Hillary needed the Black vote

Obama’s speaking. He won NC. Indiana’s too close to call. No upsets. Best case scenario for her, status quo ante.

With that, Hillary remains mathematically challenged. Doomed even. He wins.

So why have we been talking about white working-class males? Schaller suggests Hillary botched the black vote:

Though a majority of black voters may inevitably have gone for Obama, nothing precluded the wife of the so-called first black president from keeping Obama’s margins among blacks significantly narrower — say, losing to him by 4-to-1 or even 3-to-1, rather than the devastating 9-to-1 margins by which Obama has often won African-American Democrats. “The Clinton campaign has been focused on Barack Obama’s performance with white working-class voters in a few states, but they fail to mention Senator Clinton’s abysmal performance with black voters all over the country,” says political consultant and Obama supporter Jamal Simmons. “She has gone from leading among black voters to losing them 90 percent to 10 percent in Pennsylvania. One would expect Obama to win these voters, but 90-10 is a total collapse that Obama is not experiencing among any constituency. Simply put, Hillary Clinton has a black problem.” [...]

To understand the power of the black vote thus far in the 2008 Democratic primary, consider the fate of the two candidates in their own home states, both of which voted on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Unsurprisingly, a whopping 93 percent of African-Americans in Illinois supported Obama. And even though New York was and surely will remain his low-water mark for black support, 61 percent of black New Yorkers still voted for him.  [...]

What might the situation look like now if Clinton had managed to keep Obama’s 90 percent black support just to 80 percent? It’s impossible to know for certain, because it depends on where specifically — in which states and districts — she garnered those extra black votes. But NBC News political director and delegate math expert Chuck Todd ventured a conservative, back-of-the-napkin estimate. “I’m not sure how many more delegates she would have gotten at 20 percent performance, but I’d guess roughly 25 to 30,” Todd told me. “That may not seem like a lot, but it would have swung the net delegate margin by 50 to 60, or about a third of his current pledged delegate lead.”

To supplement Todd’s delegate estimates, I looked at something much easier to compute: the extra popular votes Clinton would have amassed in 13 primary states with significant black populations — Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin — had she won just 20 percent of the black voters in those states.  [...]

And the difference it would have made is striking: In those 13 other states, had she drawn just 20 percent of the African-American vote, Clinton would have shifted more than 270,000 votes from Obama to herself, a net swing of more than half a million votes. Which, by the way, is roughly the amount by which she trails Obama in the overall national popular vote right now.

LATER: Hillary is speaking, “…Tonight we’ve come from behind, we’ve broken the tie, and thanks to you it’s full speed on to the White House!”

Joe, the fact that you have to ask answers the question — yes, Limbaugh had an impact. But a marginal one that doesn’t weaken anyone. To engage is good. Kind of pathetic don’t you think that the Grand Old Party is reduced to that?