Clinton's Health-Care Focus Gives First Aid to Bid

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

CAPITAL JOURNAL
By GERALD F. SEIB

Clinton's Health-Care Focus Gives First Aid to Bid
March 6, 2008; Page A8

It turns out there's a good reason Hillary Clinton went on and on about health care in all those Democratic debates. Sen. Clinton's stunning comeback Tuesday suggests that health care did much to fuel her revival -- and, not coincidentally, is helping open up a broader socioeconomic divide among Democratic voters.


In winning this week's primaries in Ohio and Texas, Sen. Clinton thumped Barack Obama among voters who consider health care the most important issue in deciding on a candidate, as she has in other states. In Texas, for example, while the two candidates were nearly neck and neck overall, exit polls show that she won 58% to 39% among voters who put health care atop their priority list. In Ohio, she won among such voters by 56% to 42%. Taken alone, these voters focused on health care are a significant slice of the Democratic electorate. In state after state, they have tended to make up a fifth to a quarter of those voting in Democratic primaries.

But they represent more than that: They are a connection to the broader universe of blue-collar and down-scale Democratic voters who provided Sen. Clinton her biggest boost Tuesday. Lower-income voters are more worried about finding health care than anybody else, and they are the ones who now form the core of the Clinton constituency... "The Clinton coalition has basically been white women, noncollege-educated white men and Latinos," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. Sen. Obama has "gotten the college-educated white men and, obviously, African-Americans....She appeals to those downscale whites particularly on economic issues, of which health care is a prime example."

(snip)

And it isn't just Ohio and Texas where these outlines of the Clinton coalition -- and health care's role in it -- emerged. A look at the 16 states that held primaries or caucuses on February's Super Tuesday reveals the same pattern. Among those who cited health care as their main concern, Sen. Clinton got 54% of the vote; Sen. Obama, 42%. (Sen. John Edwards, still pulling votes at that point, got 3%.) And among voters with family incomes below $50,000, Sen. Clinton prevailed over Sen. Obama, 52% to 44%. The one state where these trends didn't hold up, for whatever reason, was Wisconsin, where Sen. Obama did surprisingly well among blue-collar white males, leading many analysts to think he had broken into Sen. Clinton's stronghold and made off with some of her core supporters. But this week's voting makes Wisconsin look to have been an aberration more than the setter of a new trend on this front.

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120476192512014931.html (subsription)

[MojoMojoMojo]

1. Those poor and lower mid class people arent so dumb

They see who really is going to fix healthcare.Im really surprised and delighted.That they saw through Obamas right wing talking points is amazing.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. It also helped that a rash of those Obama is a Muslim who refuses to say the Pledge emails went out.

Funny how that always happens in certains states right before the Primary.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. The WSJ should talk to the young woman I met canvassing in TX last weekend.

When I said I was there for Obama she wanted to know if he was the one who was going to "make me buy health insurance". I asked her if she had children, and she said no. So I informed her that Obama was proposing mandates only for children. She was relieved by this as she explained that both she and her fiance were working low wage jobs and were lucky to have $5 left over at the end of the month, much less whatever they'd be charging them for insurance.

These are just the type of people who will be screwed by the mandates. They probably won't qualify for any subsidies because the people with kids will glom them up. If you read through Clinton's plan, it's all about the "families". Right now in AZ, I don't qualify for any state health aid, as a single person with no children, if I make $850 a month. Somehow I just know, based on what I've heard from Clinton and proponents like Krugman, that people like me and the woman at the door will be deemed "able to afford" full premiums. If you don't have a family, the main purpose of your income is to subsidize other peoples'.

WSJ is right about a divide. I suspect it has less to do with socio-economic status and more to do with marital and family status. The people who like the mandates have kids and know that they will get help with the premiums. Hillary Clinton's supporters are more likely to be married with children. Obama's supporters are more apt to be young singles and DINKs. That's why he's smart not to include mandates for adults. He'd be turning off his base, many of whom aren't too thrilled about that lovely tax credit that Bill Clinton gave to middle class parents back in the '90s.

[question everything]

4. These are statistics and there will always be some who do not fit

For example, I do not fit into Clinton supporters who are poor and uneducated.

What bothers me here, on DU - and I hope that these are the exceptions - is that some Obama supporters channel Karl Rove who, in previous elections, commented that the poor do not vote.

I have seen a comment here about Clinton's supporters too poor and uneducated to actually think and reason and conclude that they want to vote for her.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

5. Yet you don't have a problem with the Clintons dismissing the Black and youth vote.

Both sides are guilty of stereotyping each other's supporters.