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Krugman A Must Read Today: What Obama Must Do

By Jeralyn

Big Tent Democrat wrote about this earlier, but I want to add my thoughts. Paul Krugman's column today, Thinking About November, is excellent. If Obama is the nominee, he says there are a lot of reasons Democrats should sail to an presidential win November. Then he says there is one stumbling block and opines it's a big one:

the fight for the nomination has divided the party along class and race lines in a way that I believe is unprecedented, at least in modern times. Ironically, much of Mr. Obama’s initial appeal was the hope that he could transcend these divisions. At first, voting patterns seemed consistent with this hope. In February, for example, he received the support of half of Virginia’s white voters as well as that of a huge majority of African-Americans.

But this week, Mr. Obama, while continuing to win huge African-American majorities, lost North Carolina whites by 23 points, Indiana whites by 22 points. Mr. Obama’s white support continues to be concentrated among the highly educated; there was little in Tuesday’s results to suggest that his problems with working-class whites have significantly diminished.

In other words, [More...]

Mr. Obama appears to have won the nomination with a deep but narrow base consisting of African-Americans and highly educated whites. And now he needs to bring Democrats who opposed him back into the fold.

Among his solutions is one you read all the time in the comments at TalkLeft.

More tirades from Obama supporters against Mrs. Clinton are not the answer — they will only further alienate her grass-roots supporters, many of whom feel that she received a raw deal.

Nor is it helpful to insult the groups that supported Mrs. Clinton, either by suggesting that racism was their only motivation or by minimizing their importance.

He also has an accurate warning for David Axlerod and Donna Brazile:

After the Pennsylvania primary, David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, airily dismissed concerns about working-class whites, saying that they have “gone to the Republican nominee for many elections.” On Tuesday night, Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist, declared that “we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics.” That sort of thing has to stop.

And about Michigan and Florida:

One thing the Democrats definitely need to do is give delegates from Florida and Michigan — representatives of citizens who voted in good faith, and whose support the party may well need this November — seats at the convention.

Let me just add, they need to count the delegates from these states in the vote and pledged and superdelegate totals before the nominee is chosen.

Krugman concluded:

The point is that Mr. Obama has an extraordinary opportunity in this year’s election. He should do everything possible to avoid squandering it.

On a related note, I'm getting a lot of e-mails asking whether TalkLeft will begin advocating against McCain once the nominee is chosen. The answer is, of course. We have always said that we will support whoever the Democratic nominee is. Any Democrat is light-years better than McCain.

There is no nominee yet. There is a "likely" nominee. But it's not a done deal and Hillary is still in the race.

Anything can happen and so long as she remains in the race, I'll keep writing about why she's a great candidate and why I think she's the better candidate to beat McCain.

Should Obama become the nominee, not just in the opinion of the media, but in reality, then I'll start concentrating on defeating McCain. It's not time yet. The problem that Krugman describes is one worthy of consideration before the nomination is decided.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).