I had a stock answer throughout the primaries to the never ending questions about whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton was more electable in the general election. I thought that only Barack could lose but that he also had a significantly higher support ceiling than Hillary. Since this is one of the few times when I think I’m right about something I said in the primary season, let me briefly explain why Hillary would most likely not be doing as well as Obama is right now.

 

The plot below of Clinton and Obama’s Gallup unfavorable ratings during the primary months tells much of the story. As can be seen, Clinton’s unfavorables were consistently around 10 to 15 points higher than Obama’s. Perhaps more importantly, these opinions of Clinton are the product of fifteen years worth of considerations about her. Obama’s inexperience, on the other hand, necessarily means the public brings less prior information to bear in evaluating him. The upshot is that opinions about Clinton should be more crystallized and thus more resistant to changing national and campaign dynamics.

 

 

This is precisely why I thought Obama had a lower floor and a higher ceiling than Clinton. Much the way Sarah Palin’s gaffes get 100 times more attention than Joe Biden’s, campaign missteps or scandal would have been way more devastating to Obama than Clinton because Americans have less offsetting information about him stored up in their memories. At the same time, though, Clinton could never have benefited as much as Obama seems to have from strong debate performances and the economy crashing. For everyone already had an opinion of her and 45 percent of them were negative. Simply put, it’s extremely hard to envision a scenario from these unfavorable numbers where general election candidate Clinton registers the 62 percent favorability rating that Obama received in the latest Gallup poll.

 

I’m always perplexed, then, when I hear matter of fact assertions about how much better Clinton would be doing than Obama right now because she’s white. How could any white candidate rack up the 6+ point win that Obama seems poised to capture if half of the country already disliked him.

 

Sorry to open up old wounds from the primary here, but Obama is positioned to earn a mandate that Hillary Clinton’s polarizing personality and campaign tactics probably never could have.