During last night’s Special Report roundtable discussion, Mara Liasson opined that there were several different ways for Hillary to continue in the race. She said that the worst path forward was for Hillary to continue complaining about Obama’s ineptness. Based on this USA Today article and this Huffington Post interview of Ed Koch, it’s safe to say that Hillary isn’t going quietly into that good night. Here’s a telling portion of the USA Today article:

Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters, including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that 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’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Clinton’s blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions.

Here’s what Ed Koch said:

Koch’s argued that Obama showed a complete lack of conviction and leadership in handling the controversy surrounding his former pastor. The theme is a constant feature in the former mayor’s syndicated columns, several of which have directly questioned the credibility of Obama’s attempts to distance himself from Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

“I am shocked, without knowing the reason that it is happening, that none of the allegations with the respect of Wright, his former pastor, have had any impact on his polling,” said Koch. “I’m absolutely surprised because I think that all the things that Wright says, and nobody believes that Obama supports those statements, but he didn’t have the courage to stand up and object for twenty years. If you are running for president, you can’t be like some other poor guy in the pews who is afraid to stand up or even say something privately to the minister. You’re the guy who wants to lead the country and you have to have courage to stand up and lead your own pastor. He did not exhibit that. But the fact that the Democratic constituency doesn’t seem to care is a shock to me, but I’m certain that the overall constituency voting in November will care and that it will make the difference in the adverse way to his candidacy.”

Mayor Koch isn’t the first person to question Sen. Obama’s unwillingness to deal forcefully with the Wright fiasco. Had this happened to Hillary, Wright would’ve been chucked under the bus hours after the story first surfaced.

That’s a major reason why blue collar workers aren’t becoming Obama supporters. They want someone that’ll promptly do the right thing.

These questions aren’t going away antime soon for Obama. He can point to his winning working class voters in the early states all he wants. Sen. Obama can’t credibly deny the fact that his SF fundraising comments changed everything with blue collar workers.

Those aren’t the only difficulties Sen. Obama will face this election. I pointed out here that Obama’s similarities with Jimmy Carter’s foreign policies won’t help him in the general election. It isn’t difficult to picture Hillary blasting Iran to smithereens. It’s easy picturing John McCain not taking Iran’s crap. It isn’t difficult picturing Barack Obama taking Iran’s crap.

Obama’s message on the economic front is muddled at best, too. People remember Sen. Obama’s disastrous Philadelphia debate performance wehere he couldn’t give charlie Gibson a coherent answer on the capital gains tax. The Agenda Media has talked fairly frequently about McCain’s lack of economic expertise but I haven’t seen much in terms of their coverage of Sen. Obama’s lack of economic expertise. That got covered the day after the debate but that was the extent of the coverage.

The bottom line in this is that reconciliation doesn’t appear to be a priority with Clinton supporters right now. Based on their language, I don’t think it’ll be a priority anytime soon, either. I don’t think it should be, either, because I think Hillary is the tougher candidate for Sen. McCain to beat.

This expresses perfectly the state of the general election:

Saying he would support Clinton and “hope she ultimately prevails,” Koch wasn’t worried that Democratic infighting could hurt the party’s chances in the fall. It was Obama’s candidacy, he repeated, that would be the death knell.

“I believe that when the voting is over that the vast majority, not all, on both sides, will vote for the [Democratic] candidate,” said Koch. “But that applies only to the Democrats who have been participating. I believe that the vast majority of voters will look at all of these allegations, which nobody disputes, as related to Wright and his comments, and that they will have an enormous impact on the vote and on those Independents and others who will make a decision in the general election. I just think he is a loser because of that.”

I don’t believe that 20+ percent of Hillary’s supporters will vote for Sen. McCain. He’d be happy if 10 percent of Hillary’s supporters vote that way. That said, Sen. OBama’s indecision and inexperience might be the only justification independents need to vote for John McCain.

Here’s Bill Burton’s spin on the blue collar vote:

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that in Indiana, Obama split working-class voters with Clinton and won a higher percentage of white voters than in Ohio in March. He said Obama will be the strongest nominee because he appeals “to Americans from every background and all walks of life. These statements from Sen. Clinton are not true and frankly disappointing.”

Frankly, that’s some of the shoddiest spin I’ve ever heard. You’d expect the working class vote in Indiana to be tight because the race was tight. That doesn’t mean, though, that Sen. Obama will appeal to blue collar workers in Ohio, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania. He lost those voters by wide margins in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I suspect that Obama’s strategists are worried about that gap. I suspect that this is exactly the opposite of what Sen. Obama had hoped would happen after his lopsided win in North Carolina. I suspect that, at minimum, he’d hoped that Hillary would run a halfhearted campaign based more on reconciliation than on putting up a fight. That tells me that the divisions within the Democratic Party are substantial and likely long-lasting.

If those divisions persist, then Obama’s candidacy faces an uphill fight. A month before the 2000 election, Al Gore still hadn’t solidified his base. The only thing that gained him an advantage in the popular vote was the Friday night release of GWB’s DUI arrest. If that hadn’t come out, the election wouldn’t have been nearly as close. Anytime you’re still struggling to get your base on the same page, you don’t have time to play on your opponent’s side of the fifty yard line.

Candidates that aren’t playing on the other guy’s side of the fifty don’t win very often.

Technorati Tags: Blue Collar Workers, Obama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Battleground States, Hillary, Ed Koch, Red States, Blue States, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. Meh.

   Obama ‘08.

   Comment by Liem — May 8, 2008 @ 7:58 pm

2. Dick Morris posited an interesting theory on Sean Hannity’s radio show today. He thinks Hilary knows that she can’t win, but as long as she’s still a candidate, she can continue to go after Obama. If she drops out now, she can’t continue to criticize/dig up dirt on him. But as long as she stays in the race, she can continue to bloody him up. If he loses in November, that will make it easier for her to run again for President in 2012.

   Interesting idea…

   Comment by Kalifornia Kafir — May 8, 2008 @ 10:08 pm