A Few Sad Truths

Whether you're a Hillary Rodham Clinton fan or a Barack Obama supporter, a closer look at Tuesday's election numbers from the Ohio Democratic primary are upsetting.

Exit polling done by MSNBC shows about two-thirds of white voters in Ohio backed Clinton, higher than in many other states. Also, Ohio is far more Caucasian than many states; nearly three-fourths of all voters here are white, compared to the six in 10 in previous Democratic primaries.

Obama got overwhelming support from blacks, younger voters and the college educated, but did poorly among blue-collar workers and elderly voters.

In fact, Obama won in Ohio's three largest counties: Cuyahoga, home to Cleveland; Franklin, home to Columbus; and our own Hamilton, home to Cincinnati. Obama also won Montgomery County (Dayton) and Delaware County in suburban Columbus. But Clinton took the remainder of the state — all suburban and rural areas.

Then there’s the matter of a photograph of Obama used by the Clinton campaign in advertising that appears to have been digitally altered to make the Illinois senator appear darker than he really is.

Several national bloggers first noticed the discrepancy. Clinton’s commercial on national security uses a clip of Obama from a recent debate at Cleveland State University, but his skin tone is noticeably darker than it appears in television coverage from the debate. The reddish backdrop in the TV clips is purple in Clinton’s ad, suggesting the coloring was intentionally manipulated. There’s still no explanation from the Clinton camp about how this occurred, but it smacks of Willie Horton-style dirty tricks.

Sadly, the available evidence would suggest that race played a factor in Ohio’s election results.

Clinton appeared on The Early Show on CBS this morning and hinted about the possibility of her and Obama sharing the Democratic ticket. Some political analysts believe this was done to send the message that Clinton remains friendly with Obama, and to blunt criticism of her recent negative campaigning. Most national Democratic leaders interviewed agreed that a shared ticket is unlikely, and Clinton would never deign to be on the bottom half.

Clinton’s campaign, though, needs to take another peek at the Texas results. Although she claimed victory in the Lone Star State’s primary, Obama is ahead in counting of the caucuses there, meaning he will pick up more delegates. Put in starker terms, Clinton needs to get a whopping 97 percent of the remaining delegates in upcoming primaries to win the nomination, while Obama needs a much more manageable 77 percent, according to some estimates.

Perhaps the catch phrases used by the two campaigns are telling in a way not intended. Obama’s supporters shout, “Yes, we can” at campaign events; Clinton’s backers have adopted the rallying cry of “Yes, she will.”

In the end, it seems, it’s all about ego and personal ambition for Hillary.

— Kevin Osborne

Comments

[Richard Bolha]

Good Grief! Are you looking for excuses? Perhaps, if Obama had a picture of Hillary in a dress. Is that sexist? Get over yourself. Hillary a woman. Obama is black. Who does not know that?

[Selena]

This information you have presented as "fact" about the Clinton ad has not been verified.

There is no evidence to suggest the Clinton campaign deliberatly darkened Sen. Obama's skin color in the ad.

As someone who writes for CityBeat you should know better. Where's your journalistic integrity. You are publishing information without providing both sides of the story and without investigating the claim made by this blogger John Aravosis, who by the way doesn't even have a proper grasp of grammer.

Look at this sentence he wrote:
"The Clintons keeps doing things, saying things, that sound awfully racist."

correction: Clintons keep
or Clinton keeps

I work for a news station so I think I know a little more about Television ads then you do.

Asked for comment, Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson said, "this is a bogus assertion. Ads look different based on software, screens, computers, television, etc."

This is in fact true, images get washed out, colored, darkened, even resized when transferring tape to tape, tape to digital, to hi-def...It's called generation loss.

Do some research into that.

[Way to go!]

More rumors and biased "reporting" from a Democrat.

[Sad]

Hey Republican commentors: guess what? Of course this is biased reporting, its an op-ed piece (blog), not the front page of the Washington Post! If you want to only hear and see your own views regurgitated to you, turn on Fox News! Obviously this was a ploy by the conservative guard. The Republican race was over weeks ago, so what do they do, sabotage the Democratic primary so Billary gets elected because we all know she won't stand a chance against McCain. Its like our entire election system has turned into an Episode of The Gauntlet on MTV. Another 3 Trillion wasted in the desert in the Middle East over the next 4 years. God help us all.

[Kevin Osborne]

Touchy, much?

First, this is an opinion/commentary piece. Look up the definition of "blog" sometime.

Selena, I merely posed a question about the ad that's being raised in multiple venues today. Nothing was presented as "fact," and I am not endorsing the claim that the ad was deliberately racist. But the explanation you cite sounds rather lame, too.

Generation loss does not cause images to get darker, just hazier or blurrier.

[Not the Mamma Cass!]

Kevin: you're suggesting Blacks withholding their votes from Clinton is racist?

Maybe they just like the other candidate better?

I'd be much more interested to know who the hell voted for Edwards (39,000+) and Romney/Thompson (50,000+/-)? Who the hell votes for candidates who aren't even campaigning anymore?

[David E. Gallaher]

Here's the silver lining to Barack's setback: Any PR person will tell you that bad publicity is better than no publicity. Until the Democratic ticket is settled, whenever the TV campaign news coverage switches over to McCain to be fair and balanced, viewers will hit the mute button. I know I will.
Had both the Democratic as well as the Republican tickets been settled last night, viewers would have hit the mute button for the both up until about Halloween.

[Stephen Carter-Novotni]

The race for now is about whether the country is more racist or sexist. (I bet racism wins.)

In November it will be about whether we're more ageist or sexist.

I do think the Obama camp did something very similar with their ad from last week. The Obama flyer I received had several small shots of Obama and words about what a great guy he is on one side. On the flip side was a doctored, full-page photo of Hillary. Half of her teeth were yellowed (on the right side of her mouth), her eyes were slightly bloodshot and it looked like all of her wrinkles were accentuated.

[valereee]

I really am fed up with the idea that if I don't vote for Obama, I must be racist. There are other explanations for why I voted for Hillary. Given the choice of these three candidates, I believe Hillary would be the best president. Period. It has nothing to do with anyone's skin tone or their genitalia.

I watched the ad. Yes, his skin looks marginally darker when you watch the clip side-by-side with the original video. He still looks like a light-skinned black man, and I'm quite sure if I hadn't looked at them side by side I would NEVER have noticed he looks darker-skinned than any other time I've seen him. Even if the color tone of the clip was altered, maybe it was done to make HER skin look better -- BFD. All campaign clips try to make their own candidate look good. Who are these folks who are so paranoid about such things that they scrutinize a short ad clip vs. an original ads so closely? Get over youselves.