It’s electability, stupid.
That’s what Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have been spinning to super-delegates and anyone else who will listen since she lost her grip on once-inevitable nomination.
There’s just one problem – when it comes to independent voters, those crucial swing votes in swing states, Hillary doesn’t hold the electability edge: Barack Obama does.
Independent voters favor Obama by a 2 to 1 margin over Hillary – 49% to 24% – according to a NBC/WSJ poll taken after the Jeremiah Wright scandal in late March. His approval rating among Republicans is almost twice Hillary’s as well – 19% to 10%.
Crossover appeal is the key indicator of electability – especially for Democrats. Despite Democratic dominance of Congress during most of the 20th Century, no Democratic president managed to win more than 51% of the popular vote, with the exceptions of FDR and LBJ. What’s the lesson? Democrats especially depend on Independent voters and even some centrist Republicans to win the White House.
That’s true now more than ever: Independent voters are the fastest growing and largest segment of the American electorate, as detailed in former Clinton and Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen’s new book “Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System.”
Obama’s Independent edge has already had an impact in key 2008 swing states like Virginia, where independents made up 22% of the February 12th open primary. Obama won their support by a 2 to 1 margin, on his way to a 64-35 blowout victory.
It’s not a coincidence that some of Obama’s biggest wins have come from states with open primaries – such as South Carolina, Wisconsin, Idaho, Mississippi, Minnesota and Vermont. These states – stereotypically ranging from dark red to dark blue – offer the best gauge of his geographically diverse general election appeal. And each were among the 18 states that Obama has won by 20 points or more. Hillary, by comparison, has won only Arkansas and neighboring Oklahoma by that margin.
The next and last real battleground of the 2008 primaries, Indiana, is also an open primary. And while Pennsylvania’s more than 1 million independent voters weren’t allowed to vote in this past Tuesday’s closed primary, you can bet they will determine who wins the Keystone State in November.
Ironically, the last Democratic presidential candidate who showed an Obama-like ability to win over Independent voters was Bill Clinton. Even against Independent candidate Ross Perot and Republican Bob Dole in 1996, Clinton won 47% of the Independent vote.
But luckily for Republicans, no political leader in the country has made deeper inroads to the independent vote over a longer time than Senator John McCain. His profile was forged in opposition to the Bush 2000 campaign and its Karl Rove playbook, as much as it was in the Hanoi Hilton. Instead of just playing to the base, McCain criticized out-of-control spending in Tom Delay’s Congress, held hearings into ethics charges against Jack Abramoff, and worked productively with Democrats in the Senate.
McCain’s maverick status angered many of the right-wing rank-and-file, but its paying off for the GOP now that he’s their nominee. A new AP/Yahoo poll found that “The Arizona senator has made a race of the White House contest by attracting disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall.”
Evidence of Obama and McCain’s overlapping independent appeal is seen in the NBC/WSJ poll response to the question “who can unite the country?” – a clear failing of the Bush administration. Obama and McCain were neck and neck with 60% and 58% respectively, while only 46% of voters believed that Hillary Clinton has that capacity.
Despite her largely centrist voting record in the Senate, Hillary Clinton is kryptonite to independent voters because she is one of the most polarizing figures in American politics. She is a brand-name reminder of Bush-Clinton-Bush era of hyper-partisanship that most independents want to leave behind.
“Hillary Clinton has the least traction with independents because her political persona calcified a long time ago,” says GOP strategist Rick Wilson. “She appeals to constituencies the Democrats already own and possesses none of her husband’s charisma and ability to connect with voters in the middle of the political spectrum. Hillary is John Kerry in a pantsuit to most independent voters.”
Obama, on the other hand, as a matter of style and substance represents a new generation of post-partisan politics. While Obama is certainly a center-left politician, he analyzes problems in a way that coolly criticizes the extremes of left and right. He reflects a more pragmatic approach to problem solving and brings an uncommon principled civility to politics. All this translates to unusual crossover appeal – Obama even managed to get 9 write-in votes at the conservative Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit.
A presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain would be a win-win for America’s rising tide of independent voters. They present clear policy differences, but they are decidedly non-polarizing political figures, offering a healthy competition for cross-over votes and a welcome break from the hyper-partisanship of the Bush-Clinton-Bush era. Nominating Hillary Clinton would deepen our domestic political divisions -that’s a data-driven conclusion that’s difficult for her supporters to spin their way out of.
John Avlon is the author of “Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics.”