Super Duper Party Poopers: Nothing Clear in Democratic Race

This week’s blog comes to you late. It’s late because we wanted to include some discussion of the Super Tuesday results. The problem is that we still do not have too much to say. It is a very close race (as it was before yesterday’s contests), and there is no end in immediate sight.

The racial discourse was refreshingly absent from the last week of campaigning, but pundits were largely on point with their analysis of exit poll results indicating that Obama was making headway with white voters generally and white women particularly. In Georgia, evidence showed that he took almost all of the female African-American vote.

The bottom line, of course, is that Hillary Clinton can afford to lose 100% of the black vote if she is able to secure a disproportionate amount of the white vote. Every state is majority white, so those numbers would work out just fine for her. Her problem is that Obama is showing an ability to motivate white supporters to vote for and caucus for him. Idaho? North Dakota? Are you serious? Any suspicion that Obama’s white support in Iowa was a fluke must be put aside after yesterday’s contests. To that extent, it shows that, at least in the context of this race (which is unique because of voters’ predispositions about Hillary Clinton), white folks are willing to vote for a black candidate – at least THIS black candidate. This signals a marked departure from the extant social science research and electoral results throughout American history.

And oh what fun to speculate on a brokered convention or a “dream ticket” with both Democratic candidates on it! We’ll leave that to the mainstream media and bloggers. Our interest remains in the way that race will be used as a leveraging device – most likely implicitly – throughout the remainder of the primary process. If Obama secures the nomination, our little fingers will be quite busy the whole way through November; if he is elected president, we may have to quit our jobs to keep up with the material relevant to this blog.

But all of that is worlds away at this point in February. While the Republican contest is nearing a conclusion, the Democrats look as far away as ever in deciding between the two candidates who have been frontrunners all along. What will become more interesting in the coming months is whether John McCain turns his attention to the Democrats, and if so, if he begins to use language that will disadvantage Obama based on his race.

But for today, there’s just not much we can do but wait.