Once the dust has settled, we're back to where we were 24 hours ago. Obama is out there campaigning for the presidency; Clinton is out there campaigning for an ego boost, possibly a "place on the ticket," and a public relations coup. Nothing describes the state of affairs in the Democratic race more than this morning's headline at the Boston Globe: "Clinton goes on TV, Obama adds superdelegates."
And indeed he has. He may have been served the leftovers in West Virginia last night, but he's munching on two new supers this morning alone and how many was it? 20? last week.
In the grand scheme, the Childers win in Mississippi seems more significant. We here at Prairie Weather, born and bred New Englanders, have outgrown the belief that the South is a nest of vipers. We've been there and we haven't seen any more racism there than we have in the north. It's just expressed differently.
While many northeasterners have kept their eyes focused on the pre-'80's southern states, things have been changing in the Deep South. However, racism still clings like mold and old wallpaper in southern Ohio and Indiana, West Virginia, parts of Kentucky and places where the economy stinks, the education is hard to find, and people feel (maybe rightly) resentful and suspicious. It surely doesn't help when every four years they find themselves labeled and denigrated.
No surprise that there are areas in America, given our economic inequities, which remain sullen and angry. The Clinton campaign has learned to exploit those feelings and she gets no respect here for doing it. We owe our neighbors in the Ohio valley and beyond a better, less divisive candidate than Senator Clinton who's beginning to sound a little like (but not as friendly as) Senator Thurmond.
Meanwhile, Greg Sargent has come up with Quinnapiac stats which pretty much destroy Hillary's argument that she has the "hard-working whites" sewn up.
McCain beats both Hillary and Obama by an identical margin among working class (no college) white voters. Among these voters, McCain beats Obama 46%-39%.
And McCain beats Hillary 48%-41%. That's a seven point spread in both cases.
What's more, the poll also finds that both lose to McCain by an equal margin of seven points among whites overall.
Of course, Hillary's argument is also about who would fare better among these voters in the big states in particular, and this is only one poll.
Nonetheless, there's no getting around the fact that the above numbers are difficult to square with a central aspect of her basic argument.
