Barack Obama and the Unmaking of the Democratic Party

With her overwhelming victory in Kentucky on May 20, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has completed her sweep of the crucial primary states adjoining the Ohio River -- and the fight for the Democratic nomination has entered its final phases. Having picked up a net gain of nearly 140,000 votes between Kentucky and Oregon, Clinton is now well poised to win the Puerto Rico primary on June 1 - and clinch a majority in this year's popular vote, even if the disputed returns from Michigan are discounted. Under those pressures, the Barack Obama campaign and its sympathizers have begun to articulate much more clearly what they mean by their vague slogan of "change" - nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states.

Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party's inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom "progressive" pundits and bloggers disdain variously as "Nascar man," "uneducated," "low information" whites, "rubes, fools, and hate-mongers" who live in the nation's "shitholes."

Having attempted, with the aid of a complicit news media, to brand Hillary Clinton as a racist -- by flinging charges that, as the historian Michael Lind has shown, belong "in black helicopter/grassy knoll territory," Obama's supporters now fiercely claim that Clinton's white working class following is also essentially racist. Favoring the buzzword language of the academic left, tinged by persistent, discredited New Left and black nationalist theories about working-class "white skin privilege," a vote against Obama has become, according to his fervent followers, "a vote for whiteness."

Talk about transformative post-racial politics.

In fact, all of the evidence demonstrates that white racism has not been a principal or even secondary motivation in any of this year's Democratic primaries. Every poll shows that economics, health care, and national security are the leading issues for white working class voters - and for Latino working class voters as well. These constituencies have cast positive ballots for Hillary Clinton not because she is white, but because they regard her as better on these issues. Obama's campaign and its passionate supporters refuse to acknowledge that these voters consider him weaker -- and that Clinton's positions, different from his, as well as her experience actually attract support. Instead they impute racism to working class Democrats who, the polls also show, happen to be liberal on every leading issue. The effort to taint anyone who does not support Obama as motivated by racism has now become a major factor in alienating core Democrats from Obama's campaign. Out with the Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson, F.D.R., Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, and in with the bright, shiny party of Obama - or what the formally "undeclared" Donna Brazile, a member of the Democratic National Committee and of the party's rules committee, has hailed as a "new Democratic coalition" swelled by affluent white leftists and liberals, college students, and African-Americans.

The Democratic Party, as a modern political party, dates back to 1828, when Andrew Jackson crushed John Quincy Adams to win the presidency. Yet without the votes of workers and small farmers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, as well as a strong Democratic turnout in New York City, Jackson would have lost the Electoral College in a landslide. Over the 180 years since then, only one Democrat has gained the presidency without winning either Ohio or Pennsylvania, with their large white working-class vote. (The exception, Grover Cleveland, managed the feat in 1892, and only barely lost Ohio - but he was dependent on the post-Reconstruction solid South.) Beginning in 1964, when the Democratic solid South dissolved, every successful Democratic presidential candidate has had to carry both Ohio and Pennsylvania, even when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton picked up southern states.

Northern white working-class defections to the Republicans grew steadily in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Republican's Watergate debacle temporarily halted the trend, but the disasters of the Carter presidency, especially its mishandling of economic woes and foreign policy, accelerated the defections in 1980. In his two successful races, Ronald Reagan won the support, on average, of 61 percent of white working class voters, compared to 35 percent for his opponents, Carter and Walter Mondale. (Both times, Reagan carried Ohio and Pennsylvania handily.) As the caricature of "Reagan Democrats" as racist militarists hardened among "new politics" advocates, they strove to make up the difference by creating an expanded base among African-Americans, college-age, and college educated voters. The result was yet another humiliating defeat for the Democrats in 1988.

Bill Clinton's shift to a centrist liberalism stressing lunch-pail issues--"Putting People First"--won back a large number of Reagan Democrats in 1992, enough so that, by the time Clinton won his second term in 1996, Democrats could claim parity with Republicans by winning a slim plurality among non-college educated working class white voters. But the perceived elitists Al Gore and John Kerry lost what Clinton had gained, as George W. Bush carried the white working-class vote by a margin of 17 percent in 2000 and a whopping 23 percent in 2004.

This year's primary results show no sign that Obama will reverse this trend should he win the nomination. In West Virginia and Kentucky, as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania, blue collar white voters sent him down to defeat by overwhelming margins. A recent Gallup poll report has argued that claims about Obama's weaknesses among white voters and blue collar voters have been exaggerated - yet its indisputable figures showed Obama running four percentage points below Kerry's anemic support among whites four years ago.

Given that Obama's vote in the primaries, apart from African-Americans, has generally come from affluent white suburbs and university towns, the Gallup figures presage a Democratic disaster among working-class white voters in November should Obama be the nominee.

Yet Obama's handlers profess indifference - and, at times, even pride -- about these trends. Asked about the white working-class vote following Obama's ten-point loss in Pennsylvania, chief campaign strategist David Axelrod confidently told an National Public Radio interviewer that, after all, "the white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections going back even to the Clinton years" and that Obama's winning strength lay in his ability to offset that trend and "attract independent voters... younger voters" and "expand the Democratic base."

Apart from its basic inaccuracy about Clinton's blue-collar support in 1992 and 1996, Axelrod's statement was a virtual reprise of the Democratic doomed strategy from the 1972 McGovern campaign that the party revamped in 1988. The main difference between now and then is the openness of the condescension with which many of Obama's supporters - and, apparently, the candidate himself - hold the crude "low information" types whom they believe dominate the white working class. The sympathetic media coverage of Obama's efforts to explain away his remarks in San Francisco about "bitter," economically-strapped voters who, clinging to their guns, religion, and racism, misdirect their rage and do not see the light, only reinforced his campaign's dismissive attitude. Obama's efforts at rectification were reluctant and half-hearted at best - and he undercut them completely a few days later when he referred derisively, on the stump in Indiana, to a sudden "political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."

Culturally as well as politically, Obama's dismissal of white working people represents a sea-change in the Democrats' basic identity as the workingman's party - one that has been coming since the late 1960s, when large portions of the Left began regarding white workers as hopeless and hateful reactionaries. Faced with the revolt of the "Reagan Democrats" - whose politics they interpreted in the narrowest of racial terms - "new politics" Democrats dreamed of a coalition built around an alliance of right-thinking affluent liberals and downtrodden minorities, especially African-Americans. It all came to nothing. But after Bill Clinton failed to consolidate a new version of the old Democratic coalition in the 1990s, the dreaming began again - first, with disastrous results, in the schismatic Ralph Nader campaign of 2000 and now (with the support of vehement ex-Naderites including Barbara Ehrenreich and Cornel West) in the Obama campaign.

Obama must assume that the demographics of American politics have changed dramatically in recent years so that the electorate as a whole is little more than a larger version of the combined Democratic primary constituencies of Oregon and South Carolina. While recent studies purport to show that the white working class has, indeed, shrunk over the past fifty years, as a political matter its significance remains salient, especially in the battleground and swing states--states like Ohio and West Virginia where Obama currently trails Senator John McCain in the polls. One of the studies that affirms the diminishing proportion of blue collar whites in the electorate, written for the Brookings Institution by Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abamowitz, concludes [pdf], nevertheless, that "the voting proclivities of the white working class will make a huge difference and could well determine who the next president will be."

Teixeira and Abramowitz estimate that the Democratic candidate will need to cut Kerry's deficit of 23 percent in 2004 to around 10 percent if he or she is "to achieve a solid popular vote victory." By those lights, Obama, if nominated, is almost certainly destined to lose unless he can suddenly reverse the trend that his own dismissive language and his supporters' contemptuous tone has accelerated during the primaries.

In every presidential election they have won, the Democrats have solidified their historic link to white workers, not dismissed them. Obama and the champions of a new party coalition appear to think that everything has suddenly changed, simply because of the force of their own desires. In any event, Obama had shown no ability thus far to attract the one constituency that has always spelled the difference between victory and defeat for the Democratic Party. The party must now decide whether to go along with Obama and renounce its own heritage -- and tempt the political fates.

Comments

[Liberoservative]

All lI can say is this..
If the Democratic party doesn't win this election, it will be its own fault... because we have two candidates whose issues will beat McCain....
and I am one of the guilty parties.... I have been so offended by the Clinton supporters... telling me that I am wrong to believe in truth and fairness... that I am wrong to think that when you agree to your party's rules and you SIGN a document that you will abide by those rules..... THEN to say.. well... no, I really didn'tt mean to sign that document... I really wasn't under sniper fire at bosnia either.. but you just disregard that... I don't want another liar in the whitehouse... and if I have to have another Republican liar in the whitehouse... then so be it... I know what the Repubs will do.. I don't trust Hillary on what she will do... she has lost my vote forever... she has not campaigned as a strong woman... she has used every trick in the book that we have to her advantage.... She didn't campaign as a human being...

[Johnnn]

Excellent article. I would write more but I have to go to work.

[ccrnjr]

A short history lesson and a cautionary tale

The Southern Manifesto was a document written in February-March 1956 by legislators in the United States Congress opposed to racial integration in public places. The manifesto was signed by 101 politicians from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The document was largely drawn up to counter the landmark Supreme Court 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which integrated public schools.

MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE
Walter F. George " Democrat " Guy who actually read the Manifesto into the record.
Richard B. Russell, Democrat
John Stennis, Democrat
Sam J. Elvin, Jr., Then-Democrat
Strom Thurmond, Democrat
Harry F. Byrd, Democrat
Willis Robertson, Democrat
John L. McClellan, Democrat
Allen J. Ellender, Democrat
Russell B. Long, Democrat
Lister Hill, Democrat
James O. Eastland, Democrat
W. Kerr Scott, Democrat
John Sparkman, Democrat
Olin D. Johnston, Democrat
Marion Price Daniel, Democrat
J.William Fulbright, Democrat
George A. Smathers Democrat
Spessard Lindsay Holland.Democrat

All but two of the signers of the Southern Manifesto were democrats. African American voters should really consider becoming swing voters.

[ccrnjr]

Why bother with the primaries and caucuses. Just throw out the grassroots workers and voters and CROWN Hillary the nominee. She can't even run her own campaign, she can't manage her staff or get them to work together, she was fooled by Dick Cheney and Bush into voting for the Iraq War, her apologist have taken Memorial Day(A day reserved for the troops she helped send to their deaths) and turned into "We want to continue the war by voting against Obama in the fall" day.

Well, guess what? Bob Barr, Ron Paul and the candidate from the constitution party will a thorn in McCain right flank. But, you don't discuss that. I am sure some Hillary voters from "Operation Chaos" will vote for someone else in November.

[ccrnjr]

Wilentz appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on December 8, 1998 to argue against the Clinton impeachment. His testimony " he told the House members that, if they voted for impeachment but were not convinced Clinton's offenses were impeachable, "history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness" " cheered Democratic partisans but was criticized by the New York Times, which lamented his "gratuitously patronizing presentation" in an editorial.
Wilentz has been a prominent supporter of the presidential candidacy of Sen. Hillary Clinton. He has also written numerous articles analyzing Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, charging Obama with creating "manipulative illusion[s]" and "distortions," and having "purposefully polluted the [primary electoral] contest" with "the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988."

MY DEAR HARD WORKING WHITE FRIENDS IN WISCONSIN AND HARD WORKING WHITE FAMILY MEMBERS IN MINNESOTA--HILLARY AND HER SUPPORTERS DON"T CONSIDER YOU BECAUSE MANY OF YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA. OH, I ALMOST FORGOT--MY WHITE MALE HUSBAND WITH 2 JOBS DOESN"T COUNT EITHER. HE VOTED FOR OBAMA IN TEXAS. AND ALL THOSE WHITE PEOPLE WHO FORMED A PRAYER CIRCLE FOR OBAMA IN HOUSTON, TEXAS DON"T COUNT EITHER.

[NOLAMoCity]

The truth is...The United States of America has a problem with race. Americans take the arrogant position that we are perfect - despite our flaws, which is flawed thinking. In the general election there will be angry women who will not vote for Obama because they feel he has stolen Hillary's nomination. There will be White Americans who simply cannot vote for a Black man. These are realities of being American.

My prayer for the general election is this...

There will be very distinct policy differences between McCain and the Democratic nominee. Those policies will likely shape upcoming American history like no other time. I pray that fair-minded, true Americans put their prejudices aside, open their hearts and minds to the possibility of things being different. I pray that Americans can see that they have been gradually beaten into submission and programmed to believe things cannot get better. Finally, I pray that we can come together in order to form a more perfect union.

[teleradar]

"[The Obama campaign is doing] nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states."

While that may have been where the Democratic party came from historically, it does not at this point in our history serve only white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states. I'm sorry if that particular news of change is painful to you or hard for you to accept, but it's a fact.

[KarenKaren]

Sean Wilentz, Part 1

Obama's not forgetting about the white working class, and that shouldn't be the new thing the media creates. It's as bad as what you're arguing against--the meme that Hill's supporters are racist. I like Hill, but do not agree with her many of her tactics. Were it not for these tactics (that nobody is supposed to notice or comment on) BOTH candidates would have MUCH more support--and that means Democrats would have more support in general. In fact, it would have made the Wright issue all the more glaring, hanging there all by itself with none of her oddities to drain away its power.

What do I mean when I say Hill's tactics? It was to abandon the high road and resort to mining the low road of emotionally laden negative politics. Does Obama play on emotions? Yes, he's tapped into a strong desire for change, unity, and hope. She mocked those sentiments when we needed her to affirm them and cast herself as one who could help us achieve them. Then EVERYONE would be touting the "dream ticket" with heartfelt enthusiasm. Her overriding message, however, even the "I finally found my voice", was all about knocking Obama instead of making an affirmative case about her own candidacy. (Cont'd)

[KarenKaren]

Part 2
Right now, consistent polling shows Obama putting red states like New Mexico and Colorado in play, as well as capturing the big state wins of Hillary's. Looking at states in which candidates won OVER 10% of the vote--Obama won 25 to Hill's 8. Obama has won Hill 33 to 18 in the 51 contests held so far. It doesn't even come down to ethnicity, gender, age, or income in the big picture.

The thing is, she has definite electoral weaknesses and so does Obama. McCain has his troubles too. Her case is no stronger than Obama's. The case that needs to be made now is for leadership and teamwork. That goes for Clinton, McCain, and Obama.

[MA4HRC]

As a black woman, whose only been able to vote in the last 3 presidential elections, I agree with this article 100%. Anyone voting for Senator Clinton must be a racist, just like anyone who questioned Bush was unpatriotic. As a single woman trying to pay off student loans; thinking about buying my first home; and planning my financial future; I cannot be concerned with being someone's cheerleader. I need to feel confident in the person that I send to the White House. She is the most competent and effective person to be president because she's not just telling me what she's about, she's shown me.

The so-called "new" democrats are hell bent on losing this election AGAIN! The parade of presidential losers endorsing Senator Obama only confirm my belief that the democrats are losers and like to lose. With the new democrats, we're all of the sudden supposed to believe that the people of NY, MA, CA, etc. are idiots and uneducated. The facts say something different, but if that's what we need to say in order to make ourselves feel better about nominating the next "party Leader" destined to lose, then so be it. I know that people want to dismiss the primary results, but I guess history has to be wrong at least once. I pray that she leaves the democratic party in its "new" form and runs as the independent candidate. I'm tired of losing and she is our best chance of winning.

[martina1965]

Thank you for a smart and rational comment on the smart and rational post by Mr. Wilentz. I completely agree.

[ccrnjr]

What are we supposed to do? Crown Hillary despite what the primary and caucus voters say? It's funny how people seem to forget about all the American troops and Iraqi civilians she has sent to their deaths or disability with her vote for Iraq War. Since you have a crystal ball, tell me how Hillary was supposed to win when so many people both right and left dislike her?

[debrouillard]

If you would give an example of one or two things she has shown you,it will be very helpful. But i will assume like Hillary herself when ask to state an example of her achievement over the 35 years experience she claims and she was unable to,so too would you.

Please do give us a few example of what she has shown you. Mark Penn couldnt state one example when asked,neither was howard Wolfson and above all the Queen,Hillary herself.But then again,u may know better than the above mentioned.

[Johnnn]

Thank you for this post.

[Beatcomber]

Hillary Clinton "lobbyists are people too" defender of the white working class?

Oh God .... what a bunch of bullshit !!!

[debrouillard]

Her actual quote was
"whether you like it or not,Lobbyist represents REAL Americans".

That was enough for me.By that statement what she illustarted was that,she doesnt even know what Americas problems are. You can not fix a problem you dont know,and Hillary doesnt know what Americas problem is.

[Insightful]

I will keep this reply short becuse you did not bother to print my previous one which explained this in full. It takes too much time.

OBAMA WILL LOSE THIS ELECTION BECAUSE HE DOES NOT HAVE THE MAJOR STATES.
(=not enough electoral votes)

Obama followers have become like a cult. You have to get real or it will be over all because you fell for a myth perpetrated by the likes of Ted Kennedy, and the rest of the extreme left wing who are only interested in their own selfish agendas.

[johnwinner]

Your argument is spurious. Most real Democrats voting for Hillary in the primaries will vote for the Democratic Nominee, Obama, in November. A primary vote is NOT a vote "against", merely a vote of preference. The contest in the fall is between tweo parties. Your remarks are the equivalent of a terrorist fear tactic - except utterly illogical and irrelevant.

[Amathyne]

And that is part of the reason why you will lose - This constant silly assumption that the other half of the democratic party will just nicely fall into line behind Senator Obama when his own supporters have said again and again how much they dislike Hillary's supporters, don't need them, they're all old, irrelevant. etc. etc.
Go right on taking their votes for granted after spending a year insulting them. I'm sure that will work out real well for you.

[patmancando]

I have long thought about this issue in this campaign.....why do so many people hate the Clintons?
Bill is the only two term Democratic president since Roosevelt, and Hillary has a long history of public service focused upon children's issues, health care, education and human rights here in our country and around the world. He was the most admired post president around the world and loved by many people here at home. He has accomplished more in the last 7 years since leaving the WH, in helping the afflicted people in Africa get medicines to live with HIV+, the most devastating disease to afflict the world since the black plague. He devoted time to collect money for the tsunami victims when asked by Dubya to co-chair with GHWB the effort (do you think W asked Bill out of any other reason than respect and knowing his own dad didn't have the respect and popularity around the world) (but Obamanuts accused Bill of aligning himself with the (Rs)
He formed a foundation to enlist very rich people to develop programs to help with poverty around the world, and when he visited these countries he was treated like a rock star! Millions loved him, and all these Obamanuts focused upon was the $109 million he has made since he left the WH. Hillary has been in the Senate working for legislation that would help the invisible poor...and has been voted the most admired woman in the world.

[debrouillard]

If you would just tell us what her accomplishments have been over the said long period of public services in any of those above mentioned fields,it might help her cause. Certainly Hillary herself dont know any or can not remember any,because she was asked to give a few examples and her answer was exactly what u have reitereted on here,without giving a single example.

Please give us an example of what she achieved in health care,Education,Human rights etc.

Talking about Human rights,remember she was fired from her first job with one of the reasons being she is unethical,precisely trying to take away Nixons Human and constitutional Right to have a legal representation during his impeachment.

I will assume,u know about the Health Care saga. Perhaps you always wanna find out for yourself her Contribution to the Arkansas education system,how she treated Blacks children down there

[stonej1]

What an idiot, don't you have the Fox News Website or the Clinton News Network to extend your dumb theories?

[Redrover666]

Your mind-set was what the commenter was trying to point out.

[NOLAMoCity]

We're no more cult-like than Clinton supporters. Obama has never made up stories about being shot at by snipers. He didn't lie about opposition to NAFTA. He hasn't continuously moved the goal posts of this election. I like Hillary Clinton as much as anyone else but her claim to be a fighter and Washington Queenpin is precisely where our problems lie. Regular citizens like myself have become far too complacent when it comes to politics. We expect opposition from the "other" side, prepare for battle and lose sight of what the fight was about. We just don't need to perpetuate these political stalemates. It's time for a new way to conduct business in D.C.

It's time to fundamentally alter the way politician's respond to their constituency. It's time for real leadership, transparency, honesty and progress. Senator Obama is the clear choice.

[patmancando]

All these qualities with 8 years in the Illinois legislature......did you know he ran for the US Senate after only 2 years in the state legislature and lost; so he went back and served six more years during which time he voted present 126 times. Seems he wanted to avoid controversy. So 8 yrs in the legislature, and on his second try at US Senate, he won, beating Crazy Alan Keyes, a black TV personality who is a perennial candidate.....no competition. He did meet some important people, like Rescoe, and probably Axelrod, who lobbied for a Nuclear energy company that Obama rewrote an energy bill to give Axelrod's energy company some benefits...like he voted for the Cheney energy bill that gave all those tax breaks to energy companies. And he was frugal because he was able to buy a $l.8 million home on a state legislature's salary....even tho. they were paying off their college loans which were huge. After 1 1/2 years in the US Senate, he started his run for POTUS.

Now where do you think he got those qualifications you list; "real leadership, transparency, honesty and progress." Those speeches that are so eloquent and inspiring, well someone wrote those for him, or I should say Duval Patrick, because he used them in an almost mirror image campaign for Gov. of Mass of the campaign Obama has run for POTUS. Worked once; so why not try it again.

[ApolloSpeaks]

OBAMA THE ANSWER TO MCCAIN'S PRAYERS

Is America too racist and white for Barack Obama? I think not. Truth is Obama is too much a leftist for right of center America. He is the second coming of George McGovern, the answer to John McCain's prayers.

[johnwinner]

Go ahead and vote McCain - the Democrat doesn't need NeoCons. And the Center of American politics has no place for John "more of the same" McCain.

[Amathyne]

Isn't that exactly the point he was trying to make? That automatic assumption that a person who doesn't support Obama is a Neocon (or whatever the adjective of the day is) is exactly the attitude that will get you crushed in the general election.

[patmancando]

Obama and his supporters, including the MSM. have alienated too many of the core democratic voting base and will lose the GE because of their arrogance and the illusion that this cult will bring in so many new voters. I will believe it when I see it.

[debrouillard]

If the so called core Democtrts voters reason the way you are trying to paint them,then we dont want their votes.

[SethBLiNK]

Obama's policies are not significantly different than Hillaries in any area. Yes, his health care plan comes with fewer mandates and she says that makes it not Universal, but it's a heck of a lot more Universal than anything McCain would offer. And yes she's for a gas tax holiday, which is a pandering insult to the intelligence.

But.... he supports the needs of white working class people as much as she does. He also doesn't offer a single thing to black working class people that he doesn't to whites.

So, if there are voters whose economic self-interest says they should vote for him, but they don't, what would be the reason, if not race.

White working class people should look at the candidates and decide who will do more for them. If they do that and fail to vote for the better candidate, it's not that candidate or the party who has let them down. It's themselves.

[XME]

Obama is ahead, and unless it's determined he's a serial murderer who's 100% unelectable, he'll rightfully get the nomination.

Any debates Clinton may or may not be ahead are irrelevant. The nomination will go to the candidate who's won the most elected delegates. Superdelegates aren't stupid (scared, but not stupid!)...they know if they take the nomination from the person who's ahead - the first black person to achieve this - they stand NO chance of winning in November, despite ANY arguments Clinton or her supporters make. Clinton did better in WV/KT which DOES have something to do with bigotry, but, in spite this, Obamab is FAR ahead, and superdelegates know that to overturn his numbers would be suicide.

Sadly, the longer this goes on, the tougher it become. Most of us have no doubt that's part of Clinton's plan: make it seem like FL and MI are Obama's fault, like he isn't getting white working class votes (even though he's ahead in all areas other than older white women with less education), like she's lost because of sexism, like if she doesn't get the nomination women are being disenfranchised.

She has done everything she can to split the party and to make is seem like only she can "save us". Her last hope is that her efforts will cause Obama to lose, then she can say "I told you so...you should have picked me".