Unfortunately, there’s more truth in this than I’d like to admit.
DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Yes, there are some similarities. I’d be worried if I were Barack Obama in Indiana. He’s got a very slim lead, according to the polls. And if there’s one pattern we’ve seen in week after week, primary after primary, it’s that Hillary does well among the late-deciders. And so he’s got to work hard.
Having said that, I have a little different read on the demography. I think the campaigning has scarcely mattered. In race after race, among Catholics, among white men, among older women, the demography is king.
They’ve drawn essentially the same results from the same demographic groups in state after state. The one exception is Wisconsin. I think, in places like Maryland and Virginia, you have these extraordinarily affluent electorates where Obama did well.
But if you look at California, you look in New Hampshire, you look in Pennsylvania, if you’re looking at the white working class, high school-educated voters, she does very well.
And what strikes me about this whole race is the campaigns scarcely matter. They can do well in debates; they can do bad in debates; they can have gaffes. They don’t really affect their own people.
And Barack Obama spent weeks trying to dislodge white working-class voters away from Hillary Clinton, changed his whole campaign style, ran all these ads, appeared on countless factory floors, ate a lot of fatty foods, didn’t do anything for him.
So he’s got to find some way to actually change the dynamic of the campaign. So far, demography is king and the campaigning and the politics hasn’t really affected things.
You can figure out how all the remaining contests will turn out by looking at this map.
Michigan is deceptively blue there, but it’s pretty obvious that the only thing left to solve in the primary is who wins Indiana.
