THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Protected Class Warfare: U.S. News & World Report senior writer Michael Barone characterizes the polarization of Dem voters “tribal warfare”:
Whites have voted, if you average the results from the states, 53 percent to 39 percent for Clinton; blacks, 80 percent to 17 percent for Obama; Latinos, 58 percent to 39 percent for Clinton; Asians, in California (the one primary state where they're numerous enough to gauge), 71 percent to 25 percent for Clinton.
The differences in voting by the young, overwhelmingly for Obama, and the elderly, overwhelmingly for Clinton, are as large as any I can remember in either a primary or general election. Upscale voters are heavily for Obama; downscale voters are heavily for Clinton.
As the contest has continued, increasing percentages of Clinton and Obama voters say they wouldn't vote for the other candidate against John McCain. …
Polling suggests that the Democratic nominee may not be able to count on the losing candidate's tribes in November. Academics and young people and blacks may not turn out in extraordinary numbers for Clinton, as they have for Obama, and the upscale may prefer McCain to a tax increase.
Exit polls of 24,657 voters in 22 Democratic primaries show that whites who said race was important in picking their candidate have voted for Hillary over Barack Obama nearly 2:1 (63 percent to 32 percent). Of these voters, 41 percent of them also said they would be satisfied only if Clinton won the nomination vs. 14 percent who said they would be satisfied only if Obama were the nominee, reports The Associated Press.
The polling data has good news and bad news for Obama. On the one hand: “Whites who said race influenced their decision were outnumbered more than six to one by those saying it was insignificant.” On the other hand: “The numbers also underscore the challenge Obama could face in the general election, when whites will comprise a larger share of voters and tend to be more conservative than those participating in the Democratic primaries.” And then there are the voters motivated by gender bias: Six out of 10 voters - male and female - who said gender was important went for Hillary, whereas those who didn’t care one way or the other about gender were slightly more likely to vote for Obama.
Meanwhile, national polls suggest that the controversy over whether Obama should have left his church over Rev. Jeremiah White’s racist, anti-American sermons has not hurt the candidate, but The Wall Street Journal notes, “[c]ontests in Pennsylvania on April 22, Indiana on May 6 and West Virginia on May 13 could serve as an important test. His performance among largely white, less-urban voters could show how well he can secure critical swing states in November.”
If nothing else, PA will test Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen’s Law of Racial Politics (liberals win the white vote only in states where there are few blacks) holds up. Demographically, it’s 86 percent white (the 23rd whitest state in the Union), according to 2005 census data.
† There’s No Such Thing As Free Healthcare: Last year, former Gov. Mitt Romney’s law mandating universal health insurance coverage took effect in MA, and some 340,000 of the state’s estimated 600,000 uninsured now have coverage. The downside - which The New York Times laughably calls “an unintended consequence” - is prolonged Canadian-style waits to see a doctor. The problem isn’t just more people trying to see doctors instead of going to the ER, it’s also a shortage of primary care physicians:
In pockets of the United States, rural and urban, a confluence of market and medical forces has been widening the gap between the supply of primary care physicians and the demand for their services. Modest pay, medical school debt, an aging population and the prevalence of chronic disease have each played a role.
Now in Massachusetts, in an unintended consequence of universal coverage, the imbalance is being exacerbated by the state’s new law requiring residents to have health insurance. …
Physicians are now seeing four to six new patients a day, up from one or two a year ago.
Dr. Patricia A. Sereno, state president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said an influx of the newly insured to her practice in Malden, just north of Boston, had stretched her daily caseload to as many as 22 to 25 patients, from 18 to 20 a year ago. To fit them in, Dr. Sereno limits the number of 45-minute physicals she schedules each day, thereby doubling the wait for an exam to three months.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Dr. Sereno said. “It’s great that people have access to health care, but now we’ve got to find a way to give them access to preventive services. The point of this legislation was not to get people episodic care.”
To solve the problem, state legislators are considering a law “to forgive medical school debt for those willing to practice primary care in underserved areas,” reports The Times. So to deal with this all-too-predictable consequence of state-mandated and taxpayer-subsidized healthcare coverage, taxpayers will now also have to subsidize medical school for scores of students. And so it goes …
† Blogging Can Kill You: The New York Times calls blogging for pay “a digital sweatshop”:
They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet. …
Bloggers … are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.
The Stiletto blogs for fun – she has a day job – but since her blog is about “politics and other stuff” the pressure to stay on top of events and twists of fate in this unusually long campaign season is taking its toll on the length and quality of her sleep time.
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