Maybe it’s the Candidate
While everyone is focusing on the reasons for the Clinton implosion (the strategy was poor, they should not have skipped caucuses and small primary states, her ads were awful, Bill injected race into the campaign in South Carolina…and hundreds of others) the fact is that Barrack Obama may just simply be a better candidate. Elections are almost never about issues (the Civil War and Watergate being two notable exceptions); they are, instead, about personalities. Obama is the more compelling personality. He’s connected with voters, and he’s likable. We always knew Clinton had a likeability problem but we assumed that she would dominate the early caucuses and primaries, thereby establishing an insurmountable lead and propelling her to victory. But that balloon popped when she lost Iowa…and so did her campaign. In the end, I think we will look back at South Carolina as the big turning point.
Yesterday, Obama proved that he is now cutting into Clinton’s core vote — white women, lower-income voters, self identified Democrats and union households. As you can see from the attached graph, Obama nearly split the vote among white women. The fact is that he is expanding his coalition with each passing contest while hers is deteriorating.
As I said last week, it may be too early to bury the Clinton campaign…but we just got a lot closer.
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