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Reflections

Columnists Gone Wild!

by Ralph R. Reiland,
Professor of Free Enterprise

It's Monica again, said Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, time again to run out of the room when the Clintons appear, time once again to get the kids away from the TV lest they hear yet another story about the vulgar antics of a Clinton.

What has Ms. Noonan in a state of horror is a comment Hillary Clinton made in an interview a few days before her 41-point victory over Barack Obama in West Virginia.

"In a jaw-dropping interview in USA Today on Thursday," wrote Noonan, speaking of Hillary, "she said, 'I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.' As evidence she cited an Associated Press report that, she said, 'found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.' "

There was, in fact, nothing jaw-dropping about what Hillary said, and nothing incorrect. A few days after her aforementioned comment, she won by 3-to-1 in West Virginia among Democratic white women and by 2-to-1 among Democratic white men. Among white Democrats without a college degree, she won by 3-to-1.

If anything, Mrs. Clinton underplayed her strength. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote the morning after Hillary's blowout in West Virginia: "Obama is acting the diffident debutante, pretending not to care that he was given a raspberry by a state he will need in the fall. He was dismissed not only by the voters Hillary usually gets, but was also edged out in blocs that usually prefer him – the under-30 set, college graduates and affluent voters."

So it wasn't just the hillbillies. Hillary also carried the latte and Volvo set, the gang that's usually found waving those "Change We Can Believe In" signs at Obama's road shows.

A few days before the West Virginia primary, Los Angeles Times staff writer Stephen Braun said much the same thing that Hillary Clinton had said in her reportedly 'jaw-dropping" interview.

In his article "West Virginia could spell trouble for Obama: Scant support among white working-class Democrats, especially men, could dog him into November," Braun reported on Obama's "sagging numbers among once-loyal white Democrats, who have steadily abandoned their party over the last several presidential elections." Moreover, the "concerns of party members who live amid this rolling landscape of soybean fields, poultry plants and retirement cabins mirror those of many white Democrats nationwide."

Fearful that "the GOP will exploit Obama's 'otherness,' many insist that Clinton's ebbing campaign offers a better shot come November," reported Braun, writing from West Virginia. "Even those who say they would support Obama worry about his electability, convinced that many of their neighbors will defect to the presumed Republican nominee, John McCain."

Hillary Clinton said that Obama's support was "weakening" among whites. Braun, similarly, reported that Obama's support among white male voters had "slipped." Early on, Obama beat Hillary Clinton in Virginia by 5 points among white male Democratic voters. In contrast, Obama lost the white male Democratic vote to Clinton in the subsequent primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, respectively, by 13 points and 16 points.

In West Virginia, exit polls showed that half the voters believed that Obama shared the views of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, half the voters said Obama wasn't honest or trustworthy, and half said Obama didn't share their values. Only a third of Clinton's supporters said they would vote for Obama if he was nominated.

So Hillary basically called it right. Still, African-American columnist Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post called her comments "a slap in the face to the party's most loyal constituency," Maureen Dowd wrote about the time her father's car was flipped over in West Virginia by some local yokels who didn't like the sign on his car supporting Al Smith, the first Catholic Democratic nominee, and Peggy Noonan suggested that we hide the children and turn off the TV.

For Mrs. Clinton "to play the race card," wrote Noonan, "is, well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in the case the children walk by."

I think Paul Begala, CNN commentator and Democratic analyst, got it more right: "We cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans."

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Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

Ralph R. Reiland
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15236
Phone: 412-884-4541
E-mail: rrreiland@aol.com

"Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon Professor of Free Enterprise at Robert Morris University, the owner Amel's Restaurant, and a columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review."