AMERICAblog: White Women Begin to Turn Away from Clinton

[AtomicKitten]

White women begin to turn away from Clinton
http://www.americablog.com/2008/04/white-women-begin-to-turn-away-from.html
by John Aravosis (DC) · 4/14/2008

This is the first concrete sign, I've seen, of a voter backlash against Hillary. Well, perhaps not a backlash as much as a realization that it's over for Hillary, she lost the race two months ago. Not only do voters want to back a winner, they really don't want to back someone who has already lost - at some point, no matter how ardent a supporter, when you realize that your candidate doesn't have a chance, you hang it up and go home. This is the first sign that Hillary's strongest supporters, white women, are going home. From McClatchy:

* Clinton's strongest core of support — white women — is beginning to erode in Pennsylvania, the site of the critical April 22 Democratic presidential primary, and a loss here could effectively end her White House run.

* A Quinnipiac University survey taken April 3-6 in Pennsylvania found that Clinton's support fell 6 percentage points in a week among white women. Nationally, a Lifetime Networks poll of women found that 26 percent said they liked Clinton less now than in January, while only 15 percent said they liked her more.

This part of the story is particularly interesting:

* A lot of white women, and for that matter white men, want the race to end and increasingly consider Obama an acceptable nominee.

* "There may be a general, reluctant acceptance that things just don't look that good for Clinton," said Susan Carroll, a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Rutgers University.

* The most familiar echo among many Pennsylvania women when they discuss Clinton, however, is disappointment. Ask them when they became disillusioned with the woman who would be president, and they can cite almost the exact moment.

* For Clare Howard, a meditation teacher from Southhampton, it was the night in January when Bill Clinton suggested that Obama did well in the South Carolina primary because of his race.

* That went too far, said Howard, 60. "It was like they would do anything to win," she said.

* Joan Schmidt, 60, a school psychologist in Levittown, grew tired of hearing Clinton tout — and exaggerate — her experience.