Obama Goes All Out for Victory In PA
Kevin Boyle
Posted: 04.21.2008 / 3:02 PM EDT
Tomorrow is the big day in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State’s result will insure either Hillary’s presidential ambitions gain new momentum to fight on through Puerto Rico or Obama clinches the nomination. Many commentators in Pennsylvania and nationally are asserting that a close Hillary victory of less than six percent will actually be an Obama victory. I argue that due to the amount of money Obama is spending in this state, there are no moral victories. If anyone has spent time watching television or listening to radio in the Philadelphia media market they would have seen and heard an unprecedented amount of Obama advertising. Obama is clearly fighting hard to achieve victory but if he comes up short it will further demonstrate an inability to do well with an essential constituency for the November general election, lower income white voters.
After the March 4 contests in Texas and Ohio some commentators asserted that Obama would not go all out to win Pennsylvania. They argued that the demographics in Pennsylvania were just too much in Hillary’s favor for him to seriously compete. They pointed to his relative failure to attract white working class support in neighboring Ohio as evidence. One thing is for sure in Pennsylvania. These commentators were wrong in predicting Obama’s strategy. Obama is fighting all out to win in the Keystone State. In choosing to fight for victory, he opens himself up to critical scrutiny about his chances in November if he loses.
This is because usually candidates that spend the most money win on Election Day. Whenever there is a serious inbalance like there is here in Pennsylvania (three to one spending ratio in Obama’s favor) it suggests a serious defect to voters among the candidate spending the greater amount of money. Proof positive of this was in Republican contests earlier this year. Mitt Romney seriously outspent his opponents in both Iowa and New Hampshire but failed to win either race because GOP voters simply did not find him genuine.
Like Romney did in these aforementioned states Obama is saturating local media with his advertisements. For those in the Philadelphia media market, where I live, it is all Obama, all the time. His ads appear constantly on both broadcast and cable stations. During last night’s 76ers-Pistons Game 1 NBA playoff game I counted atleast ten Obama commercials to Hillary’s three. I have actually heard many Obama paid advertisements on Top 40 stations (Q 102, Wired 96.5), rock stations (104.5, 94.1), and even today a country station (92.5 WXTU). As a longtime Philadelphia resident, I have never heard a political candidate advertise so much on these non traditional outlets.
Obama’s campaign obviously recognizes he needs the greatest help among its support with working class voters. Obama’s advertising in Pennsylvania has been savvy to the extent that it has strongly featured blue collar imagery. Obama has replaced his standard business casual look for a more working class look. In one ad he appears in a leather jacket while in front of an industrial site.
My final prediction on the Pennsylvania race is Hillary 54.5% to Obama’s 45.5%. This result will likely cause greater scrutiny of Obama’s inability to win blue collar support but probably not deny his ascent to the nomination. For Obama to win in November, in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan he will need to devise a more effective strategy to court this key constituency.
April 21st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Romney lost because no amount of $$ would or could disguise the fact that he changed his positions to whatever was “politically expedient”. Obama does not have that problem. If in fact his problem is “poor whites” or “Poor less educated whites”, keep in mind that U.S. history has clearly shown that “poor whites” have always been subject to being victimized by the moneyed and vested interests(the “elite”) who taught “jim crow” values to the poor whites so they could take action against minorities and leave the vested interests still in control with clean hands. These views were not just “southern” and will not just “go away” with out exposure for what they are and where they came from. The “poor whites” and their descendants who had less training and earnings potential than the slave” were taught to be
threatened by the slave when slave became free. Pitting one against the other kept the vested interests(Mr. Charley & Co.) in control of Both!!
April 21st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I always find that the more I hear from a candidate, the less I like him. Obama’s teflonicity is due mainly to the fact that the media adore him. And, we are prisoners of our pundits.
April 21st, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Let’s state the obvious: There are small differences between Clinton an Obama in health care, Iraq, and the economy. In November, there will be a major policy differences between Obama and McCain.
Republicans want Clinton to be the nominee because my Republican friends know she will be easier to beat than Obama. Her experience argument will be weak against McCain’s experience argument but Obama’s “judgment” and “new ideas” arguments, plus his youth, will be more difficult for McCain. Paul in Ventura, CA
April 21st, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Your root premise is that primary results predict general election outcomes. Your premise is false — especially for the case of the Clinton/Obama Pennsylvania contest.
The Clinton/Obama contest treats only whether Democrat-registered primary voters prefer Clinton over Obama, in an intra-party contest. It cannot predict how either Clinton or Obama would fare against McCain, in party vs. party race. Clinton’s and Obama’s policy positions are not much different (though their “characters” are). But both Clinton’s and Obama’s policy positions are very different from McCain’s.
Also, nether Clinton nor Obama is fighting a Party machine. In the general election, Obama or Clinton (the Democrat nominee) would fight the Republican machine. Though, if Obama is the Democrat nominee, some Clinton supporters will not vote for him and some will vote for McCain, still, many Clinton supporters will vote Democrat, hence for Obama.
Your argument must account for statistics produced by some of the several polls that treated the Clinton/Obama Pennsylvania contest. Otherwise, your argument would be even more irrational than it is. Except one, the most recent polls have predicted that Clinton would win Pennsylvania by 6 to 10 points. Your prediction accords. But your prediction suffers rebuttal by the far-and-away most reliable recent poll.
Saturday and Sunday (19 & 20 April) Public Policy Polling polled 2,338 Pennsylvania voters who are likely to cast ballots in tomorrow’s Keystone State primary. Its poll shows Obama leading Clinton 49%-46%.
The Public Policy Polling sample was more than twice the size of the largest samples of all the other polls (Quinnipiac 1027, Strategic Vision 1202, Suffolk University 600, and Zogby International 602, and the Public Policy Polling sample’s absolute number was very large (in the world of polling), especially because the subject was just Pennsylvania, not the entire nation. So, the Public Policy Polling result is the most reliable and significant.
The Suffolk University poll gives Clinton the greatest lead (10 points), and it is the most-cited, though it is the least reliable (having used a sample of just 600). The Quinnipiac poll gave Clinton only a 7-point lead (plus or minus an error margin of 3.1 points). The Strategic Vision poll, too, gave Clinton only a 7-point lead. The Zogby International poll (a 600 sample) gave her a mere 6-point lead (plus or minus 4.1 points).
The Zogby poll allows that her lead may be only 1.9 points, since its error margin is 4.1. So, that poll suggests an outcome not much different from the 3-point Obama-favoring outcome the Public Policy Polling poll suggests. If Obama loses by 1.9 or 2.4 or 3.2 points, or even 6 points, Clinton’s “victory” will be insignificant. And, surely, if Obama wins (even if by small margin), Clinton will be finished — or the Democratic National Committee and most superdelegates ought to force her out.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:29 am
Something fundamental seems to have escaped Mr. Boyle - Obama did not get to where he is today by following the kind of conventional logic that Boyle and many other ’seasoned’ political commentators are continuing to ruminate over.
Instead, Obama is running as hard as he can in PA because he has an avowed and deceptively simple strategy of using each primary to build his own base, and on his own terms, in every state. In PA he is not just fighting Clinton, but gaining important leverage over the existing Democratic machine, currently led by Rendell. Having clawed his way to top of Democratic politics in Illinois, Obama understands this game very, very well.
Therefore, Obama expects the effort and money he has spent in PA (as elsewhere) to pay off handsomely by building a loyal and experienced cadre for the 2008 general election and beyond, regardless of how well he does against the already-doomed Clinton primary campaign in any given state. If he simply wanted to win against Clinton at this point he would hardly have to make such an effort, which is why Boyle is so confused.
Instead, Obama is already thinking well beyond the primaries. By exploiting each and every primary to construct a whole new base for himself in every state, Obama is not only preparing himself to run against McCain (another hopeless goner!), but working to inoculate himself again the old Democratic apparatchniks now making their last stand around Clinton, who will of course try to knee-cap him within his own party once he is nominated. Clinton is of course fighting hard for the same reason - she needs to keep her troops energized behind her doomed campaign at least until the convention in order to maintain any hope for continued significant influence within the Democratic party and ultimately the ’spoils’ to come from a Democratic victory in the coming election.
In case you weren’t watching, the defining moment in PA was not ‘Bittergate’, but rather when the Obama campaign refused to pay a piddling amount of ‘walking money’ to precinct-level Democratic party machine workers in Philly, despite his clear ‘need’ to get out the vote where he is strongest. This is a clear sign that he is only interested in a ‘clean’ vote that he owes to nobody but his own all-volunteer supporters. To my knowledge, no other candidate has every taken such a principled position - and certainly not with Obama’s resulting level of success.
So, in a way, I agree with Boyle. If Obama’s main goal is be elected President, he is going about it in a rather risky and ‘illogical’ way. But, if his main goal is to alter the national political equation into order to effectuate real change for years to come, then he is right on target. Those who see this in Obama will stick with him through thick and thin. The rest have either just not gotten the message yet, or else they are part of the problem.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 am
Obama’s great virtue is his ability to market himself. He reminds me of someone else in that way. The man I am thinking of came to the top of a distressed and defeated country by virtue of his spellbinding oratory. He re-energized and united his country in an unprecedented way. Let’s see how this one works out.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:33 am
No amount of money can change a McNabe personlity. One can only take a horse to the watershed - no one can make it drink. There is a reason some regions and class of people are backward - because they don’t do anything about it. PA is going to be a blow out victory for Clinton.