You have to actually try to be this stupid.
I don’t get all this talk about how the Democrats cannot afford to not choose Obama, because of fear of alienating the African-American vote. It’s not like we don’t have an opposite reaction if Democrats don’t choose Clinton, among segments of Latinos, perhaps part of the Jewish and Catholic vote, certain women and working-class Democrats… That ship has already sailed.
Clinton and Obama are not in an equal position. If the convention in Denver picks the nominee that has won the most states, the most votes, and the most pledged delegates, there will be precious little for the other candidate (and their supporters) to complain about. Not so, if the reverse happens.
In any tough fought primary campaign the loser and their supporters are disappointed, sometimes bitterly so. If they feel like their loss was due to dirty tactics and dishonest attacks, the bitterness can be long-lasting and even carry into the general election. But as long as the loss is seen as legitimate (e.g., the votes were counted honestly) the fallout from a contested primary is usually non-fatal to the eventual nominee. There are, of course, exceptions.
Provided that Obama receives the nomination after winning the pledged delegate count, there is no reason for ‘Latinos, perhaps part of the Jewish and Catholic vote, certain women and working-class Democrats’ to lose confidence in the process. Their preferred candidate simply lost. It happens.
But if Obama wins the pledged delegate count and still does not gain the nomination, his supporters (most especially but certainly not limited to African-Americans) will be deeply, deeply disillusioned with the process. Even if Clinton were to catch up in the popular vote (a near pipe-dream, but nonetheless) it would offer some measure of mitigation, but not nearly enough to avoid a gross sense of injustice.
If Jerome Armstrong cannot anticipate the rift such an outcome would create in the Democratic Party, then he isn’t qualified to opine on American politics. African-American turnout in the general election will be severely depressed, and the damage will be lasting.
Black turnout is absolutely critical to any Democratic statewide run for office in states like Missouri, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Latino turnout can be critical in some states, too, but Armstrong has no argument for why Latino turnout would be severely depressed by a legitimate Obama nomination.
Obama may have a different base than Clinton, but if we are going to do an honest analysis, we have to ask which constituencies are going to stay-home or vote for McCain because Obama won the nomination (in their eyes) illegitimately. The answer is, of course, none. Obama has the conventional and legitimate claim to the nomination. Clinton’s claim is based on non-traditional and non-conventional arguments. Her claim is an electability argument, which can wax and wane depending on the day.
Are there some Jewish, Catholic, white working class, and female voters that will vote for Clinton and not for Obama? Certainly. Of course, the opposite is also true. But the operative question is why will they or won’t they vote for Obama? If it is not because of the perceived illegitimacy of his nomination then it isn’t really relevant, is it?
So, why won’t blacks vote for Clinton if she is the nominee? For starters, it is because she will have won unconventionally, and on the argument that Barack Obama is unelectable. Why is he unelectable? Well, currently the Clinton campaign is saying he is unelectable because he has connections to an urban black church and a controversial pastor. That is an argument that, whatever its objective merits, is a straight rebuke of the legitimacy of African-Americans as Americans. To win, Clinton will have had to convince the overwhelmingly white superdelegates that Obama’s connections to the black community render him unacceptable to the broader general electorate. They cannot win any other way.
Is there any sense in which Obama’s nomination is dependent on convincing the electorate that Clinton’s gender renders her unelectable? No. First of all, Obama has already secured the nomination in the traditional sense, and he doesn’t need to make extracurricular arguments about electability. But, secondly, his campaign has always (until recently) argued that Clinton is fully qualified to be president and has never to my knowledge raised her gender as a negative in this campaign (either overtly, or covertly).
There are going to be some women that think Clinton was treated unfairly in this process because of her gender, but very few of them will be able to harbor the kind of lingering resentment toward the Obama campaign that would preclude them from supporting him in the fall.
At this point in the process, the legitimacy of Obama’s nomination is so established by The Math that the Democratic Party has almost no choice but to nominate him. To fail to do so would destroy the electoral viability of the party not only in the presidential race but in statewide downticket races all across the country.
If Jerome Armstrong doesn’t get that, it’s really rather pathetic.
