THE ENDGAME? - May 12, 2008
  

Ever since Barack Obama secured his hefty lead in elected delegates in the series of primaries and caucuses that followed Super Tuesday in February, the successive rounds of primaries beginning with Ohio and Texas followed a consistent pattern. In each round, Hillary Clinton did slightly better than prior expectations, while Obama did not do quite as well. She did not cut into his elected delegate lead, but he was not closing the deal. After Pennsylvania, Hillary could even claim more total votes in the primary season, though only by including the disallowed primaries in Florida and Michigan, in the latter of which Obama's name was not on the ballot.

 
Hillary's better-than-expected streak ended with the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on 6 May. As had been widely expected, she won Indiana while Obama won North Carolina. However – contrary to polling during the week leading up to the primaries that suggested she

was gaining ground in both states – her Indiana win was razor thin, about one percent, while Obama romped to a 15-point victory in North Carolina. Obama added to his big lead in elected delegates, and edged back ahead by all measures of the popular vote. Most important, after several weeks of being more or less on the defensive, Obama regained the initiative.
  

Since February, Hillary's strategy has been to encourage "buyer's remorse" among Democratic primary voters, and uneasiness among superdelegates, by sewing doubts about Obama's prospects in a general election against John McCain in the fall. With no prospect of overcoming Obama's lead in elected delegates, she would need such doubts to reach a critical mass, emboldening superdelegates to tip the nomination to her. Her better-than-expected showings kept this prospect alive. Had the margins been reversed on 6 May – an easy Hillary win in Indiana, and only a relatively narrow Obama win in North Carolina – her argument would have been considerably strengthened. Instead, Obama's good showing in Indiana and easy win in North Carolina left Hillary's arguments suddenly weaker.
  

Realistically, there is nothing Hillary can now do to win the nomination – she can only hope that Obama will lose it. Even better-than-expected showings in the remaining primaries are unlikely to cut significantly into his big delegate lead, or tip the total popular vote back toward Hillary. After North Carolina and Indiana, there is no clear indication that either her arguments or general doubts about Obama are gaining traction with Democratic primary voters. General election trial heats that showed Hillary performing slightly better against McCain than Obama did have drifted back toward parity between them as fall competitors, weakening her argument to superdelegates. In fact superdelegates have been trickling into the Obama camp, leaving him now tied for superdelegates with Hillary, as well as leading her by all other standard measures.
  

The uncommitted superdelegates are not, however, flooding into the Obama camp to seal the deal for him. For this there are likely two reasons. Having come so far, and with only some three weeks left in the primary season, there is little reason not to let the process play itself out naturally. Anything seen as trying to force Hillary out of the race risks antagonizing her supporters, making it harder for them to coalesce around Obama in the fall. It is better politics to let the fact of an Obama victory sink in with them gradually than to rub their noses in it.
  

Another reason, however, for the non-rush of superdelegates to Obama may be continuing vague doubts about his fall prospects, combined with a sense that Hillary has gotten out of so many submerged steamer trunks wrapped in chains that she might somehow even get out of this one. A political campaign is not a mathematical exercise but a campaign – a nonviolent but fierce struggle for power, akin to warfare. Armies that refuse to admit they are beaten have been known to end up the winners. Both of these are arguments from intuition (Obama supporters would say superstition), which makes them no less powerful in politics.
  

Doubts about Obama's general election prospects quickly draw in the toxic issue of race, but the doubts are not racial as such – they are not primarily rooted in Obama's being black, though they cannot be entirely separated from race. Through the primary season he has won majorities of younger, more educated, and higher-income Democrats both black and white. He has lagged among white working-class Democrats, who constitute Hillary's base. Surely this is in some part racial, since in general racial tensions are greater among working class than middle class populations. It is probably much more reflective, however, of campaign styles and messages.
  

Obama follows more or less in a tradition of insurgent reformist Democratic presidential candidates who lay a particular stress on public ethics and transforming the political culture. Prior examples have been Howard Dean in 2004, Bill Bradley in 2000, Paul Tsongas in 1992, and with a somewhat different flavor, Gary Hart in 1984. All of these candidates – none of whom won the nomination – ran well in the primaries with younger, educated, and higher income whites, but poorly with working class voters of all colors. The profile of their support, in fact, looks much like the profile of Obama's support, minus his overwhelming African American support.
  

Since none of those previous insurgents won the nomination, how they would have fared in a general election is unknown. It is fair to say, however, that many longtime Democratic pols feel that support from young and well-educated voters drawn to a reformist message is a double-edged sword, because their prominence in a campaign's coalition is believed to drive away working class whites. The buzz word is "elitism," and the evoked symbolism is roughly upper middle class hippies – though George Orwell described the stereotype decades earlier, in The Road to Wigan Pier: every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
  

This stereotype has no obvious connection to Obama himself, but some of his most visible and vocal supporters – for example online - evoke it just enough to ring alarm bells for politicians. Those same politicians may have a related concern that Obama's relatively genteel style thus far, and his criticism of "conventional politics," will leave him unwilling or unable to hit back against hard GOP attacks in the fall. The elitist theme has been wielded effectively against every unsuccessful Democratic nominee for two decades, giving it a somewhat fearsome mystique among Democratic pols.
  

My own very subjective evaluation – from the perspective of a Hillary supporter – is that Obama, his campaign themes and style, and his support base, all show worrisome signs of traits that could leave them vulnerable to well-established GOP campaign themes in the fall. Obama himself, however, has clear strengths as a candidate. He is simply a better politician than any of his reformist-insurgent predecessors since perhaps Gary Hart, and better also than Al Gore or John Kerry. If uncommitted superdelegates share a roughly similar perspective, they are uneasy enough about his general election prospects not to rush his coronation, but will not deny it to him unless something happens to make him look much weaker in the fall than he appears to be now.

Rick Robinson

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Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.

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