Thursday, February 1, 2007

Alienating your base

Lots of folks have been discussing the comments of Joe Biden (D-DE) regarding Barack Obama (D-IL) in recent days. I'll give you the quote one more time:
Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
In turn, everyone has been in a fluff over, essentially, Biden apparently saying that other previous African-American presidential candidates being, well, inarticulate and/or not exactly 'the boy next door'.

Now, Biden was quick to act on this, saying that the quote lacked a suitable pause, specifically a comma after African-American. He also said that 'bright and clean' had a specific meaning within his family. Just for the sake of arguement, I'll accept each of these points from the Senator at face value.

Even if I do so, Joe's closed this primary campaign even faster than quoting Neil Kinnock in 1988. Why?

Here, I share with you data from 1988, specifically the delegate totals at the Democratic Convention (source: Wikipedia):
Joe, who's looking to win his party's primary (and who netted a whopping 2 delegates in '88), has just told roughly 31% of those who voted in the party's primary in 1988 (those who voted for Jesse Jackson) that their primary vote wasn't for someone in the mainstream of American politics.

Talk about digging yourself a hole.

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