Today is the contest in the state of Pennsylvania. It is therefore apropos that the Wizard of S make a comment on it.

First the prediction: Clinton by 6 points, give or take 3.

What is behind the prediction? Well, let’s just call it a gut feeling. Clinton has been doing well in the state, though not as well today as a month ago. Obama has not been able to erode her support in the state to the point where he can win, so he will have to accept a single digit loss there. The cities are important for Obama, but the majority of the state is not city, and those areas tend to vote for Hillary. The “scandals” have not hurt Obama, but they also haven’t helped Clinton. So Clinton wins, as expected, and if I am wrong, I will issue a retraction.

Now to the accompanying analysis. Long have the political junkies in this country waited for another contest. SIX WEEKS! Over this time, we have seen the slugfest on television, but the one thing we haven’t seen is the effects that the hard campaign has had on the attitudes among not only the people in Pennsylvania, but also in the country. About a week or so ago, news reports began talking about Obama in terms of “When” not “if” he takes on McCain in the fall. Now Pundits say things like “What is Clinton doing?”, as if she had no reason to continue the process, and should have dropped out.

But these last few weeks demonstrate clearly why she stayed in the race after March. She has been able to continue promoting her agenda, even though she now faces an overwhelming tide of support for Obama in the country, on the television, and in people’s mind. She is now running the classic protest campaign, and I say good for her. The Socialist Party would do well to take at least this lesson from her: when you know you aren’t going to win, you stop trying to win and start saying what you really mean. She is in a position to put her real agenda out there, because it is very unlikely that she will have to implement any of it, OR defend it for very long. She knows she will probably not get the nomination, nor will she be considered for VP, so she has the latitude that Obama does not have, and that is the freedom to use the “kitchen sink” and whatnot.

Some seem to think that Clinton’s continued participation in the primaries is damaging the Democratic Party. Many television commentators discuss this ad infinitum. I think that Obama accurately stated it on the Daily Show last night when he said that by October, this will be old news, but not for the reason he said. He said that eventually voters will see that there is a real difference between what McCain proposes and what generic Democrat, probably Obama proposes, and they will forget the bickering. Yeah, but this is not why they will vote Democrat.

First consider this Hypothetical Distribution of votes in the US electorate this year. This is on the standard left-right spectrum, and everything is clearly labeled. If you are not sure how to read this diagram, email me, but it is pretty intuitive. It is not based on rigorous scientific data, just my educated guess, given the reported positions of the candidates, the assumption that people are fed up with the GOP, the assumption that much of the GOP base still hasn’t fully embraced McCain, and the assumption that many of the people who support Clinton don’t do it because they actually disagree with Obama’s positions (which are for the most part, very similar to Clinton’s), but for some other reasons, like gender, race, income, education, etc, but some people actually disagree based on ideology of the two candidates. Clinton is assumed to be more liberal, both because her positions are closer to what a socialist would want (not much, but slightly) while Obama attracts more independents who may think Clinton’s proposals, or the Democratic Party’s platform in general is too radical, or too radical at least to keep them from declaring themselves “Democrat”. The independents have about as much of the spectrum as either of the Parties (though the Independent political “space” is a bit smaller, because while there is almost an even 3-way split between party members and independents in terms of identification, there are very few independents who do not lean. Most of these leaners are actually partisans in all but name.) All these assumptions are fairly well based in conventional wisdom, but I am sure, with a degree of research, I could find data to back these assumptions up. If we take it as a general picture of society rather than some scientific production, I’ll be alright.

This season has seen record turnouts everywhere across the country: in many cases twice as many Dems show up to the polls as GOP voters. If you think of it, worse case scenario, where all those who supported ONLY the losing Dem (probably Clinton) sit out and refuse to support the other guy, Obama still wins, though it is much closer. The Dems have the advantage here of nominating the guy closest to the political center (not Clinton), and making it that much harder for those to the left of his base-of-support (basically the liberal elements in the Dem Party) to actually vote for the Republican candidate. These people have “farther to go” ideologically to support McCain over Obama. If you think of Obama’s ideology as overlapping Clinton’s to a significant degree, most of Clinton’s supporters can still ideologically support Obama, even if they resent the fact that they have to vote for a man, or for a black person, or whatever. The electorate is however, not going to simply abstain, and refuse to vote with a person they can only get 90% behind. The rational voter idea will send the majority of Clinton’s supporters to the polls, except those who have a serious problems with Obama’s proposals (and then even many of them will hold their noses). Clinton’s support base does not enjoy the same features. (A good portion of Obama’s supporters could just as easily switch, ideologically to McCain as to Clinton, and when the middle is divided like this, the person whose base position is farther from the Center will lose.)

But we can also see the slightly better, but not optimal case: those who are also in Obama’s base, and chose Clinton for non-ideological reasons (such as this absurd concept of “sisterhood”) will vote for Obama, and those who just ideologically can’t get behind Obama (which is, I think just a very small portion of Clinton’s supporters) will abstain. This is a rout for McCain, due to the massive Democratic voter turnout in the primaries. In this sense, Obama wins not only a plurality, but a majority, and a sizable majority. They could win by perhaps as much as 33% if Democrats get together around one candidate, and continue turning out in numbers like they did in the primaries. It is safe to assume that Obama will lose the independents that he shares with McCain, because the influx of Clinton supporters WILL pull Obama’s right edge closer to the center (because they pull him left) giving McCain the chance to make the case to those independents that the Republicans are actually more the party for them. But as Obama’s left edge moves further left, you can see in the diagram that he picks up a WHOLE LOT more voters that will more than compensate for the small losses he suffers on the right.

Optimally, of course, whoever gets the nomination will get every Democratic voter, even those which are ideologically opposed to a candidate’s position. By the model, which I assume to be correct, it will be more difficult for Clinton’s position to expand to cover all those moderates without alienating the ideological leftists which form a good chunk of her current base. I would bet that the Optimal situation will at best, not happen, given this breakdown.

Granted, my assumptions may be entirely wrong. I may be wrong in thinking that the voter is rational. They may vote for someone for irrational reasons, like “She is a Woman.” or “He is Black”, or “My father was a Republican” or “I support America” or “He may be a Muslim.” I may have the wrong understanding of the character of the US electorate. Maybe there is a groundswell of support for the GOP that nobody, least of all the candidates, have detected yet. Perhaps the numbers which were reported about turnout were wrong. Who knows. But this is not important. Given this model, which I believe to be a sufficient picture of the electorate, Obama wins in any scenario, both the nomination, as well as the general election. And if Clinton’s supporters (who will have a tougher time ideologically of supporting McCain than Obama’s supporters would) actually vote in the fall, the margin will be a substantial victory.

As I said elsewhere, the only way Obama will not win (assuming the things I have) in the fall is if it was revealed and substantiated that he was a murderer or a Klansman or a practicing Vampire or something like this. Other than that, barring the assassin’s bullet, and given this model, Obama will win handily. So the non-luminescent heat being created by stupid pundits who do clearly do not understand that most voters are rational, (that they may be able to satiate their equally uninformed audiences’ demands for a 24 hour news cycle,) is actually nothing but a bunch of hot air.

This is a classic example of “median voter theory.” The median voter in the idealized US franchise is at the center, and the candidate that captures that median voter wins the election. In any foreseeable scenario (except the one where he declares his intention to begin nationalizing key industries, for example), Obama has that median voter. Plus he has some of the votes to the right of that median voter, and his strength among independents keeps McCain from getting anywhere near the median voter. Because Obama is at the center, this also prevents Clinton from taking the center, guaranteeing her a loss in the three person contest. Some may say that division between Dems is a boon for McCain, but this is not the case given the features of the franchise in this election. In fact, the exact opposite is more likely the truth.

Let Hillary Run. Let her go all the way to the convention. She won’t win, but there are still very good reasons for her to stay in the campaign, because as my model suggests, there are voters, and sizable numbers at that, to and about whom she is still talking, and which Obama has not talked about, and cannot actually talk much about without losing his right, and possibly the median voter. I may hate the fact that she, who is worth tens of millions of dollars, and is able to personally bankroll part of her campaign from her savings(!) can still get away with calling Obama an elitist (and worse yet, expecting that it will stick), or I may hate the hypocrisy of her saying that she supports “getting out of the kitchen when you can’t take the heat”, when it has been her and Mr. Clinton who have been complaining for months about the media coverage of their campaign, and the unfairness of the content of the debates, etc. But if we forget that she acts like a crook, and that she voted for the War, and is both extremely ambitious and entitled, we can pay attention to the fact that in substance, she belongs in the race all the way to the end, or at the VERY least, until there is no mathematical way she can win. She belongs there, and she is doing a great job making it so Obama can still claim the center, and the left-wing of the Dem Party isn’t forgotten completely. In this sense, she’s been “out-Clintoned”, but nonetheless, she needs to stay in for these reasons, and her continued campaign, especially if she reserves her attacks for McCain (and Obama does the same) will help, not hurt her Party’s nominee in the fall.

These are the rules of American politics, and if you don’t like them, you don’t complain about the rules while still trying to play the game by them. You work to change the rules.

Serenely,
The Wizard of S
The Reverend William Doc Stodden

Tags: Campaign, Clinton, Democratic, Democrats, Election, McCain, media voter, Obama, Pennsylvania, Primaries, Republican