Electability

I think it's pretty silly to be talking about electability. I mean at this point everybody is electable. So you might as well vote for the best candidate. The one who'll make the best president. And whoever gets the nomination, work to make them a winner.

That said, Josh Feit over at Slog is running the numbers from her recent Senate campaign and by God, traditional Republican enclaves are showing her some love. And while there are problems with county by county analysis, and with comparing a popular incumbent Senator to an up for grabs Presidency, this shows that she can win over Republicans without hurting herself with Democrats and independents.

The self-hating rap from elite urban liberals is this: “I can’t support Hillary Clinton because she turns off mainstream voters.”

The grating irony of this analysis is that in trying to understand, cater to, and bond with the white working classes, liberal elites who are nervous about Clinton’s candidacy among the lumpen proletariat are actually misunderstanding (and condescending to) the lumpen proletariat… yet again.

We took a look at all the counties in New York State where: the income is lower than the state median; where the percent of college graduates is lower than the percentage of the state as a whole; and where the white population is greater than the state as a whole (basically, the great white working classes). It turns out, Hillary cleaned up in those counties in her most recent run for U.S. Senate. It wasn’t all Manhattan.

She comfortably won 35 out of the 38 counties that would qualify as Joe and Jane Public voting blocs (counties measured by data on education level and income level which typically define the white working class. The “Wal-Mart vote,” if you will.)

And in some of those counties, where the the data skews even more dramatically toward white working class, Clinton really really cleaned up. For example, in Franklin County where the median is $32,531 and only 13 percent of the population graduated from college, Hillary scored 65 percent of the vote. In Chautauqua County, where the median income is $33,000 and only 17 percent graduated college, Hillary got 55 percent. In Chemung County, where the median income is $36,000 and only 19 percent graduated college, Hillary got 58 percent. In Montgomery County, where the median income is $34,000 and only 13 percent graduated college, Clinton got 62 percent. All these counties hover around 80 percent white.

In other words, judging from the electoral outcomes in New York, the masses don’t think Hillary is the “lesbian witch” that liberal elites worry the masses think Hillary is.

My point being, urbanites should stop hand-wringing and tempering their own beliefs on behalf of the pick-up truck crowd—especially when it seems they’ve got the pick-up truck crowd all wrong.

Judging from New York State, anyway, Clinton’s a bit of a star.

P.S. Clinton’s also a star among non-whites. In places like Queens, where 45 percent are non-white, HC got 80 percent of the vote.