David Sirota has a compelling piece in this month’s In These Times about how Hillary Clinton's primary and caucus performance is tied to a state’s share of black voters. The relationship is curvilinear -- she does poorly where there are low percentages of African Americans and where there are high percentages, but well in the middle ranges. Check out the article's great graphic for details, but the basic point is that black-white racial tensions are irrelevant in mostly-white states, swamped by the overwhelming share of black Democrats in black-dominant states, but sufficient enough to prevent Barack Obama from winning in the middle ranges where racial polarization is significant enough but black votes cannot swamp it out.
Sirota's point is that these white voters are her firewall. Mark Penn said Latinos were. But, guess what, if she loses it proves that neither was a sufficient bulwark against Obama. And if that happens I think I will be vindicated in an argument my beloved editors here at the Prospect thought was too absurd to publish, namely, that Clinton's real firewall all along was African Americans. She was leading Obama among black voters late into 2007, and she never needed to win them outright anyway -- she just needed to keep her support at or above 30 percent, by my back-of-napkin estimates. What makes this strategic blunder so damning for her campaign is the fact that a majority of black voters are female -- her most obvious opportunity for defection from Obama-mania.
For my money, Bill Clinton's stupid comments after Iowa will be remembered as the key volleys that helped tear down the firewall his wife might have used to hold back Obama: Those black voters who, almost a year after he declared, still weren’t quite sure about him or his chances to win, but got certain once they saw what the Clintons were willing to do to beat back Obama.
--Tom Schaller
