NOTE TO POLLSTERS IT’S THE SINGLE WOMEN, STUPID
Published in the New York Post on February 6, 2008.
Hillary Clinton’s victory in California restores her as the front-runner, a title that was in doubt as Barack Obama racked up victory after victory in states he was not supposed to win.
While the apportionment of the delegates will distort her victory, the message is clear: Obama’s surge fell short.
Once again, the polls proved to be blind to the single women, the core of Hillary’s base, who flood the polls to back the possible first woman president.
Obama may inspire, but it is Hillary who quietly wins the unmarried women who struggle at minimum-wage jobs and desperately need public schools, mass transit, day care, health insurance and public services.
The political establishment does not hear their voices, but Hillary’s victory on Super Tuesday is based on them.
The polls will continue to be wrong because they are not geared to counting those who have never voted and are not normally part of the political system.
Ultimately, Hillary’s candidacy is so much stronger than her campaign.
Her efforts to polarize the race racially backfired massively. Her speeches are downright boring.
Her focus on experience, hitting the “ground running on day one,” and her pathetic attempts to adopt Bill Clinton’s record as her own are falling flat.
But through it all are the inexorable demographics in Democratic primaries where women cast upwards of 60 percent of the vote.
Yesterday, inspiration confronted demographics. Charisma faced a laundry list of proposals that a large block of voters needed.
The prosaic won. And the doctrinaire ideological construct that her candidacy represents is likely to sweep the remaining contests and land her in the White House.
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