaries:  Here are the 10 since Super Tuesday:

Louisiana: +21
Nebraska: +36
Washington: +37
Maine: +19
Virgin Islands: +82
DC: +51
Maryland: +23
Virginia: +29
Wisconsin: +17
Hawaii: +52

Obama can be humble, needs to be actually.  But the facts of the last 10 races are quite overwhelming.  A guy that almost nobody had heard of a year ago is crushing the establishment inevitable candidate in state after state.  "White" states.  "Black" states.  Stretching from DC to Hawaii, including the voters that are supposed to be the Clinton base.  In fact, the exit polls from Wisconsin, largely mirroring those from Virginia last week, suggest that the term "Clinton base" is increasingly anachronistic.    Ck out the exit poll results yourself, they are amazingly informative: http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#WIDEM

When Obama wins the majority of those who are in the 50-64 age group, or the majority of working class voters, or the majority of those with no college education, it is not that he is "cutting into her base," as the media keeps repeating, it is that he has taken her base and made it part of his.   This could change of course, but in the last 2 states that even Mark Penn would have to concede are "representative," Obama has won the majority not only of the negroes and their latte drinking allies, but the majority of everybody. 

How could this change?  It is not that Clinton is going to come up with new ideas or a new message or new packaging.  As my friend Paul told me today, if Clinton had any new good ideas in her arsenal she would have brought them out by now.  So the only way for the Clintons to change the dynamic is to hope for an Obama flub or to go more negative.  Going negative might not work, but if they get desperate . . . .?
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Now, why is Obama winning?  I've shared theories on Obama's appeal relative to Clinton before, but here are some recent conversations I've had that have pushed my thinking further.

Conversation # 1.  Middle aged white woman tells me that she worked for President Carter.  He had good ideas.  But he did not have the ability to move people, to persuade a majority, to convince those that do not start off agreeing with him that they should come to his side, or to truly mobilize those who already agreed with him.  She thinks Clinton and Obama are similar on the details (I don't, as I've written before), but she thinks that Obama's ability to persuade and mobilize means that he is more likely to be able to get his agenda through. 

Conversation # 2.  Middle aged white woman tells me that she and her friends have been brought to Obama through their children.  They were likely Hillary voters, but their kids have persuaded them, won them over, and seeing how fired up their kids are about the cause has actually led them to believe that something different is happening, beyond the bounds of what we normally call our politics.  And it is good.

Conversation # 3.  I was talking to a woman in her late 20s about why she supported Obama.  We got to chatting about the week leading up to the SCarolina primary.  We recalled how the Clintons went negative, went racial, and grossly manipulated Obama's comments about Reagan to suggest that he was endorsing the worst of Reagan's ideas.  I told her how this for me brought up the worst of the Clintons in the 1990s, especially around race.  Her response floored me.  She said, to paraphrase, "me and my friends don't remember Ricky Ray Rector, Sister Souljah and all that you are talking about.  We loved Bill Clinton, we thought he was the new South, and when he did that racial stuff before S. Carolina we felt like the rug had been pulled out from under us.  How could the guy we loved do the racially divisive stuff?"  As she spoke, I realized that I had actually underestimated the number of people impacted by the Clintons' S. Carolina negativity.  I had assumed that everybody read it, as I had, against a previous 8 years of the same.  What I had not accounted for is that there is a whole generation of 20 somethings who adored Clinton, didn't remember the race stuff from the early 1990s and were shocked and appalled when they were exposed to Clinton racial politics for the first time. 
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Ok, that's all good.  But now we have to close the deal.  Latest polls still show Obama down by almost 10% points in Ohio.  That is closer than the previous polls and we can help close the gap more with a great ground campaign.  Join us.  DC for Obama still has space on their buses to Ohio, and the Gtown law group and others are heading to Youngstown and Columbus by car and plane.  If you want to come, we still need you.  Email me for more details. 

Love, James