E-mail a friendJonathan Alter
airdate April 23, 2008
As Newsweek senior editor, Jonathan Alter helps shape the magazine's news coverage. In addition, he writes an acclaimed column that examines politics, media and social and global issues. He's also a correspondent for NBC News, where he appears regularly on various broadcasts. Alter has covered the last six presidential campaigns, and his book, The Defining Moment, looks at the crucial period of time when a new leader takes office. A native of Chicago, Alter holds a degree in history from Harvard.
Jonathan Alter
Tavis: Jonathan Alter is a senior editor and columnist at "Newsweek" and a contributing correspondent for NBC News. He's also an author whose most recent book about FDR's early days in the White House is called "The Defining Moment." He joins us tonight from New York. Jonathan, nice to talk to you as always, sir.
Jonathan Alter: Nice to talk to you, Tavis.
Tavis: So what's your top line for what happened in the Keystone State yesterday?
Alter: Well, too little, too late, I think. Hillary Clinton had an important victory for her in terms of ending this campaign with the sense that she went the distance and she gave it all that she had, but she still is a real long shot for the Democratic nomination.
Tavis: When you say long shot, what do you mean by that? And what do you mean by too little, too late?
Alter: She really needed a big blow-out. She won by, like, I think 9.2 or 9.3 points. That really wasn't enough to change the delegate math in a way that is significant for her. Whatever the spin here, this is a race for delegates, and because he rolled up those 12 very large victories in February, Barack Obama put himself into a commanding position to win the Democratic nomination.
And even though she's put together a couple of big wins in the last several weeks, it's just not enough. If she had won by 20 points last night instead of nine, then you could really start to talk about a changing dynamic in this race. But she wasn't able to do that.
Tavis: For the sake of argument, let me just challenge your thesis and suggest to you that it's not just about delegates, Mr. Alter, it's also about who, in fact, can win in November, and the argument that the Clinton campaign is making today is that given that he could not, with all the money he spent, three or four to one, he couldn't take her out in Pennsylvania, he lost in every significant demographic category that he needs to do better in.
And while you may be right on the one hand that it's about delegates and he wins ultimately the delegate count, if he ends up being a nominee who gets smoked by John McCain come November because Hillary kept saying to us that he can't win the big ones, he can't win the swing states - you know this stuff, yadda, yadda, yadda.
So you're wrong, maybe it's not just about delegates count, it's about who wins, who can win in November.
Alter: Well, that would be true - that would be a good analysis if the state-by-state polls showed that she was beating McCain and Obama was not. That is only true in a couple of states; it is not true in several others. And nationally, according to most polls, Obama still runs better against McCain.
Now in terms of these demographics, he didn't lose every demographic group; he won some very important ones for Democrats, including men. He carried men, which is something that I think has not been well understood. He lost mostly, if you really dive into the numbers, Tavis, he lost mostly on the basis of age, which is a factor that has not been very well understood in this race.
He just gets crushed 50 and above, and he beats her pretty solidly below 50, below 45.
Tavis: But John -
Alter: Let me just finish this point.
Tavis: Yeah, sure.
Alter: And she also does extremely well with women. Well, 58 percent of the voters in Pennsylvania yesterday were women, and Pennsylvania is the second-oldest state in the United States, next only to Florida. So this was a state that was tailor-made for her demographics. He does better with Independents. They were not able to vote in the Pennsylvania primary.
So you could look at this from a lot of different angles in terms of various demographic groups - who has an edge in which groups. She obviously has an edge with some of them. But you cannot say definitively. It's just not a consensus that she would be a stronger candidate against John McCain.
Tavis: But what am I missing or what are you missing about the all-importance of women in November. You can't just pooh-pooh that, number one, and number two, when you talk about old versus young, for all the talk about younger voters in these various primaries, with all due respect, they ain't swung nothing nowhere.
Alter: That's not true.
Tavis: It is older voters. Where? Where? Tell me one state where young voters made the difference.
Alter: It started with Iowa, the very first one. They came out in double the numbers - young voters, many multiples of their earlier numbers. But the electorate as a whole was double. He was powered to that victory by a huge wave of young supporters. I'm not talking about 18-year-olds, I'm talking about up through that demographic that he's carried so strongly through all of these primaries, really, even the ones that he loses.
And by the way, she's only had one 20-point win in Arkansas. He's had many 20-point wins. So he has crushed her in a number of primaries, not just caucuses. That's spin from the other camp other than the Obama people, from the Clinton camp. He's crushed her in a number of primaries, and young people and lower-middle-aged people have been very, very important.
In terms of women, the Democrats have a huge gender gap advantage that they've had for many years. Doesn't matter who their candidate is. Their challenge is to do better with men, and so the candidate that does better with women, that's just pocketing something the Democrats already have, and there's no indication, really strong indication, that they're going to lose women.
Even when they've run weak candidates they have done extremely well with women in this country.
Tavis: Okay, we've talked about age, let's talk about the one thing we've not talked about; race. You chalk this victory up for Hillary Clinton to age. Looked at through another prism, Barack Obama did do well with men, but he on the race question, outside of Black areas like Philadelphia, just didn't carry the day in Pennsylvania.
Alter: Well, I think you're right. It would be naïve to deny that race is a factor and he needs to reclaim some of his success down the road in some of these other states. Great success that he had in attracting White voters in heavily White states like Wisconsin - these Midwestern states, Illinois, Iowa. We could go on down the list.
Virginia, he got a large number of White votes. So he did have a problem with that in Pennsylvania, I would make the argument that yes, he does have a problem with White working class voters, but if you look at the ones that he lost, they're older voters. He didn't do that terribly with young, White voters.
You have to look at - I don't know what the exact numbers were, but it wasn't stopped among young, White voters. He got crushed among older White voters, and so that's the challenge for him. He has to figure out how to do better with older voters, though I'm not sure - if voters vote their age, I'm not sure that Hillary against McCain, who's 71, would necessarily have an advantage with older voters against McCain.
Tavis: Two other quick questions, I've got to run. Number one, for all the talk of this campaign season being about gender and being about ethnicity, and I'm not just talking about Barack and Hillary, I'm talking about Bill Richardson at one point, and a Mormon, for that matter, Romney having been in the race.
For all the talk of diversity in this campaign, is it interesting, fascinating for you that at the end of the day the superdelegates, primarily made up of White men, no disrespect, are going to make the call here? Is that ironic for you?
Alter: Yeah, actually, there are quite a number of African American superdelegates as well. I don't know what the actual percentage is. Fewer Hispanics, and also quite a number of women superdelegates. But I do think it's ironic, and you make a great point, that there's been all this talk about the White male voter in the last couple weeks in Pennsylvania as being so critical after all this talk about women and African Americans.
I don't want to leave you with a misleading conclusion that I think it's a settled issue that Obama is definitely the stronger candidate, but I would just caution you against the spin that Hillary is definitely the stronger candidate. I think it's an open question right now, and for anybody to think that superdelegates are going to all, like, go rushing to Hillary because these men and some women in this smoke-filled or smoke-free room are going to defy what was done in primaries and caucuses, it's not very likely.
He would have to really lose North Carolina, that's a key state to look at. If he loses North Carolina on May 6th, he's in serious trouble.
Tavis: Yeah, I was just challenging you respectfully on two things. One, as you point out now, saying at the end of the conversation an open question is one thing; saying earlier that too little, too late, those are two diametrically different things.
Alter: No, it's too little, too late, Tavis, just so we're clear, because she cannot overcome his lead in pledged delegates. That is a mathematical impossibility, and she would have to win 57 percent of all of the remaining contests, which is unlikely, to average 57 percent, in order to bring his pledge delegate total below 100.
An 100 pledge delegate lead by Obama has been a kind of a consensus that if it's below 100 then you could say, "Hey, he's only winning by a little bit." But if it's above 100, it's very hard to go - for the superdelegates to go against the will of the people if he's got a lead of more than 100 going into that convention.
Tavis: You and I are longtime friends, and we could do this for hours. Having said that, with all due respect to this conversation, the media has been wrong about just about everything in this race.
Alter: Yeah, that's true. (Laughter) You're right, they've been wrong about a lot. No doubt about it.
Tavis: That said, always an honor to have Jonathan Alter on the program. Jonathan, thanks for coming on, man.
Alter: Thanks, Tavis.
Tavis: Appreciate your insight.
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