By Michael C. Dawson | TheRoot.com
April 24, 2008-- How will black voters react if Obama
retains the lead in delegates, popular votes, states
won, and money raised, but the superdelegates give
Clinton the nomination?
They're working. The rules are working as designed
(see my earlier piece, No Time for Smoke-Filled
Rooms), to guarantee that in a deeply divided,
complicated and dangerous primary season the party
elders will have the last say in choosing the
Democratic Party's nominee for president. But the
people who designed, and seem so eager to play by,
these rules might do well to consider the following
question: How will black voters react if Obama retains
the lead in delegates, popular votes, states won and
money raised, but the superdelegates give Clinton the
nomination?
delegates to make a convincing claim that the results
at the polls had not produced a clear winner.
The probability of this scenario emerging is more
likely than it sounds. First, as several articles today
have already pointed out, Clinton's victory in
Pennsylvania while strong, was not overwhelming to
the degree needed to start changing the basic math.
Clinton needs to have won the remaining contests by
over 15 percent in order to have a chance to pull close
enough to Obama in popular vote and pledged
As important, the March fundraising numbers make it
extremely clear that the Clinton campaign is in bad
financial shape, and the Obama campaign continues
to acquire extraordinary fiscal resources. This will be
more important in the remaining primaries as many,
such as Indiana, are far more favorable to Obama
than Pennsylvania. Thus, Obama's superior
resources are likely to have a greater impact in the
remaining contests. Yesterday's results reinforce the
strong belief that Clinton cannot even come close in
votes and delegates, let alone pull ahead.
The picture for Obama is sobering as well.
Yesterday's results have done nothing to alleviate
worries that he is having a hard time making inroads
among white working class voters—particularly white
Catholic voters who were at the core of the group
labeled the "Reagan Democrats." As many of us have
argued , "the race card" does, indeed, work against
Obama. CNN reports that of the 20 percent of voters
that considered race yesterday, nearly 60 percent
went to Clinton. Of the 21 percent who considered
gender, 71 percent chose Clinton, compared to 23
percent for Obama.
