The implausible case for why Hillary Clinton could win the presidency -- which we're going to hear a lot about over the next four years -- seems to depend on her surprising success at winning over skeptical New York voters in 2000, particularly upstate. Don't believe the hype.
First of all, her 55%-43% win was not exactly a landslide. As the Almanac of American Politics 2002 points out, Chuck Schumer beat Al D'Amato by an almost identical margin of 55%-44% in the 1998 race for New York's other Senate seat, and Hillary was riding the coattails of Al Gore, who won the state 60%-35%. According to Barone and company, when you break it down by region, she won New York City 74%-25%, lost in the suburbs 53%-45%, and lost upstate 51%-47%. The latter two numbers are pretty good, but again, compare her to Schumer -- he won New York City 76%-23%, lost the suburbs 51%-49% and lost upstate 53%-45%. The figures are almost identical.
The obvious conclusion is that Hillary did about as well as your average Democrat in a Democrat-leaning state. While things could have gone much worse given how polarizing she was, it proves almost nothing about her ability to win over voters in the the battleground states of the industrial Midwest, let alone the South.
And then a thought jumps to mind -- where have we heard this story before? There was someone who was reported to be a "good closer" that could win over voters when it really counted. As the story goes, after polls showed him neck-and-neck with his opponent in his toughest race, he pulled out a convincing win. The margin was 52%-45%; the state was Massachusetts; and the candidate was, of course, John Kerry in his 1996 race against William Weld. Just like Hillary Clinton, he benefitted from a presidential landslide in a heavily Democratic state -- Bill Clinton took the state 61%-28% -- to pull out a race that he should have won.
Will Democratic voters buy the same lousy analogy again?
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