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Hillary Rodham Clinton is right. She has the broader and whiter political coalition, so she should, by all rights, be the Democratic presidential nominee. After all, in other realms of the political process, we routinely refer to "black districts" or "Latino districts" and speak of the necessity of those jurisdictions to be represented by black or Latino elected officials. Well, then, because the American population is 66% white, maybe the United States is a de facto white district that should be represented accordingly. Don't scoff at the idea. Ethnic and racial self-determination have been underlying factors in the formation of...

DES MOINES, Iowa - Barack Obama shied away from triumphantly proclaiming total victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton last night, but he certainly annihilated the central reason she gives for staying in the race. The Clinton team claims that Sen. Obama is nothing more than a black candidate with a sidecar of liberal academics. This is why, the Clintons argue, white Democrats in working-class and rural states simply can't pull the lever for this black guy with a foreign-sounding name. And, the Clinton's implied reasoning goes, since she appeals so much to these racist white Democrats that are the "backbone" of...

Even before I heard Chris Matthews mention it, it struck me too . . . Among the visuals a big-time campaign carefully choreographs is the human backdrop when the candidate speaks—particularly when it's a matter of an important, nationally-televised speech. So it's very hard to imagine that it was coincidence that the crowd visible behind Hillary this evening as she gave her Kentucky primary victory speech . . . was comprised 100% of people of pallor. Kibitzing with co-anchor Keith Olbermann immediately after Clinton's comments, Matthews mentioned it. CHRIS MATTHEWS: I thought a giveaway line was "who is best positioned...

. . . Before the April and early May primaries, cultural and racial politics seemed to throw the Obama campaign off its stride, especially as the controversy over Obama's former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, smoldered, then flared again. It angered Don Lutes, a retired steelworker and union official from Griffith, Ind., who voted early for Clinton. "All this came out with the Rev. Wright and this [former Weatherman] Bill Ayers deal," Lutes says. "I can't believe he knew this Ayers. They bombed the Capitol. How could he associate with people like that? That really turned me off. And [Obama's]...

Furthermore, Obama does not deserve the vote of any Catholic, Jew, or self-respecting African-American. The reason has nothing to do with the color of his skin, and everything to do with the content (or lack thereof) of his character. ...It is easy to imagine white people, and especially Jewish white people, reacting to this picture the way most African-Americans would react to a candidate posing arm in arm with someone in a sheet and hood in front of a burning cross. ...Hillary Clinton added, and quite correctly, that she “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans,...

I'll never forget a frigid morning in Springfield: Sen. Barack Obama, elegantly Lincolnesque in a long wool coat, launching his presidential candidacy in the shadow of the old Illinois State Capitol. The echoes of history were almost deafening—not just of Abraham Lincoln, who, like Obama, had been a legislator there, but of the argument over slavery and race that Lincoln had joined there. On that sunny February day in 2007, Obama seemed to radiate uplift and glorious possibility. He was making a statement: that his candidacy would be the exclamation point at the end of our four-century-long argument over the...

A confluence of groups customarily inclined toward Hillary Clinton was voting in the West Virginia primary, with less-educated, lower-income Southern whites predominating. Nonetheless there was room for criticism of Clinton -- and bringing "needed change," Barack Obama's trademark, was again the most-desired candidate trait. The Race Factor Racially motivated voting appeared to be running higher than usual: Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. And only a third of those voters said they'd support Obama as the nominee against John McCain, fewer than in other primaries where...

Democrats bristle at talking about this in plainer terms. They say Sen. Hillary Clinton has found her base -- the "working class." That's why she won in the Rust Belt primaries. That's her great hope in Kentucky and West Virginia. But calling Clinton's strategy one of kowtowing to the "working class" doesn't quite say it, does it? Isn't this just old-fashioned racism within the Democratic Party? When Hillary strategists say they are winning the "working class," they don't mean they are winning working people with a household income of, say, less than $50,000. All the exit polls show quite clearly...

Hillary Clinton, down to her last straw, is making the case that she is the better candidate to run against the Republicans because, unlike Barack Obama, she can win white Democrats. She is right. But because she is daring to touch the hot button of racial politics, she is being told to shut up or risk being charged with exploiting racial tensions for political advantage. The facts are stubborn, however. Since his phenomenal win with 33% of the white vote in nearly all-white Iowa, Obama has been unable to get a firm grip on white Democrats. He has won a...

NEW YORK — Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), among Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top African-American supporters, was none too pleased with Clinton’s comments this week to USA Today that she has broader appeal with white voters. The statement was “the dumbest thing she could have said,” Rangel told reporters before a Clinton fundraiser in a midtown hotel ballroom Saturday. He called her statement “very poorly worded” but acknowledged there may be some truth to it. “In any campaign, there are groups of people that you know that you have and groups of people that you don’t,” he said. “And I don’t...

Whether or not the Democratic primary marathon between two path-breaking candidates has been good for the party or the country, it has clearly been good for people like me: political scientists who study voting behavior. We've been given a data gold mine, the results of an experiment that no one intended to conduct. Sen. Barack Obama is the all but certain Democratic nominee, but voting patterns in Indiana and North Carolina show that resistance to a black candidate among some white Democrats remains a serious threat to his chances in November: · As in other recent primaries, Sen. Hillary Rodham...

Well, Barack Obama should be one happy guy. His big victory in North Carolina has pretty much locked up the Democratic presidential nomination. Now it is virtually impossible for Hillary Clinton to defeat him in the popular vote or in the elected delegate category. Thus, Obama has the nomination won unless another Rev. Wright crawls into the picture. Spinners who talk about re-votes in Florida and Michigan are dreaming; that will not happen. The Obama campaign would be foolish to participate. They played by the Democratic Party's rules and won. They're not going to sanction do-overs. Also, as Al Sharpton...

As if the divisions between race and gender in the Democratic Party hadn’t been further exposed through Tuesday night’s exit polls — and by a very heated exchange on CNN between Donna Brazile and Paul Begala — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s interview with USA Today on Wednesday is further mining those tense depths. “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in the interview, citing an article by The Associated Press. It “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had...

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PRINCETON, NJ -- Barack Obama's current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry's margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

On the eve of two crucial primary election contests, Hillary Clinton is pinning her hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination on a collapse in the white vote for Barack Obama. “White flight” from Obama, who was hailed as the first post-racial presidential candidate, has been gathering force since Clinton’s nine-point victory in last month’s Pennsylvania primary. Her allies will be looking at voting patterns in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday, the two largest remaining states to go to the polls, for any signs that Obama’s proven weakness among white working-class voters may turn into a rout. Clinton is...

Reproduction and circulation of the following as a viral E-mail, and/or re-posting, is encouraged. Why Won’t Whites, Jews, and Catholics Vote for Obama? Despite the endorsement of Senator Robert Casey (D-PA), Barack Obama lost the Pennsylvania primary by a 55-45 margin. In Luzerne County PA, a traditional Democratic region whose demographics include factory workers and the descendents of immigrant coal miners (many Catholic), Obama lost by a three to one margin. Why does Barack Obama have so much difficulty in getting white people (and especially Catholics and Jews) to vote for him? Let’s give “Barry” some hints and see his...

Arianna Huffington started The Huffington Post with a read-my-lips-with-an-accent pledge: it would be an oasis of brainy progressivism, not a slash-and-burn hate site. That's a tough promise to live up to when you invite Hollywood mudslingers like Alec Baldwin and Bill Maher to the table. But even the women sling mud. Screenwriter Nora Ephron is starting out the week singling out white men as vile and ignorant boobs who shouldn't be allowed to pick the next president:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) got glowing reviews when he addressed the issue of race last month in Philadelphia. But there are aspects of the race issue in this campaign that still make people nervous. Recently I called a number of political strategists of both parties, as well as unaffiliated experts, to ask whether Democrats have been voting along racial lines in this year's primary season. After all, 92 percent of black Democrats in Mississippi voted for Obama, while 91 percent of black Democrats in Wisconsin did the same. And 70 percent of white Democrats in Mississippi voted for Sen. Hillary...

Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama's 10-point advantage in a head-to-head matchup, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates in an Associated Press-Ipsos national poll released Thursday. The survey showed the extended Democratic primary campaign creating divisions among supporters of Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and suggests a tight race for the presidency in November no matter which Democrat becomes the nominee. McCain is benefiting from a bounce since he clinched the GOP nomination a month ago. The four-term Arizona senator has moved up in matchups with each of the Democratic candidates, particularly Obama....

Obama advance: 'Get me more white people' POLITICO Ben Smith From the account in Carnegie Mellon's paper, the Tartan, of a Michelle Obama event in Pittsburgh: While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.” “I didn’t know they...

Only a week after her husband drew throngs to Soldiers and Sailors, Michelle Obama wooed a small crowd at Skibo Gymnasium on Wednesday. Skibo’s risers were packed with community members and students from many of Pittsburgh’s universities. The rally was staffed by volunteers from a number of Carnegie Mellon student organizations, including Carnegie Mellon Students for Barack Obama, Student Senate, AB Political Speakers, and College Democrats. Helping Students for Obama lead the crowd in cheers of “Ready to go” was Steve Sovern, a professional mediator from just outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who got excited enough about the campaign to...

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.” “I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attende....

Add this to the divisive debate over race in the presidential campaign: Whites who said race was important in picking their candidate have been about twice as likely to back Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as Sen. Barack Obama. Exit polls of voters in Democratic primaries also show that whites who considered the contender's race — Clinton is white, Obama is black — were three times likelier to say they would only be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee than if Obama were chosen. The figures shed some light on race's effect on a competition that moves to the April 22...

It was probably inevitable. The historic contest between a woman and an African-American for the presidential nomination is now all about white men. Not that the white male voters asked for this. They’ve been uncommitted, supporting Hillary in one contest and Barack in the next. But all that hemming and hawing has turned them into the deciding factor in the big upcoming primary in Pennsylvania. Reporters are spread all over the state, searching for white men to interview. American Legion halls under siege! Both campaigns engage in extensive research, which reveals that white men are very concerned about the economy....

After months of speeches and debates, and nearly $1 billion in total campaign spending to date, the presidential race is a dead heat. A head-to-head showdown between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama is now too close to call — 45.9 percent to 44.6 percent — based on an averaging of national polls by realclearpolitics.com. A head-to-head showdown between McCain and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is also razor-thin, 46 percent to 45.7 percent. Now, a poll of likely Christian voters offers evidence of why the McCain campaign is struggling to gain real traction and a lead that can last. The...

Listen for a few minutes to Joey Vento, owner of a south Philadelphia institution that serves gut-busting sandwiches through a takeaway hatch, and the scale of Barack Obama's problems become apparent. Obama is having the worst week of his campaign. It is, some believe, a week that threatens his chances of becoming president. "That minister, that was terrible, all his sayings. He's preaching hatred," Vento said. "The thing I didn't like about Obama; you're telling me for 20 years you been going to that church and you never heard that?" Vento, 68, was speaking about Obama's former pastor and spiritual...

WASHINGTON - In the fierce campaign between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a battle dominated by issues of race and gender, white men have emerged as perhaps the single critical swing constituency. The competition for the support of white men, particularly those defined as working class, will shape the showdown between Clinton and Obama in Pennsylvania's Democratic presidential primary April 22. Obama of Illinois won majorities among those voters in what appeared to be breakthrough victories in Wisconsin and Virginia last month. But he badly lost working-class white men to Clinton, of New York, in Ohio and Texas two...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton was winning robust support Tuesday in Ohio's Democratic presidential contest from groups that have been the foundation of her candidacy, taking strong margins among white, blue collar and older voters. Early results from exit polls of the state's Democratic voters showed that Barack Obama was not doing as well as he had in recent contests in eroding her support from those groups. The senator from Illinois was doing best among voters who have been with him from early on in this year's voting. He was getting backing from nine in 10 blacks, two thirds...

There is a great amount of interest in this year's presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates - a woman and an African-American – while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party's nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain. Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians. There is one group no one has...

Democratic Base FissuresAlthough attention has been focused on McCain's problems with the GOP base, there are indications that some Democrats might defect if Obama is the party's nominee. Overall, 20% of white Democratic voters say they would vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee. That is twice the percentage of white Democrats who say they would support McCain in a Clinton-McCain matchup. Older Democrats (ages 65 and older), lower-income and less educated Democrats also would support McCain at higher levels if Obama rather than Clinton is the party's nominee. Read more at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=398

Crafty Obama playing to the white voters Tuesday, September 11, 2007 3:42 AM I would like to comment on the comment that presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama isn't black enough ("Questioning Obama's blackness is petty," Dispatch Forum column, Sept. 1). I think that his disconnect with the descendants of slaves comes from his desire to show his white supporters how white he can be. When he did his little southern black accent down in Alabama, by which I was personally offended, he was showing his white supporters that he knows how to play the game. I did, however, enjoy his...

The city's Democratic Party has a problem: White flight. Whites voted for Michael Bloomberg in droves on Tuesday — the fourth consecutive mayoral election in which the Republican received more white votes than the Democrat. The shift of white voters — many of them Democrats — has breathed new life into the city's Republican Party, at least in mayoral elections, and exposed fissures among the city's Democrats. "Having the Democratic nomination is not tantamount to victory any more," said Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant who worked for Green. "When it comes to mayoral elections, New York City is now a ...

All the post-election blather about the composition of Bush's base proves that Karl Rove and the Bush GOP are right: The entire Democratic Party establishment, along with the "serious" news outlets (the broadcast networks, the prestige daily papers), have no idea what's become of the white working class. None. They set it aside momentarily a mere 30 or so years ago...

Election Day 2004 threw a bucket of cold water on Democratic hopes that America's changing demographics would necessarily improve their future prospects. Exit polls indicate the Bush campaign increased its share of the white vote even as it expanded its appeal to minorities, especially Hispanics. And there were decisive Republican victories in the bubbling multiculture of Florida and in increasingly diverse Nevada, not to mention a narrow win in heavily Hispanic New Mexico. Until Nov. 2, Democrats had viewed the nation's growing diversity as their ace in the hole: As America became less white, they reasoned, the party's fortunes would...