| NYT | 0 | |
| Miami Herald | 0 | |
| Don Surber | 0 | |
| AP | 0 | |
| WaPo | Obama Urges Groups to Stop Attacks [on Dems who oppose ObamaCare] |
0 |
Audacity of Truth
"Change" You Can Believe In:
"Nixon didn’t try to do that. They couldn't control (the media). They didn’t try. [...] What the hell do they think we are, puppets?"
- Liberal opinion writer Helen Thomas, describing the Obama admin's penchant for heavily scripting public appearances & press conferences - 7/1/09
The narrative starts: New Hampshire Democrats are racists
Obama devotee Andrew Sullivan kicks the post-NH primary speculation off with what he believes may be a possible explanation for why his candidate lost last night: The return of the “Bradley Effect.” What is the Bradley Effect? Andrew links up to this piece:
The term Bradley effect or Wilder effect refers to a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voter opinion polls in some American political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate. Specifically, there have been instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots. White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the black candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate. This reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well.
Researchers who have studied the issue theorize that some white voters give inaccurate responses to polling questions because of a fear that they might appear to others to be racially prejudiced. Some research has suggested that the race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor into that concern. At least one prominent researcher has suggested that with regard to pre-election polls, the discrepancy can be traced in part by the polls’ failure to account for general conservative political leanings among late-deciding voters.
Sullivan writes:
Tonight is the first primary – not a caucus. People get to vote in a secret ballot – not in front of their largely liberal peers, as in Iowa. They may have told the pollsters one thing about voting for a black man, but in the privacy of the voting booth, something else happens. I don’t have any hard evidence for this, but the discrepancy in the polls is remarkable. David Kuo cites it. The vast discrepancy between the last polls and the result puts it on the table. I hope it’s not true. But it could be.
Predictable. But at least he didn’t blame it on Diebold (heh). Or something like that.
Already, the collective brain of the lefty blogosphere is mulling over in its mind the possibility that closet racists inhabit the Democratic party in New Hampshire. More on that here. Racists do indeed exist in the Democratic party, but it’s not closeted; in fact it’s wide open, and we hear it everytime a Democrat opens their mouth and insists that a black person can’t succeed in this country without “special help” from the government. But that’s another topic for another day.
Liberal Matthew Yglesias takes a more measured approach, and isn’t buying the “Bradley Effect” nonsense:
If you look at the breakdown of the results, you’d need to believe that white women, but not white men, are inclined to lie to pollsters about that. More likely we’re looking at a combination of gender backlash, plus the fact that Obama was so widely perceived as likely to win led independents to vote for John McCain in the GOP primary.
I think that’s closer to the mark. I don’t think the pollsters were necessarily wrong here. In essence, Hillary’s tears, and her “go girl!” response to the staged “Iron My Shirt” heckler the day before the NH primary helped propel her from a candidate who had all but written off NH in the final days to one who came out on top.
In the meanwhile, MoDo’s latest piece in the NYT doesn’t pull any punches: Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House? (h/t: Dan Collins):
Bill Clinton was known for biting his lip, but here was Hillary doing the Muskie. Certainly it was impressive that she could choke up and stay on message.
She won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man. She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man. She was seen as so controlling when she ran for the Senate that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did during the Monica scandal, before she seemed soft enough to attract many New York voters.
Getting brushed back by Barack Obama in Iowa, her emotional moment here in a cafe and her chagrin at a debate question suggesting she was not likable served the same purpose, making her more appealing, especially to women, particularly to women over 45.
The Obama campaign calculated that they had the women’s vote over the weekend but watched it slip away in the track of her tears.
The reactions from La Socialista Clintonista’s feminist support network are amusing. Go here and sift through the links for a good morning laugh. Put down your coffee first, though. 
I rarely agree with anything Maureen Dowd says but I think she, too, is closer to being correct than the Obama apologists’ use of the alleged “Bradley Effect” to explain why their boy wonder had to settle for second last night.
Speaking of tears, guess who was tearing up last night during Hillary’s victory speech? (h/t: ST reader Sparky)
Last but not least, MM blogs about Hillary and the “Access Hollywood” factor, and how shows like that (along with The View) work at making Hillary look more human and appealing to women’s voters. It’s an interesting read.
Today is the Day After Yesterday. And Tomorrow is Another Day. Or, er, you know what I mean. It ain’t over til’ it’s over.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Trackbacks
12 Responses to “The narrative starts: New Hampshire Democrats are racists”
Comments
Blogads
Disclaimer: The views expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect those of ST's advertisers, nor do their opinions necessarily reflect ST's. Stats
Here are the pre-NH poll averages
LINK
Poll Date Sample Obama Clinton Edwards Richardson Spread
RCP Average 01/05 – 01/07 – 38.3 30.0 18.3 5.7 Obama +8.3
It had Obama at 38, he got 37. It had edwards at 18, he got 17. It had richardson at 5, he got 5. Add up all the number here and you get 92.3. That 7.7 percent should be distributed around the lesser tier candidates and the undecided…
So, your telling me that hillary, took one percentage away from obama and edward each, then pulled in 7 percent of the 7.7 percent undecideds? That means she got 90% of the undecided vote. Thats unheard of, in fact they should have broken evenly and the election been obamas…
And these werent some half-assed local polls, these were polls with good reputations for accuracy.
It will go down as a hillary win, and nobody will really look at it closely, but something is seriously wrong with those numbers…
My theory has been that undecided democrats were largely out seeing candidates, and not taking pollster calls; whereas decided voters were not as concerned with attending rallies. Since most of Hillary’s ‘comeback’ theoretically occurred in the last few days, polls should have trouble accessing those who were out being influenced.
But, just a half-baked theory.
I think the so-called “Bradley Effect” is hogwash. The MSM may like to use it explain how they got things so wrong, but it ignores the MSM’s own predilection for directional Polling. They poll in such a way as to get the answers they want, then trumpet them as a way to direct the voting populace in the proper direction.
It also ignores the feeling many have that the polls are rigged – they are – and their own desire to buck the MSM’s announced trends.
Polls can be nice when they indicate that folks are leaning your way, but in reality I pay little attention to them. Exit polls are just as meaningless.
As for closet racists … I think the Dems have far more overt racists – bigots – than the Party would like to believe. And more racists in their ranks than the Republicans. The closet racists are in the Democrat Party Leadership.
Notice that it is a peculiarly Democratic artifact, particularly affecting northeastern liberals, and therefore not a story that would be recognized by MSM.
Let’s ask Bobby Jindal or Ken Blackwell what they think.
Hmmmm…which is more racist, not voting for a candidate because they are black, or voting for them for no other reason than that they are black?
Two sides of the same coin I’d say…
The Comte is correct. Something’s wrong with the polls. That should be obvious. And I can’t figure out what. If the polls had shown a lead for Hillary and Obama had eeeked out the win, instead of the other way around, I would have said, “well, sure–it’s the old folks who have landlines and who actually answer them when the caller ID panel comes up with a blank that caused the problem. The young and the restless were undercounted by the pollsters.” But this appears to be the reverse.
Could it be that the indies and undecideds, figuring that Obama had it wrapped, went over to the GOP side to vote for McCain?
Sullivan’s wrong too. Are we to believe that white women are closet racists but white men aren’t? Nonsense.
I think it’s much more simple–Boomer women drove the Chevy to the Levee for Hillary one more time. Was it because she teared up (and who cares whether or not it was calculated or not–it worked)? Probably so. Will it work again down the road? Who knows? I just have one word to say about that: Carville.
Oh: And don’t forget Edwards. The Punditocracy, now intone that “this isn’t like ‘American Idol.’ ” Well as Simon Cowell would snark, “Sorry! It is.” Anybody remember when the smart money said Melinda and Jordin would be in the finals and Blake would finish third?
Uh huh, uh huh . . .
I’m quite sure that most of the male Edwards voters would have picked Obama as their second choice.
Anyway, as for me: I’m just glad that Iowa and New Hampshire haven’t decided the whole thing.
Turn the page.
Pollsters should not be blaming the Bradley Effect. I think they will continue to have a hard time with their polls because this year’s race seems to be unpredictable. I know I didn’t think Hillary would win last night, but I did notice more support for her online yesterday, specifically on Fit to be Pres (where anyone can rate the candidates). The number of ratings for Hillary went up yesterday and will probably continue to today.
A better explanation from Salon…
So what happened?
The polls didn’t overstate the support for the black man (or any man, for that matter); they understated the support for Hillary Clinton. Pollster’s “standard estimate” put Clinton’s support at 30.4 percent as the polls opened. When the ballots were counted, she had 39 percent.
Thus, maybe the issue this morning shouldn’t be whether white New Hampshire voters hid their racist preferences from pollsters (or even the Iowa corollary — that in public caucuses as opposed to private voting booths, Democrats wanted to make a good show of voting for the black man). Instead, perhaps it should be why the pollsters didn’t have a better grasp on the support for Clinton — or how it was that undecided and late-changing voters left the race in play long after a lot of us thought it was over.
A talk show on Fox made a good point, it was on the Hume show I believe. He said that the exit polls were pretty much dead on when compared to the voting breakdown and who else would people lie to other than exit pollsters?
There was no racism there.
Clinton gave the nation’s highest civilian award — the Presidential Medal of Freedom — to a man who spent the vast majority of his public career and life as a proud segregationist.
1. Bill Clinton interned for J. William Fulbright in 1966-67, when Fulbright was still a segregationist. Fulbright became Clinton’s “mentor.”
2. In April 1985, Governor Bill Clinton signed Act 985 into law, making the birthdates of Martin Luther King Jr. (the preeminent leader of the civil-rights movement) and Robert E. Lee (the general who led the Confederate army) state holidays on the same day. Of course, the word “segregation” never passed Clinton’s considerable lips, but the (uncoded) message he was sending to certain of his white constituents could not have be clearer.
3. Clinton took no steps during his twelve years as governor to repeal a Confederate flag law: Arkansas Code Annotated, Section 1-5-107, provides as follows:
(a) The Saturday immediately preceding Easter Sunday of each year is designated as ‘Confederate Flag Day’ in this state.
(b) No person, firm, or corporation shall display an Confederate flag or replica thereof in connection with any advertisement of any commercial enterprise, or in any manner for any purpose except to honor the Confederate States of America. [Emphasis added.]
(c) Any person, firm, or corporation violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000).
In 1989, then-Gov. Bill Clinton was sued as one of three top Arkansas officials responsible for the intimidation of black voters in his state as part of a legal action brought under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, NewsMax.com has learned.
And a year earlier the U.S. Supreme court ruled that Clinton had wrongfully tried to overturn the election of a black state representative in favor of a white Democrat.
In a related 1988 case, Clinton had tried to replace a duly elected African-American state representative with a white candidate, only to be stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruling came as the then-governor was fighting another court battle to preserve racial profiling in his state, a tool that Clinton later criticized while president as a “morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice.”
But a decade earlier he approved the profiling of Hispanics by Arkansas State Police as part of a drug interdiction program in 1988, the Washington Times revealed in 1999.
“The Arkansas plan gave state troopers the authority to stop and search vehicles based on a drug-courier profile of Hispanics, particularly those driving cars with Texas license plates,” the Times said.
“A federal judge later ruled the program unconstitutional,” the paper reported. “A lawsuit and a federal consent decree ended the practice – known as the ‘criminal apprehension program’ the next year.”
Then-Gov. Clinton, however, not only criticized the profiling ban; “at one point, [he] threatened to reinstate the program despite the court’s ruling,” the Times said.
Hearing Clinton’s condemnation of racial profiling in 1999, Roberto Garcia de Posada, executive director of the Hispanic Business Roundtable, complained that the then-president “had been a strong supporter of racial profiling against Hispanics in the past.”
After he was sued in the late 1980s by the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund for failing to enforce the Voting Rights Act in Arkansas, then-Gov. Bill Clinton suggested to a group of pro-segregation whites that they were being unfairly targeted by civil rights laws as a result of the South’s loss in the Civil War.
“The meeting turned sour when one of the local whites demanded to know why, in his view, the whites were always made to pay for others’ problems. Other whites in the group began to echo his charge. …” “Bill Clinton, the lead defendant in the case, took to the podium to respond. In a tone of resignation, Clinton said, ‘We have to pay because we lost.’” Clinton was referring to the South’s Civil War loss.
Bill Clinton spent Wednesday afternoon playing golf at a country club accused of discriminating against blacks and Jews. Jake Siewert, Clinton’s rep, confirmed it was the second time Clinton has played at the Indian Creek Country Club about 20 miles north of Miami. He first played there a year and a half ago. Siewert said, “All venues are fully vetted,” and dismissed allegations of racism and anti-Semitism as “not true.”
“There’s no question about it, the club has anti-Semitic policies in place to keep out Jews,” said Earl Barber, who was on the club’s board for 14 years, and a member for 22. Barber, along with Alvah Chapman, a former chairman of Knight Ridder, and M. Anthony Burns, a trucking magnate, resigned their club memberships because of its “membership policies.”
To add insult to injury, 14 of the island’s 34 homes are owned by Jews, and although they are denied access to the club, a portion of the residents’ property tax is used for the club’s upkeep. Miller notes that he refused to meet Clinton during his 1999 visit to Indian Creek because the president was playing at the anti-Semitic club. The snub even made the local news.
When Jeb Bush was slated to pay a visit to the club, Miller informed the Florida governor of the restrictive policies, and Bush cancelled.
I think that some Democrats believe Obama is a rank amateur who is unqualified to be President – but are terrified of saying so in a public caucus for fear of being branded as racists. In the privacy of a voting booth, however, …….
I also think that some MSM outlets were playing hanky-panky with the polling results. Remember: the MSM has an unofficial “all Democrats all the time” policy. The MSM took a severe hit in their credibility (and deservedly so) by defending Slick Willy 24/7 during his pants-down presidency. They do not want to have to spend the next four years taking more lumps to protect Hilly the Hun and want a fresh Democrat face without the ethical sleaze of Clinton Inc.
But the Hun is a monster the MSM created, and in the end I suspect that they will have no choice but to bow to her wishes. The alternative is to tell the truth – and risk having Republicans win.