I'm not one who usually quotes from the Wall Street Journal or ever blogs about politics, but this article really summed up what I've been thinking the past couple weeks about how all the pseudo-ties between the disparate demographic groups that make up the Democratic party are unraveling at a very quick pace...
Whatever else yesterday's voting may have done, it did a good job of laying bare the divides within each party. More than that, it may have exacerbated the splits.
The Democratic fight between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seems certain to continue, and it is showing a clear divide between whites and blacks, between Hispanics and non-Hispanics, between women and men, and between older and younger voters.... The problem for Democrats is that the race is opening up the kind of sensitive divides that go to the party's very identity as an institution that unites races and genders.
The racial split was glaring in Georgia, where exit polls showed that roughly half the Democrats who voted were African-American, and that some 80% of them voted for Sen. Obama. And it wasn't just Georgia. In New York, a much different kind of state, roughly six in 10 blacks went for Sen. Obama over Sen. Clinton in her home state.
The flip side of the black-white split is the white-Hispanic split. Hispanics are starting to consistently back Sen. Clinton. In the electoral crucible of California, for instance, roughly two-thirds of Hispanics went for her, exit polls showed.
There also is a less glaring split within the party between men and women, with women going for Mrs. Clinton, and older women showing more enthusiasm than younger women. Older Democrats generally are tending toward Sen. Clinton, younger ones toward Sen. Obama.
Will be interesting to see how all this pans out. I think the reality that the alliances that make up the Democratic party are hanging by the thinnest of threads needed to be exposed for the party's own sake. There was a palpable tension in my polling station today; dozens of people in line from the different demographic groups described above, sizing each other up and predicting who one another was going to vote for. All Democrats!
Seems like wake-up calls like this are just what the doctor ordered...
3 comments:
I think we've seen generational divides among Democrats before. In 1984, we had the divide between the establishment candidate Walter Mondale and his "new ideas" challenger Gary Hart. In 2000, it was a split between Clinton heir apparent Al Gore and challenger Bill Bradley. What makes 2008 different is that for the first time neither leading candidate is white and male. With the prospect of either the first female president or the first non-white president, the enthusiasm -- and the factionalism -- will grow until the party coalesces around one candidate. Personally, I think a Clinton-Obama ticket (with either one at the top) would be unbeatable, but if the primary season wears on and gets really nasty, I'm not sure if they could come together. It will be interesting to watch.
True, although for me, it's interesting that my trajectory has gone from being a overzealous fan of the Clintons in 1992 to wanting absolutely nothing to do with them in 2008. And I do say "Them" because it is "them" we're getting, like the "them" we had before. Given that Hillary raised more money from lobbyists than anyone else, the Democratic party is really not all that different than the folks across the aisle. Big money talks. Lobbyist paybacks talk. And if you go against Big Money, you will face the dire consequences (enter media blackouts of John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, etc. etc.). Not saying Obama's some stately prince in this dept, either. I'm just not all that enthusiastic right now. Kind of sad, really.
Hrm...I am not as eloquent as you are on this topic...
The blended (people of multiple descent) vote has been ignored...
But it seems that anything complex is covered by niche media...
Else its bifercation all the time.
I miss the naive days of 1992 when I supported Jerry Brown as a potential candidate and then when he didn't get the backing, I ended up voting for Clinton. I was excited since it was my first presidential election.
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