You Can Know Your Demographic Without Alienating the Other Demographics

I knew there would be spin coming out of the Clinton camp today after she was beat by a wide margin in N.C. and won by a tiny margin in Indiana. She was expected to lose in N.C. and she could have just left that state alone and made some kind of story up about how that slight victory in Indiana was the new, blinking neon goal posts that everyone should pay attention to. At least that would keep members of her campaign from talking to the press about how their strength among whites in N.C. was the story we all should have been paying attention to in that state (and not Obama’s high performance among…everyone).

From TPM:

On the Hillary conference call, Hillary chief strategist Geoff Garin made the case for her electability in some of the most explicitly race-based terms I’ve heard yet.

Garin argued that the North Carolina contest, which Obama won by 14 points, represented “progress” for Hillary because she did better among white voters there than she did in Virginia.

“When we began in North Carolina,” Garin said, “our internal polling and much of the public polling [showed] we were running exactly even with white voters.”

Garin said that the Virginia electorate was the “closest white electorate in the country” to North Carolina, and added that Hillary “started even” among whites in North Carolina, and “ended up earning a significant win of 24 points.”

“We obviously did not do as well as we would want or needed to among African American voters,” Garin concluded.

Put in the context of the Hillary campaign’s chief argument that she’s the more electable Dem, Garin’s overall implication here is that her success among white voters in North Carolina yesterday is “progress” in the sense that it strengthens her case for electability.

In other words, it’s an explicit, and unabashed, linking of her claim of electability to her success among whites.

Granted, politics is all about framing. But saying that you’re more electable since you’re down with the white people (which implies that your opponent isn’t, and that the non-white people aren’t as important- neither of which is true) might not be the campaign slogan you put up on the banners.

Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, North Carolina primary, Indiana primary