There can be little doubt now that Old Media is applying full-court pressure to anoint Barack Obama with the Democratic nomination, and on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race.
The New York Times's stories for tomorrow's print edition ("Support for Clinton Wanes as Obama Sees Finish Line" and "Pundits Declare the Race Over") clearly point in those directions. The first describes North Carolina as "a decisive loss" for Mrs. Clinton. The second shows how determined the Times appears to be to come up with evidence that Obama has the nomination in the bag, as it actually notes the despised Matt Drudge's headline link earier today to Tim Russert's "The Nominee" video.
Wait a minute.
Jim Geraghty at National Review online appears to be about the only person to have caught the obvious: Barack Obama's overwhelming support from African-Americans means that he performed miserably with the rest of the voters.
Did he ever:
(Sources: ABC for vote totals (as of post time); Geraghty below for Obama's percentages of the African-American vote; the 40% and 16.8% estimates for NC's and IN's African-American percentage of total are consistent proportionally with the turnout in South Carolina.)
I contend that if this were almost any other candidate, the press would be asking him how he can possibly win the general election if he could get only 35% of the non-African-American vote in North Carolina, and just 41% of it in the state just east of his home state of Illinois.
But this isn't any other candidate, Geraghty notes, as he also goes to the selective questioning of the motivations of certain voting blocs :
African-Americans are free to vote for whoever they like, obviously. But as the primary stretches on, and it becomes clear that overwhelming and monolithic support among African-Americans is putting Obama over the top, I wonder how other voter demographics will react.
Obama carried 91 percent of the African-American vote in North Carolina and 90 percent of the African-American vote in Indiana. No other demographic was anywhere near so lopsided in their support; the closest were non-college whites who split 71-26 for Hillary in North Carolina; 65-35 for Hillary in Indiana.
..... African-Americans are voting overwhelmingly for a candidate who shares their skin color, but it's being repeatedly suggested that white working-class voters are motivated by racism. Is this the "national conversation on race" that Obama had in mind in his Philly speech?
The other question the press isn't asking is how Obama went from sweeping virtually every demographic group except white females in January's South Carolina primary to losing just about every one except African-Americans less than four months later. The deterioration is striking, as is the press's failure to note it.
Adapted and updated from entries (here, here, and here) originally posted at BizzyBlog.com.
