Did Obama win the Dem Primary cause of his race?

[Verily]

And Obama would have done better, but still lost, the white racist vote in places like WV or KY. The basic point is that he would have been smashed in SC and that would have altered the race a lot.

Why these? The rural white Southern and Appalachian voters had no particular loyalty to Clinton until after she rebranded herself--which was, of course, a mid-campaign shift in response to Obama's race. In fact, these were the sorts of voters among which Clinton was likely to run into some of her biggest problems, as her previous reputation was as "the biggest liberal around".

Would Obama have won South Carolina in a landslide? Of course not. But would Clinton have won South Carolina in a landslide? Possibly, but probably not. Edwards would have done much better among rural white voters with Clinton focusing her attention on blacks. Well enough, in fact, that white!Obama may have decided to basically skip the state and focus on areas with greater white liberal anti-Iraq voting blocs in the primary. Who would win in the battle of the white and black voters in South Carolina is hard to say. While Obama won in our timeline, that was because blacks supported him at 90%; they would be unlikely to support Clinton at any more than 65% or so. More importantly, however, the race in South Carolina is irrelevant.

New Hampshire is the most obvious example of where Obama would do better early on. It seems unlikely in retrospect that Clinton would have won New Hampshire without at least some of the observed Irish Catholic racism (incidentally, the only manifested "Bradley Effect" in the whole campaign--MA, RI and NH in the primaries). Certainly these voters owed some loyalty to Clinton anyway, but not to the extent at which they supported her. Moreover, white!Obama spends more effort courting these votes since he's not campaigning in South Carolina. White!Obama wins New Hampshire, and suddenly the race is over.

Unrealistic? Surely not. Not what would have happened? Certainly it's not the only logical extrapolation of the primary campaign with white!Obama. But, while we can't know for certain, I think this is the most probable scenario.

[Verily]

Rural Appalachian voters don't tend to vote for very liberal intellectual Northerners. But if you want to believe that they would have loved Obama go ahead.

I didn't say they would; I said they'd support Edwards, who of course has much better ties to both. But my main point was that they would be irrelevant; the race would be over before South Carolina got to vote, let alone West Virginia or Kentucky.

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You're missing the racial dimension here. Southern white voters and black voters will not support the same candidate. Ever. If Clinton is the choice of Southern blacks, she is automatically disqualified in the minds of many Southern whites, to the benefit of John Edwards primarily but also probably to white!Obama somewhat. (The pattern is weaker in Appalachia, of course, but Appalachia voted very, very late this year.)

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Not at all; momentum was essential. Obama sputtered when he lost momentum, when the race underwent a long hiatus. Prior to that, the race was entirely about momentum (afterwards, it had become clear that the race was close enough and had gone on long enough that no one could end it definitively).

Obama wins IA and NH, and Nevada is a very, very, very difficult win for Clinton, who doesn't really gain much ground in the state from Obama not having black voters on his side. Remember, Obama barely lost Nevada despite having been devastatingly defeated in New Hampshire a few days previously; he almost certainly would have won in this timeline.

And three victories means the primaries are over. No candidate has ever won the first two primaries and then failed to win the nomination, let alone the first three primaries. Admittedly, this is an appeal to tradition, but Clinton would be absolutely crushed in the polls at this point.

[Verily]

You're missing the racial dimension here. Southern white voters and black voters will not support the same candidate. Ever. If Clinton is the choice of Southern blacks, she is automatically disqualified in the minds of many Southern whites, to the benefit of John Edwards primarily but also probably to white!Obama somewhat. (The pattern is weaker in Appalachia, of course, but Appalachia voted very, very late this year.)

What about 1992?  Clinton swept the South in the primaries.  Did Brown or Tsongas do particularly well with either whites or blacks?  Or did Clinton pretty much win everybody?

Neither Brown nor Tsongas contested any Southern states except Florida (where Tsongas campaigned). Both were running out of funds by Super Tuesday and, in retrospect, had no shot even beforehand. (No idea on the voting patterns, btw, although Brown would later announce that he would consider Jesse Jackson as a running mate, so maybe he was trying black outreach at this point.)

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Minor sidenote here: It was actually 11 days between NH and NV.[/quote]

"A few" was just shorthand for "I know it was the third primary, but I don't remember how long after NH it was and it doesn't really matter."

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In 1972, Muskie won both Iowa and New Hampshire, and went on to lose the nomination.  Of course, McGovern came in a strong second place in both, and media coverage of these things was a lot different back then.....I don't think people really paid that much attention to Iowa yet at that point.  (At least, based on what I've read.  I wasn't born yet in 1972, so that's all I have to go on.  )[/quote]

Possibly; I don't know much about 1972, either. But, like you said, Iowa was not such a big deal, and McGovern probably didn't contest NH too hard because of Muskie's regional advantage.

[Verily]

You're missing the racial dimension here. Southern white voters and black voters will not support the same candidate. Ever. If Clinton is the choice of Southern blacks, she is automatically disqualified in the minds of many Southern whites, to the benefit of John Edwards primarily but also probably to white!Obama somewhat. (The pattern is weaker in Appalachia, of course, but Appalachia voted very, very late this year.)

What about 1992?  Clinton swept the South in the primaries.  Did Brown or Tsongas do particularly well with either whites or blacks?  Or did Clinton pretty much win everybody?

Neither Brown nor Tsongas contested any Southern states except Florida (where Tsongas campaigned). Both were running out of funds by Super Tuesday and, in retrospect, had no shot even beforehand. (No idea on the voting patterns, btw, although Brown would later announce that he would consider Jesse Jackson as a running mate, so maybe he was trying black outreach at this point.)

So we're not counting 1992, because it wasn't competitive enough?  I assume we're not counting 2000 or 2004 either because they weren't competitive enough.  So are there *any* other Democratic primaries in the modern era that were competitive, on which you can conclude that the white and black Democrats will automatically vote for opposing candidates?

1988, sure.  But again, that has the complication of one of the candidates being black himself.  1984?  Same issue.  Jackson wasn't nearly as competitive as in '88, but presumably still got most of the black vote in the South.  1980?  Carter beat Kennedy in every state in the South.  Is that disqualified for the same reason as 1992 (the race wasn't sufficiently competitive in the South to measure this effect)?  Do you have to go back to 1976 for an example of Southern whites and blacks voting differently in a Democratic primary, in which none of the candidates was black himself?

It's true on the state level, and it was true to some extent in 2004 as well (blacks for Kerry [and Sharpton], whites for Edwards, although whites in Charleston voted for Kerry). I suppose I shouldn't have stated it in such strong terms; I back off from that. But it's really hard to deny that Edwards had much stronger appeal to such people, both in rhetoric early in the campaign and in background, than Clinton. I'm not so concerned about Obama; all that matters is that Clinton doesn't run away with those states when Obama doesn't contest them.