Sorry to keep beating the drum here, but in case you missed them, the Wisconsin exit polls have some telling data. Yeah, Obama did win across a lot of demographics, which probably isn’t good news for Texas and Ohio. But there was one demographic where Hillary thoroughly trounced Obama, and that was among people who said their top candidate quality was experience. Obama won among people who wanted a candidate who cared about people or could bring change, but people who wanted experience voted 95% for Hillary. Those people were 22% of the respondents to that question, but remember, we’re running against John McCain now, and we know that even if nothing goes (further) wrong internationally between now and November, McCain is going to trot out his experience (the guy is fracking 1000 years old, let’s be realistic, he’s got the experience) at every opportunity. Yeah, the Republican primary voters have always gone with “personal qualities”, and our primary voters are apparently going with “change”, but when the general comes around, isn’t our friend “experience” going to come into play? </plug>

As an aside, although NPR beat me to it (and I can’t find the story), think about this: There’s been talk in recent years amounting to “omg we can’t nominate a Senator!” Well, we’re now assured of some hot Senator-on-Senator action come the general. Assuming that all those negatives about sitting Senators are true, we’re looking good with either Obama or Clinton – we’re throwing three years and seven years in the Senate against 21 (!), so on that count we should be completely golden. In any case, you can bet that the negative ads we’ve seen so far are only a few dimpled chads in what is sure to be a campaign of unprecedented viciousness.

Sorry to keep beating the drum here, but in case you missed them, the Wisconsin exit polls have some telling data. Yeah, Obama did win across a lot of demographics, which probably isn’t good news for Texas and Ohio. But there was one demographic where Hillary thoroughly trounced Obama, and that was among people who said their top candidate quality was experience. Obama won among people who wanted a candidate who cared about people or could bring change, but people who wanted experience voted 95% for Hillary. Those people were 22% of the respondents to that question, but remember, we’re running against John McCain now, and we know that even if nothing goes (further) wrong internationally between now and November, McCain is going to trot out his experience (the guy is fracking 1000 years old, let’s be realistic, he’s got the experience) at every opportunity. Yeah, the Republican primary voters have always gone with “personal qualities”, and our primary voters are apparently going with “change”, but when the general comes around, isn’t our friend “experience” going to come into play? </plug>

As an aside, although NPR beat me to it (and I can’t find the story), think about this: There’s been talk in recent years amounting to “omg we can’t nominate a Senator!” Well, we’re now assured of some hot Senator-on-Senator action come the general. Assuming that all those negatives about sitting Senators are true, we’re looking good with either Obama or Clinton – we’re throwing three years and seven years in the Senate against 21 (!), so on that count we should be completely golden. In any case, you can bet that the negative ads we’ve seen so far are only a few dimpled chads in what is sure to be a campaign of unprecedented viciousness.