Wednesday, April 23, 2008

A COUNTERNARRATIVE

While we're wringing our hands about the resistance of white working-class voters and older voters to Barack Obama, and aboutdefections to McCain if he's the nominee, let's not forget this statistic (from page 5 of the CNN exit poll for Pennsylvania):



One out of every voters in this primary registered as a Democrat within the past three months. And 62% of those newbies voted for Obama. And that's after Reverend Wright and "bitter" and a bad debate.

Even in a loss, he still brings people into the fold and gets them to the polls. Does that offset defections by traditional Democrats? I don't know, but the narrative right now is all about those defections and nothing else -- and that's not the whole story.

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