Yesterday I wrote a diary entitled “Could we please stop with the “Hillary’s only winning red states that we’ll lose in November” crap?” which generated a heated discussion in response.
I have two updates I wanted to add, but since that diary has mostly fallen off the radar, I’m moving them to a new one.
The first is a simple clarification about this passage:
Not only is this nonsense (she’s won Iowa, Nevada, Massachusetts and Virginia, after all, all of which Obama won in 2008, while Bernie won OKLAHOMA, which is about as Red as you can get), it’s also meaningless.
Many people completely misunderstood what I meant here, pointing out that Hillary won Massachusetts in the 2008 primary, not Obama. I was talking about Obama winning all of those states in the general election in 2008, not the primary. I can see how my wording was confusing at first glance, but when you read the whole piece it should be pretty obvious what my point was: Hillary is not “only winning red states” this year.
The larger point of this follow-up, however, is this: Several commenters in the original diary claimed that the “Obama only winning red states in the primaries!” claim wasn’t a Thing in 2008. I don’t know if these people are too young to remember the ‘08 primary, or weren’t paying attention, but yes, that was a huge thing for a couple of months at the time...and yes, the claim was pushed, hard, by the Clinton campaign. As proof, here’s a diary written by Feliks in March 2008:
From the Hillary Clinton website:
# The Red States: The central strategic argument of the Obama campaign is flawed. Senator Obama argues that his success in Democratic primary contests held in long-time Red States means he will carry those states in a general election. In reality, there are no "Red States" in a Democratic primary – there are only Democratic voters who live in Republican states and represent a small percentage of the general election population.
* Of the eleven core Republican states that have gone to the polls, Sen. Obama has won ten: Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. John Kerry lost each of these states by fifteen points or more.
* The last time a Democratic nominee won Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Kansas, and Alaska in the general election was 1964.
* Even if Obama is "transcendent," as his campaign has argued, the historic electoral trends and the current political environment suggest that translating those primary wins into November success will be close to impossible.
* In short: Hillary is better positioned to carry the battle ground states that Democrats need to win in November and Obama’s victories in deep red states do not.
Sound familiar?
The point is not that Hillary would be able to win any of these states in the general election. The point is that she made the exact same argument about Obama in 2008, trying to claim that this somehow magically meant that she was more electable in the general.
I’m not saying that Hillary winning “only” red states in the primary means that she’ll win those states in the general. I’m also not claiming that she’ll win the general as a result of winning those states in the primary. I’m saying that “only winning red states in the primary” has no meaning whatsoever for the general one way or the other.
It was a silly argument for her campaign to make against Obama in 2008, and it’s an equally silly argument for Bernie supporters to make against her in 2016.
UPDATE: Oh, one more thing: For anyone claiming that the “She’s only winning red states!” argument isn’t being pushed now, guess what?
As Realistiko just noted this morning:
If you post any diaries touting victories in these state, you will have called Moore dumb.
UPDATE: Here’s another fun diary about “Obama States” vs. “Hillary States” from February 2008...written by none other than “Poblano”, who some of you might know better as “NATE SILVER”. I’m not gonna bother quoting from it, but he went into factors like:
- Caucus versus Primary
- African-American population
- Percentage of 18-29 voters
- Percentage of adults with college degrees
- Fundraising
- Percentage of Southern Baptists
- John Kerry vote share, 2004
-
Percentage of Democratic voters who self-identify as Liberal
- Percentage of naturalized citizens, e.g. immigrants.
Obviously the Kerry factor isn’t as relevant today, but all of the others are major demographic criteria which probably have a bigger impact on how the general is likely to go than which candidate won the primary in that state in and of itself.