Having grown up on the Pennsylvania border, travelled throughout the state, and spent a lot of time in Philadelphia, I know Pennsylvania fairly well.
So, here are my comments on tomorrow's Democratic primary.
1. Hillary by 12. My record as a primary prognosticator is terrible, but my gut feeling is that Hillary will be at the outer edge of the polls if not a little further out. A lot of Hillary's margin depends on how well she does in the Philly suburbs that should be Obama country.
2. Bitter People. Obama really blew it with his "people cling to God, guns, and racism out of their bitterness over the economy statement." Sure, there's bitterness over the economy. Two of my cousins couldn't make their dairy farms in Northeastern Pennsylvania profitable, had to start working in the local Sylvania factory, and died in their forties. But that doesn't have much to do with God, guns, and race.
3. Guns, Freedom, and Sex. Most of the Pennsylvania guys I knew weren't any more interested in God than they were in being gay. But there's a certain extent that the guns represent an element of freedom that's not enjoyed in the tonier Philadelphia suburbs. My Pennsylvania cousins all viewed themselves as having the freedom to reject education, college, and the 60 hour/week world for hunting, fishing, and otherwise focusing on their own enjoyment. There's a lot less of that freedom in the upper middle-class suburbs. I haven't been in contact with my cousins for a long time, but I imagine that guns have also acquired the same kind of huge autoerotic sexual charge in Pennsylvania that they now have in Kentucky. As my students say, a lot of guys are more interested in their guns than they are in women.
4. Multiple sources for Racism. People don't cling to racism out of economic bitterness either. Unlike the South where racism tends to have monolithic roots in regional grievance, family loyalty, and nostalgia for segregation, Northern racism is fed by little trickles of sentiment here and there. For older people like my mom, there's a kind of standing up for the racist past that is Southern-like in its nostalgic rejection of the present. There's also a tribalism of Irish, German, Polish, and Italian ethnic identification that defines blacks as outside their tribe or any tribe. It's easy to underestimate the extent to which ethnic tribalism permeates Pennsylvania families, neighborhoods, schools, and other institutions. Keeping blacks out has been a way to maintain the integrity of the tribe. There's also the Rockette aesthetic racism where white people who haven't been around many black people try to keep blacks from moving into their neighborhoods, workplaces, or families just like the Rockettes tried to maintain an all-white line. In Philadelphia, there was a class dimension to racism as well. White guys liked to vaunt their access to higher income working class jobs than the black guys they worked with. All these little streams of racial hostility add up to a tenacious racism that is unburdened by the horrors of pervasive police brutality, lynchings, and violent resistance to integration.
5. Black Working-Class. Actually, I think Obama's "bitter people" comments indicate that he has just as little awareness of theblack working class guys as he has of rural white people. Barack Obama is the political equivalent of Oprah, Michael Jordan, and Beyonce in the sense that he likes to pose his candidacy as "beyond category"--the Alpe du Huez of presidential candidates. But a lot of black life in an area like West Philadelphia is rooted in a sense of place just like a lot of white ethnic culture. Black life is not racially exclusive in the same way as white ethnic culture (people were nice to me even though I did get mugged once), but it's a kind of geographically, educationally, and ethnically bound life that Obama has little feel for.
If Hillary and Bill hadn't handed the black vote to Obama after South Carolina, she'd have won Pennsylvania by an even bigger margin than I'm predicting.
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4 comments:
Even if she "wins," she still loses.
Sorry Ric but my call is Obama by a point and a half and here is why:
* Clinton hasn't succeeded in making any of her criticisms of Obama stick. He has managed to weather scandals that would sink a politician of lesser skill.
* Clinton has been most effective when she is seen as the victim and underdog, but, given her aggressive response to Obama's "bitter" comments and her established strength in Pennsylvania, neither of these circumstances apply. If he can resist the urge to complain about his treatment in the debate, he may be the one seen as a victim.
- Bob Casey Jr
The importance of Casey's endorsement of Obama is hard to overstate. In part that's because Pennsylvania's junior senator is as daring as a piece of Lackawanna anthracite coal and is seen as unwilling or unable to play cynical political games. What's more, he is an able counterbalance to Clinton's two biggest supporters -- the affably pugnacious Gov. Ed. Rendell, and Philadelphia's African American mayor, Michael Nutter.
Casey is also exactly the kind of conservative, Catholic, blue-collar Democrat that Obama is supposed to have the most trouble attracting. He needs Casey's help all the more now that some of these voters think that he sees them as clinging to guns and religion out of a sense of economic frustration. In a new ad for Obama, Casey makes the election clearly about the economy, declaring on camera that "in towns like yours and mine, families are struggling with bills they can't afford and jobs moving away. It has to change -- but it won't until we change Washington."
But Casey's endorsement does something less obvious for Obama -- it rescues him from being the "Philadelphia candidate" and all the taint of racialized politics, corruption, and urban decay that such a label would put on him. This is especially true when Casey's support is contrasted with Rendell's and Nutter's, since both are current or former mayors of Philadelphia.
Obama "blew it" for telling the truth?
You really think by 12? I figured it would be pretty close seeing that the polls understate the youth vote (b/c they have cell-phones). I just hope it is not so close that I have to sit up all night waiting :)
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