Political Snapshot

Night lands Clinton closer to oblivion

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(Via Salon News.)

Hillary Clinton is one day and two important primaries closer to oblivion. Her hairbreadth victory here in Indiana coupled with her double-digit defeat in North Carolina on the last big night of the 2008 primary season provided a dreams-deferred, delegate-deficit downturn in her already dispiriting fortunes. Not only is Hillary clinging to the hands of a clock in an old-time Harold Lloyd silent movie, but the clock face has begun to wobble.

Barack Obama — who survived and even prospered after Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads created the worst week of his political career — felt self-confident enough in his victory speech from Raleigh, N.C., to offer an all-is-forgiven unity message directed at the supporters of his “formidable opponent” who harbor “bruised feelings.” But the most important message of the evening was not embedded in Obama’s words, but buried in the interstices of the exit polls. It was not that Obama did particularly well among lower-income white voters, but that he did well enough to prevent Clinton from mounting a renewed can’t-win-in-November argument.

In North Carolina, Obama swept every economic subgroup, along with 93 percent of the black vote and a healthy 36 percent of the white vote. The verdict from Indiana was more ambiguous, but Obama, often portrayed as an upstairs-downstairs candidate whose coalition seemed based on investment bankers and the inner city, won at least 43 percent support in every income category. (A cautionary note about the invaluable but imperfect exit polls: They are crude instruments that have an addictive power because on Election Night they are essentially the only game in town.)

Full story here.