Fitting that Bush uses peace for cover for war.

Then again he did say:

When I talk about war, I mean peace.

Didn’t you get the memo? War is Peace.

Speaking of 1984 references, I thought the funniest line on the past week’s Wait, Wait! Don’t Tell Me! was:

Paula Poundstone: There is no “pre-Halliburton.”

Adam Felber: Not in the new textbooks, anyway.

The election results and polling results show no significant diminution of support for Obama. His election performance is congruent with his polling numbers.

However, the Clinton polling numbers, exit poll results and election results really tell the tale of how she won. The answer in one word is women. Women voters made up a majority of voters and she easily won a plurality of their votes.

Why did the upset happen? It’s always tough to determine what exactly happened to give Clinton her upset win. According to the exit polls, she won among voters who had made up their mind more than a month ago. She also split the vote with Obama among voters who made up their mind in the last 3 days. This is significant. She had a lead among voters who had already made up their mind and she held her own with Obama among the late deciders. This was the margin of her victory.

How did she stay even with Obama among late deciders? Clearly, she was successful in getting her voters to the polls. The warm weather probably helped her campaign galvanize elderly women voters. And it’s likely that the constant beating she was taking in the final 3 days may have helped her field operation galvanize women voters.

I think it’s very important to point out the interplay between events on the ground, events that play out in the media and the field operations. No matter how good your field operations are, and Clinton’s was the best of the best, you really need some issue or some event that the field people can use to rally the voters and get them to the polls to vote. The “piling on” effect could very easily have been this galvanizing event. There is some anecdotal evidence for this.

How did the polls get it so wrong? Due to the compressed nature of the election cycle coming out of Iowa, it was a “perfect storm” of events and turnout that created the “wave” of Clinton support on election day. Had the cycle not been so compressed, it is likely that polling would have caught a turnaround.

Politically, it seems likely that the compressed nature of the election cycle prevented the Obama campaign from consolidating his Iowa bounce. Effectively, the campaign in NH was so close to the Iowa campaign that things were in flux. Voters did not have time to adsorb the results or to adequately access the Obama campaign. The Clinton campaign was a known commodity, had a superior field operation and were able to take voters from the Edwards campaign.

The Jesse Jackson Jr. comment is not subtle and is foolish. However, the motivation behind it is transparent. S. Carolina is going to be a critical contest as they head into the Super Tuesday contests. Given Hillary’s “stunning” and “remarkable comeback” in New Hampshire, S. Carolina becomes even more critical to the Obama campaign. It will be interesting to watch how the Obama campaign uses surrogates and its own operatives to wedge black votes from Hillary and to motivate and galvanize a huge black turnout for Obama. The Jackson incident is the worst possible way to try to do this.

However, a much more subtle way to accomplish the same goal is the approach employed by an Obama supporter who is a political commentator on MSNBC. Michael Dyson argued that the election results in NH were a result of racism. He argued that racism was at play b/c all the polls showed that Obama should have won but now we had this stunning upset unsupported by the polls. The subtle context of his argument was that a black man cannot get a fair shake from a white electorate. It’s called the Bradley effect – white voters tell pollsters that they will vote for a black candidate because it’s the politically correct thing to say and they don’t want to appear to be racists but when they go to the polls they vote for the white candidate.

The reason why the Jackson and Dyson comments are interesting to me is b/c S. Carolina is a very important state for Obama, he really needs a win there to more effectively take on Clinton on Super Tuesday. Clinton has a reservoir of goodwill and votes in the black community in S. Carolina. The Obama campaign needs to peel off black voters from Clinton and to increase turnout among his black supporters in order for him to guarantee a win in S. Carolina.

The messaging of supporters like Dyson could drive turnout among black voters in S. Carolina. One of the best things you can do to drive your field operations is to have a rallying cry to get your voters, which you have already identified, to the polls. By subtly messaging to black voters that Obama did not get a fair shake from the white electorate in NH, it’s possible to excite them to right the wrong by turning out to vote for Obama. Every good field operation needs a strong catalyst to help it drive turnout. Obama needs a big turnout. What we don’t know is whether this is a strategy that is approved by the Obama campaign.

Playing the racism card could also “moot” the Clinton victory in white NH among black voters in SC. This is important b/c it makes it easier for Obama to increase black support and to even peel away black voters from Clinton if it appears that she is vulnerable. A vulnerable Clinton bleeds black support while a resurgent Clinton campaign will hold black votes.

What I’m going to watch is the covert and overt ground game that will get underway in earnest now in S. Carolina. We should see lots of signaling on both sides of the political divide. Is it cynical? Yes. But it could well be effective.

“They” will claim it would be too expensive, but I’d rather my tax money be spent this way than on unsecured voting computers that don’t allow every vote to be accounted for!!
Anonymous Coward | 01.09.08 – 7:29 pm | #
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What a wonder full ideal. Anonymous Coward is presenting something America needs, way over due. More over this is the second day America is listening to the rant of what went wrong in the poles. So, what does Chris Mathews do in his analysis? For that matter across the spectrum is witness to Mainstream Media now blaming the candidates and the American voter. Hello America are you reading this? Everyone in America should be furious.

Right away blame the candidates, Blame emotions like sex differences, race discrimination, and worst all with open arrogance with fired up disrespectful audacity the son of bitch that is given the opportunity, licensed by the FCC, to serve the public community says that very public is lying to the Mainstream Media. The public is giving the Mainstream Media bad data, we the public who have a right of secret ballot, who don’t have to tell anyone what we voted for are blame for the problem that they the Media screwed up.

Ladies and Gentleman of America The Media across the spectrum, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and a host of others are all connected with a mind set that we the American citizen that has the right to a private ballot is the problem of their so called exit system tabulation. After casting my ballet sometimes I just smile at an exit pollster with nothing said. When in fact those mainstream Media persons that are assigned to collect this data could very well be biased, corrupt, or just plain loyal to fix the numbers. Isn’t this neat this bastard Chris Mathews is solidly shifting the blame on American citizens rather then admitting Mainstream Media screwed up. Of course with this said that Mainstream Media screwed this one how many others have been screwed how many others have been fixed. Of course from perspective, this can only be a Republican from of blame. Sounds like “the fix is in” at MSNBC. We already know our regular election is an embarrassment.

Their should be something we should do as Americans, require the FCC to ask exit pollsters some questions like who they are, some form of identification, name their organization, what or why are they collecting how do they record the data. Let get a video record of the transaction, make that a requirement if they want to publish through the electromagnetic spectrum do with values that support the Constitution.

Maybe here is were America could start to kick those son of bitches in the ass Mainstream Media, to be able to review a video recording of exit polling data the same way Anonymous Coward described above for regular ballet counting. If an American does not want to talk about their vote so be it. Come on America get hot give em hell because it gets tired to eat cake.

She and Mitt seem to be incapable of original thought.

LOL.

“I just don’t want to see us fall backwards.”

That train, Hillary left the station years and years ago. And you gave it a good swift kick along the way.

Senator “Nobody Will Be Forgotten Clinton’s Voting Record” Anatomy of a Long Backward Fall

He thinks it’s the pocket Constitution.

Didn’t some pasty-faced Republican consultant suggest they wanted to shrink the Constitution to where they could scrunch it down into a pocket where nobody would see it?

Michael Eric Dyson just called all the women in New Hampshire racists

Is he an Obama guy? Where do such ‘Democrats’ come from? Sheesh. Let’s get Obama on the record on this ‘racism’ thing. We’ve got to know where he stands.

Does this logically mean that any last minute votes for Clinton came not from Obama supporters (as his results pretty much matched the polling) but from Edwards supporters?

It’s hard to say. JRE was polling about 17% for a while before the primary. He might’ve won some after Iowa and then lost ‘em back, but nobody knows.

Doesn’t seem fair to lump Obama into this IMHO.

Is that because he “remained above the fray” and just directed his evil flying monkeys to do the nasty work?

I wish I knew whether he was really at all like those supporters. That would certainly clarify things well.

They make up 99.9% of the crap they publish. So what else is new?

Did you know that 96.39% of all newspaper reports about statistics are just lies?