Pennsylvania: Zero Hour
Zero hour in Pennsylvania.
Or is it? We've had to somehow fill the gap of the six weeks since the last primary, so we've sort of convinced ourselves that something momentous is about to happen Tuesday in Pennsylvania. Fact is, it's highly unlikely that the results of the voting will have some game-changing impact on the underlying fundamentals i.e. that Hillary Clinton is running close behind but definitively in second place to Barack Obama and, further, that is precisely the way the nomination process will
end.
You can spin this stuff anyway you please but we're going to wind up always at the same point of departure --or if you prefer--Â terminus: in America we have a simple tradition of declaring as winner whomever it is who gets the most votes, in some cases directly. In other cases, by count of delegate or elector. Period.
I fully expect Hillary Clinton to win Pennsylvania by as many as 10 points, perhaps more. When and if she does, she will pick up a net gain of a handful or two of delegates. And then, two weeks from now, she will lose them again in North Carolina and, most likely, in Indiana. That's her best case scenario. The worst case is an Iowa redux in which a surge of new Pennsylvania voters will cut deep into her margin of victory thereby effectively ending the race on Wednesday instead of two weeks from now.
In the meantime, the media has invented a now universal fairy tale about some dark, mysterious, almost primeval region known as Pennsylvania. How many times have we now heard that it is somehow exempt from the rest of America and is inhabited, instead, by some strange exceptional species of hairy-arm-pitted near-humans with sloping foreheads who spend their days dragging bowling balls through the woods and then waste away their nights oiling their .12 gauges and knocking back brewskies. Oh yes, and they're all sort of grumbling blue-collar trolls who wistfully wallow in the nostalgia of shuttered assembly lines and Sunday afternoon trade union picnics off limits to uppity Nee-grows and Messicans.
What a fervent and totally manufactured fantasy. And, man, am I tired of it. Aren't you? Pennsylvania is little different than most other places in this great land. Right here in Woodland Hills, California where I live, just a few yards from the posh Motion Picture & Television Retirement Community, we've got --gasp!-- a real, live 48 lane bowling alley. And in it, they serve...beer! And just a mile up the road, we've got a Maserati dealership. And a store that sells...guns! Can you imagine?
Yet, someone over at MSNBC/McClatchy spent real money to conduct a Pennsylvania presidential poll this past weekend divvying the citizenry up among "bowlers," "beer drinkers," and "hunters." The results, of course, are reliable predictors of absolutely nothing. This is like polling those who wipe with their left hands instead of their right and who drink 2% milk as opposed to 1%. Who thinks this stuff up?
All of this is hocus-pocus, a neat little narrative to keep the media story pot bubbling. And a very good reason to soon be done -- at least until November-- with any more mindless yapping about the odd land of Pennsylvania.
The real predictor in the Obama-Clinton race isn't whether you drink Starbucks or Schlitz but, rather, something much more simpler and elemental: how old -- or how young-- you are. As The New York Times reports:
In a campaign where demographics seem to be destiny, one of the most striking factors is the segregation of voters by age. In state after state, older voters have formed a core constituency for Mrs. Clinton, who is 60, while younger voters have coalesced around Mr. Obama, who is 46. Age has been one of the most consistent indicators of how someone might vote — more than sex, more than income, more than education. Only race is a stronger predictor of voting than age, and then only if a voter is black, not if he or she is white...
...According to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky in the states that have voted so far, 57 percent of voters 65 and older have supported Mrs. Clinton and 36 percent have supported Mr. Obama. Most of the Clinton voters say they want a candidate with experience.
Of voters age 30 and younger, 59 percent have supported Mr. Obama and 38 percent have supported Mrs. Clinton. Most of Mr. Obama’s supporters say they want change.
It's whether you're part of the past. Or part of the future. Let's get on with it.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:22 pm
A bowling alley in Woodland Hills? In Warner Center or south of the blvd.?
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:36 am
The Youth Vote is, like, sooooo “fired up” for Obama right now. Too bad by November Obama will be sooooo last April.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:43 am
The only consolation to this pathetic economy is the fact that the bulk of voters everywhere - including in red states - will be voting with their interests in mind for a change. That looks good for Obama, no matter how many times the punditoids replay the tape of his Reverend Wright.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:39 am
This 69 year old white woman and a gaggle of like minded and like aged friends are all for Obama. So much for predictions. Go Obama!
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:01 am
Tonight, get your unbiased perspective on the Pennsylvania race from CNN.
What do these people learn in journalism school?
I can hardly wait for their coverage in the general election.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:06 am
Love that photo.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 am
If you are in need of others(government) to manage your life for you. If you are in need of others to pay your bills. If you are in need of others to be responsible for you and fix your screw-ups. If you are in need of others to listen to your thankless complaining and whining that others are still not doing enough for you(goes with the personality of those who take government handouts), then Obama is your main man for sure.
Your second choice would be Hillary. But for godsake, if you a a self-starter, an entrepreneur, a hard worker, a responsible person who respects the only thing our Constitution promises you, “FREEDOM to pursue happiness”, not guarantee it, do not go anywhere near either of these two.
Nothing is for free, which you will eventual find out as your freedoms to make your own decisions in ‘your’ life are traded off for a huge, expensive, and intrusive money sucking monster.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:04 am
Sandy Parker:
“This 69 year old white woman and a gaggle of like minded and like aged friends are all for Obama. So much for predictions. Go Obama!”
Yeah, actual age is a predictor, but it’s also how young people are in their minds!
I was 21 when Bill Clinton played sax on Arsenio Hall and I just wasn’t impressed at all. Nor when he was on MTV. It was sort of exciting that the “Twelve year midnight” of Republican rule was ending, but Clinton seemed like a phony to me. I bet the youth and Obama supporters will be even more jacked in the general election. The inaugeration party will be crazy!!!
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 am
Marc -
Great point about the mythification of Pennsylvania. I live next door, drive through often and have a kid in college there, but I haven’t yet spotted the beasts with bowling balla slouching towards Bethlehem.
At some point the whole campaign begins to seem like a media-generated folk tale and that the peaks and troughs and crises are spun into life out of TV pixels. But unfortunately the folk-tale has real consequences.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:28 am
Half of my family is from Pennsylvania and I’m perfectly normal.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
This should really make the MoveOn crowd more comfortable with Hillary Clinton.
“Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could ‘totally obliterate’ Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.”
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I agree with you Marc. Heard one talkin’ head on CCN describe it now as “she’s in it to spin it.”
But I must confess, all this talk about bowling is making me homesick for Los Angeles, where we bowl as well as anyone from Pennsylvania. Probably better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnLweMNQoiE
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
“the media has invented a now universal fairy tale about some dark, mysterious, almost primeval region known as Pennsylvania…. inhabited, instead, by some strange exceptional species of hairy-arm-pitted near-humans with sloping foreheads who spend their days dragging bowling balls through the woods and then waste away their nights oiling their .12 gauges and knocking back brewskies. ……..they’re all sort of grumbling blue-collar trolls who wistfully wallow in the nostalgia of shuttered assembly lines and Sunday afternoon trade union picnics off limits to uppity Nee-grows and Messicans.”
Puh-lease! A media “invention?” Millions of us know very well that our big-city and university town symbol-manipulating New Class fellow American “progressives” view us as yahoos and dupes and idiots.
Just because we believe that life begins at conception and that the second amendment means we are allowed to own a gun doesn’t mean that we have never read the Nation nor
the Progressive nor Mother Jones nor “What’s Wrong with Kansas?”
Are we really supposed to believe that “progressives” aren’t hostile to free trade and don’t think we are nativists and racists for wanting to enforce the immigration laws that are on the books? And don’t think us confused for not voting Democratic and our supposed “class” interests? And don’t view pietistic and fundementalist and evangelical (white) Christians
with utmost contempt.
The problem with this revisionism is that we can read, and have been reading your progressive crapola for decades.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Marc,
If we had “a simple tradition of declaring as winner whomever it is who gets the most votes,” Al Gore would have won in 2000. From my perspective, we have a purposely obfuscated tradition of nurturing such illusions while powerful partisans pick our leaders.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Samuel Stott writes: “Millions of us know very well that our big-city and university town symbol-manipulating New Class fellow American “progressives†view us as yahoos and dupes and idiots.”
If the shoe fits, Samuel, wear it.
And while you’re trying them on, ask yourself why conservatives — BY THEIR OWN ESTIMATIONS — underperform in the news media and academia.
If you want to demand that creationism is science, get used to walking around in those idiot shoes. If you want to insist –as Dick Cheney STILL does — that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda and had WMD ready for an attack on the U.S. — then get used to being dismissed as delusional and/or ignorant.
If you want to argue, against every available statistical observation, that Republicans are more fiscally responsible than Democrats, learn to limp along in those moron sneakers.
But maybe you don’t buy the conservative mainstream media nonsense and don’t have any need to wear those stinky imbecile loafers. If so, good for you! Have a cookie and STOP WHINING!!!!
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
http://PennsylvaniaOnlinePharmacy.Com/